Cognition: Capacity-Limited Engagement with Relational Substrate

This preprint proposes an organizational account of cognition derived from two minimal primitives:

• a differentiated relational substrate
• finite engagement capacity

It argues that several recurring features of cognition—including limits on simultaneous processing, temporally ordered cognitive activity, structural modification through repeated engagement, stabilized regions within the relational substrate, and spontaneous cognition under reduced external constraint—can be understood as consequences of the interaction between these two primitives.

The framework is presented as an organizational account rather than a model of specific neural mechanisms. It aims to provide a compact theoretical basis for understanding how several widely observed features of cognition can arise from the interaction between relational structure and capacity-limited engagement.