A meta-theoretic system for constructing correspondences in cognitive science

A fundamental issue in cognitive science is the question how to accomplish a multidisciplinary cooperation between the disciplines involved. The problem is that we lack a meta-theoretical framework, or guidelines about how to sort and match different perspectives. I propose to dismiss the standard approach that reduced different views to the single unifying concept of "information", and to move towards a meta-theoretical perspective striving to point out correspondences between various accounts. To describe such correspondences, I suggest some general concepts: state, event, flow, flow-chain. A single common sense fact may be variously described by different disciplines as the state of a brain area, or of the body, or of consciousness, and so on. As states follow one another in time, different events, and flows (sequences of events), may also be described by using the languages of diverse disciplines. To examine correspondences, we can consider different flows in parallel at the same time internal (a flow-chain),including several flows (physical, behavioural, sensorial, of consciousness, etc), and establish horizontal (between events in the same flow) and vertical (between events in different flows) links. Such links may have causal or correlational nature. Examples of analyses of specific tasks are provided and some consequences for communication between disciplines are discussed.