Protention and retention in biological systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a mathematical framework for understanding cognitive and biological time, focusing on the extended present created by memory and anticipation, and proposes a new concept called biological inertia.

Contribution

It develops an abstract mathematical model for protention and retention, linking physical theories to biological time perception and introducing the concept of biological inertia.

Findings

A functional model of biological protention is proposed.

The concept of biological inertia is introduced.

The framework connects physical relaxation phenomena to biological time features.

Abstract

This paper proposes an abstract mathematical frame for describing some features of cognitive and biological time. We focus here on the so called "extended present" as a result of protentional and retentional activities (memory and anticipation). Memory, as retention, is treated in some physical theories (relaxation phenomena, which will inspire our approach), while protention (or anticipation) seems outside the scope of physics. We then suggest a simple functional representation of biological protention. This allows us to introduce the abstract notion of "biological inertia".