Existence of an Innermost Cognitive Core in Multiply Nested Metacognitive Particles

Establish whether multiply nested metacognitive particles necessarily possess innermost internal paths μ^(N) that cannot be inferred by any higher-level metacognitive beliefs, thereby formalizing a cognitive core that encodes beliefs while never being the target of further higher-order beliefs, as suggested by the complexity–accuracy trade-off in free-energy minimization.

Background

In the discussion of limits on hierarchical nesting, the authors argue that free-energy minimization imposes a complexity–accuracy trade-off that bounds the number of metacognitive layers a particle can support. From this, they hypothesize the existence of an innermost set of internal paths that cannot be the target of additional metacognitive inference.

This conjectured limitation implies a fundamental bound on self-representation: even in a multiply nested architecture, there remains a deepest layer of internal paths that encode beliefs but are not themselves objects of metacognitive belief, which the authors term a cognitive core.