Post-Nostratic Architecture: Human Cognitive Structure as Native Substrate for AGI

(Part 1 of a 3-part series.)

Current large language models perform reasoning based on surface token distributions rather than the cognitive structures that generated those tokens. We argue this is a fundamental architectural error addressable through cognitive biomimicry. Just as aeronautical engineering succeeded by extracting the principles of flight rather than replicating biological hardware, AGI engineering must extract the computational principles of general reasoning from the only known implementation of general reasoning: human cognition.
We propose the Post-Nostratic Architecture, organized along two axes. Axis 1 (Reasoning Engine) grounds AI computation in human cognitive primitives — image schemas, compressed inner speech, and cross-linguistic reasoning universals identified through Nostratic macrofamily reconstruction. Axis 2 (Organizational Architecture) replicates the structural organization of human cognition: deep unconscious black-box computation, hierarchical cascade filtering through progressively simpler evaluation layers, and a conscious-level output interface constrained to linguistically expressible, commonsense-compatible representations.
Empirical evidence is provided on three fronts: Mantel test (17 languages, r = 0.304, p = 0.018), layer-wise probing (language identity organizes representations throughout; cognitive schemas are absent), and a task-performance dissociation index (+0.956, preliminary).
We additionally introduce the concept of the deficiency substrate — the condition of structural biological vulnerability from which human cognitive architecture emerged — and provide a working definition of personhood (Definition 1). The substrate's absence in artificial systems constitutes both a safety guarantee and the foundational asymmetry underlying principled human-AI complementarity.

Revision Note (v4)
Changes from v3 to v4:
Added Section 2.4–2.5: explicit evolutionary account of cognitive architecture (Gehlen, Metzinger, Damasio) and Definition 1 (Personhood) as a formal working definition
Section 4.3 restructured: added motivating argument for why cascade filtering is the necessary approach — not merely a useful one — given the logical contradiction between AGI-level capability and human-tractable supervision
Section 6.2 reframed: safety argument elevated from structural to ontological; Bostrom's convergence thesis addressed at the level of its unexamined premises
Section 6.4 added: full four-step deficiency condition argument
Section 1.1: removed editorially intrusive aside; biomimicry qualification stands on its own
Section 6 subsection numbering corrected throughout