Provided by Cognitive Sciences ePrint Archive
The Immune System and Other
Cognitive Systems
In the following pages we propose a theory on cognitive systems and the
common strategies of perception, which are at the basis of their
function. We demonstrate that these strategies are easily seen to be in
place in known cognitive systems such as vision and language.
Furthermore we show that taking these strategies into consideration
implies a new outlook on immune function calling for a new appraisal of
the immune system as a cognitive system.
URI HERSHBERG AND SOL EFRONI
Uri Hershberg is at the
Interdisciplinary Center for Neuronal
Computation, at the Hebrew
University, Jerusalem, Israel. Sol Efroni
is at the Computer Science and Applied
Math Department and at the
Immunology Department at the
Weizmann Institute of Science,
Rehovot, Israel.
E-mail for communication:
[email protected].
It is becoming clear that the field of immunology is approaching a paradigm shift.
It is agreed by most researchers that the immune system is a complex system
both in its composition and its behavior. However, the most popular ideas of
immune function treat the immune system in a mechanistic and reductionist man-
ner. According to the clonal selection theory the immune system’s function is to
defeat pathogens. The immune system identifies foreign antigens and destroys
them. The identification of the foreign is made possible by removing, in the immune
system’s prenatal development, all receptors that recognize self. Anything that an
immune receptor identifies “must be the enemy” [1]. Countering this mainstream
view are a growing number of voices that state the need to change the clonal
selection theory or discard it, claiming that such a simplistic appraisal of the im-
mune system’s function and mode of action is untenable because, at the molecular
level, we are closely related to the pathogens that invade us. There is a need to
consider the immune system as a integrative system with the ability to see patterns
and understand context [2,3]. It is in the context of this argument about the immune
system that we present our theory of cognitive systems and claim that the immune
system should be seen as such a cognitive system.
The phrase “cognitive system” is used in many fields to describe the various
faculties that we and other organisms use to perceive and interact with the world.
Despite its widespread use, the phrase “cognitive systems” has not yet been defined
in a way that can be applied to all of the cases in which it is used.
We suggest the following criterion to differ between cognitive and noncognitive
systems: In cognitive systems the perceptual sensitivities of the system are not
preordained only by the plan of the system but need an interaction with their
environment to define the system’s exact sensitivities.
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CO M PLEXITY
© 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Vol. 6, No. 5