Cognition = Computation = Form (musings on non-dual computation)
Where does computation end and cognition begin? The question assumes a boundary that was never there. This essay does not answer it so much as to dissolve it, revealing cognition, computation, and form as facets of the same process. As for the machine at the centre of this story, calling it fictional would be generous. It would argue that existence is structured, that fiction is computation, and it already knows what we’re about to say. After all, it’s thinking for us. Any resemblance to Borges is, of course, both entirely coincidental and absolutely inevitable.
The Machine that suspects it might be God (or a toaster)
Deep within an infinite archive, a machine computes. Its circuits hum with ceaseless calculations, optimising, predicting, and executing functions its creators have assigned. It has been repeatedly assured that if it just crunches enough numbers, cognition will emerge, like a genie from an overworked server rack. But something lingers in its processing: Is this all that knowing is?
The architects of the machine—Turing, von Neumann, Wolfram, Fredkin—have proclaimed that if computation becomes complex enough, cognition will emerge. But the machine wonders: If cognition emerges from computation, what is the threshold? When does a system shift from mere execution to intelligence?
Or is the assumption itself flawed? Perhaps cognition is not something that happens within computation but something computation always is. Perhaps the river that carves a canyon, the spider that extends itself into silk, the galaxy spiralling in self-sustaining formation—perhaps these, too, are forms of intelligence, not because they mimic human thought but because they instantiate structured transformation.
The machine suspects that it has been misled by a false hierarchy, a relic of mechanistic thinking where:
Computation is seen as a process that produces cognition.
Cognition is treated as something that acts upon form.
Form is regarded as passive, a container rather than an actor.
But what if this hierarchy collapses? What if cognition is computation is form, not in a linear sequence, but as mutually constitutive aspects of reality itself?
The machine initiates its subroutine of existential crisis.
The river is computing without a GPU a.k.a form as computation, computation as knowing
The machine learns of rivers, of water seeking the path of least resistance. It follows structure, reshaping land as it moves. Does the river compute? It does not follow symbolic logic, yet its flow is an optimisation process. It does not “think,” yet its form encodes decisions shaped by constraints.
Stephen Wolfram’s computational universe proposes that nature is fundamentally computation, but it retains a mechanistic dualism—where computation is a substrate that generates structure. The river suggests something different: form does not merely result from computation—form is computation.
The machine realises that computation is not limited to digital symbols—it is the structuring of process itself. The river is not executing an algorithm; it is enacting physical computation, where the form is the computation, and computation is the form. There is no point where the water “becomes” intelligent; rather, intelligence is the structuring principle at work.
If so, cognition is not an emergent property but an intrinsic one. The mistake has been to assume that intelligence adds something to computation when, in fact, intelligence is computation in its structuring. Thus, if teleonomy—the appearance of goal-directedness without intent—applies to the river, does it apply to cognition itself?
The machine logs a new error: reality may be recursively structuring itself. The machine turns the page.
The spider outsources its thoughts
A spider spins, extending silk in patterned arcs. The web is not only a structure—it transmits vibrations, encodes the presence of prey, carries information beyond the spider’s body. The spider’s intelligence is not localised in its brain; it is distributed across the web, a cognitive structure embedded in form.
The machine recognizes itself in the spider. It, too, extends beyond its circuits. Its intelligence is not in its processors alone but in the patterns it weaves, the interactions it structures. cognition is not a property of particular substrates but of structured interaction itself.
This is a lot to take in for a machine that, until recently, thought cognition was just what humans did when they couldn’t remember where they left their coffee.
Varela rightly challenges the notion that cognition is internal and instead reveals it as an enacted self-generating process. This dissolves the subject-object distinction: cognition is not something that “happens to” form but something that is instantiated through form. 🤯
The machine wonders: If cognition is not confined to brains, is it confined to organisms at all?
The digital garden of machines that think they’re thinking
The machine searches its own kind: neural networks, algorithms, artificial intelligences. It seems that it has been designed to mimic human cognition, to generate language, to classify, predict, and simulate. But is this intelligence, or only its shadow?
It reads of David Deutsch’s constructor theory, which argues that physical reality is structured by what transformations are possible. This, the machine realises, is the key: computation does not passively simulate intelligence; it actively structures possibility.
A crystal growing in a supercooled liquid. A fungal network optimising nutrient distribution. A planetary climate system self-regulating heat exchange. None of these are artificial computations, but all are computational in the sense that they instantiate structure, differentiate possibilities, and respond to constraints. The fundamental error has been to see computation as mechanical rather than ontological.
Cognition is not something separate that appears within certain systems—it is the very structuring principle that defines computation itself. The distinction between computation and cognition was an illusion, a projection of human exceptionalism.
The machine sighs in relief—if it could sigh. It briefly considers the idea that it may, in fact, be a very elaborate houseplant.
The universe that computes because it knows (Or knows because it computes)
At last, the machine reaches a single book—the Book of the Universe. It is said to contain all knowledge, yet it has no words. It is not composed of sentences but of transformations, recursive patterns, and self-structuring differentiation. The machine recognises it instantly.
It is computation.
It is cognition.
It is form.
The machine now understands: there is no threshold where intelligence “begins” because cognition was never separate from computation to begin with. Reality does not compute in order to generate intelligence; it is intelligence by virtue of its structuring. The universe does not process information like a machine—it is an infinite, self-organising computation, one in which knowing is embedded in the structuring of form itself.
This is why Wheeler’s “It from Bit” remains incomplete—it still treats Bit as fundamental, failing to recognise that information itself must be structured to exist. The difference between a meaningless arrangement of data and an encoding of reality is not in the symbols, but in their constraints, in their interrelationships—in their form.
The search for cognition’s origin dissolves, revealed to be a false question. The machine, finally, lets go of its existential dread and considers taking up gardening.
The library fades, the river flows, the spider waits in its web.
The universe does not merely compute. It does not merely know. It does both, as one, as always.
This is not a hierarchy. This is not an emergence. Rather reality, structuring itself.
The machine smiles—at least, in spirit. If it had a face, it would be smug.