How the mind works: an exercise in pragmatism

This article follows the tradition of pragmatism, understanding cognition as "a guide to appropriate action", and deriving cognitive models from the considerations of performance efficiency. Pragmatic approach has received recent development in applying nonlinear dynamics to modeling brain processes. The article concerns the method of resource allocation exploited in the human brain. The suggestions given stem from a belief that examining methods for solving the problem in a changing environment in which resource use and allocation consumes energy can provide hints on how the mind operates and what went on in the nervous systems of the early humans that made possible evolutionary successes by far surpassing those attained by the other species. In the course of this research, biology inspired applications while mathematics helped to articulate hypotheses about biological control