A Universal Developmental Code

This final chapter discusses far-ranging implications of the discoveries that this book describes, including lessons about how to live more fulfilling lives, how perplexing aspects of the human condition arise, and how ethical value systems and religious beliefs are sustained. Principles of our brains’ self-organizing measurement process generalize to all cellular biological organisms, and are shaped by the physical world with which our brains ceaselessly communicate and adapt. In particular, our brains’ complementary computing, uncertainty principles, and resonance have analogs in the laws of the physical world that has shaped them. A universal computational code for mental life enables a lifetime of experiences to cohere in an emerging sense of self. Complementary computing and hierarchical resolution of uncertainty require conscious states to select effective actions, and thus actively engage us in the ceaseless brain-environment perception-cognition-emotion-action feedback loop that drives brain self-organization to adapt to a changing world. Actions that lead to errors can be corrected using cognitive and cognitive-emotional processes to discover a better understanding of environmental causes and the physical laws that shape them. Symmetry-breaking between approach and avoidance outcomes in cognition and emotion provides a biological basis for morality and religion, with positive emotions facilitating sustainable motivations and empathy, while also causing negative experiences like learned helplessness, self-punitive behaviors, fetishes, and the motivations to commit evil acts. A universal developmental code uses similar STM and LTM laws for brain development, adult learning, gastrulation, organ size increases that preserve tissue form, Hydra regeneration, slime mold aggregation, and Rhodnius cuticles.