Cognitive Psychiatry and the genesis of knowledge: From Meno’s paradox to cosmogenetic analyticity

Abstract

Arthur Pap’s functional a priori explains how laws change function once knowledge is constituted, but not how the conceptual core enabling such change is formed. The aim of this article is to propose a naturogenetic theory of the genesis of knowledge, based on a re-edition of Meno’s paradox, that completes Arthur Pap’s functional conception of the a priori. This theoretical essay draws on a narrative review of recent literature (2021-2026) in philosophy of science, cognitive science and neuroscience. The paradox unfolds into difficulties of identity, pertinence and the gap. The unknown has borders, as Mendeleev’s empty cells and Maxwell’s analogies show, and definition formalizes relations it does not create; operational criteria secure diagnostic reliability, not validity. The organism, produced within the causal organization of reality, couples to it through co-praxis, co-synchrony and co-causalization, sedimenting concepts as tracks for future knowledge, consistent with research on cognitive maps, schemas and causal learning. Leibniz’s complete concept is reread as processual containment, and inquiry is traced back to a cosmogenetic analyticity prior to life and mind, which neither natural selection nor self-organization explains. Meno is answered by progressive nucleation, a naturalized recollection that also accounts for error. Pap’s mobility of laws presupposes this foundation. Objections of regress, nativism, conventionalism and metaphysical overreach are addressed, and implications for psychiatric nosology are outlined. The most fundamental analyticity is a relation between real possibilities, not between words.