Mental events are considered to supervene on physical events. A supervenient event does not change without a corresponding change in the underlying subvenient physical events. Since wholes and their parts exhibit the same supervenience-subvenience relations, inter-level causation has been expected to serve as a model for mental causation. We proposed an inter-level causation mechanism to construct a model of consciousness and an agent's self-determination. However, a significant gap exists between this mechanism and cognitive functions. Here, we demonstrate how to integrate the inter-level causation mechanism with the widely known dual-process theories. We assume that the supervenience level is composed of multiple supervenient functions (i.e., neural networks), and we argue that inter-level causation can be achieved by controlling the feedback error defined through changing algebraic expressions combining these functions. Using inter-level causation allows for a dual laws model in which each level possesses its own distinct dynamics. In this framework, the feedback error is determined independently by two processes: (1) the selection of equations combining supervenient functions, and (2) the negative feedback error reduction to satisfy the equations through adjustments of neurons and synapses. We interpret these two independent feedback controls as Type 1 and Type 2 processes in the dual process theories. As a result, theories of consciousness, agency, and dual process theory are unified into a single framework, and the characteristic features of Type 1 and Type 2 processes are naturally derived.
Human cognition can exhibit two different modes of operation for the same stimulus. One is a fast, automatic, associative response, and the other is a slower, deliberative, rule-based reasoning (Sloman, 1996;Smith & DeCoster, 2000;Evans, 2008;Kahneman, 2011). Dual-process theory labels these two modes "Type 1" and "Type 2," widely known as "System 1" and "System 2." However, the existence of two distinct systems has been questioned, and recently, it has been suggested that the term "system" should be abolished and replaced with clusters of characteristics (C1/C2) or processing modes (Bellini-Leite, 2018).
At the behavioral and computational levels, the default interventionist theory (Evans & Stanovich, 2013)-where Type 1 provides default intuitive output and Type 2 monitors and logically corrects it-is empirically fruitful. However, evidence that people can intuitively perceive logical contradictions (De Neys, 2012;De Neys and Pennycook, 2019) supports a parallel/competitive dynamics between these two processes (De Neys, 2021;De Neys, 2023), rather than a serial handover. This is because perceiving logical inconsistency requires detecting a conflict between the outputs of the two processes. Discussions continue regarding the nature of these two types of processing, their integration, and their respective characteristics (Samuels, 2009;Bellini-Leite, 2022;De Neys, 2023).
Findings from cognitive neuroscience have not yet revealed distinct activity patterns reflecting differences between the two types of thinking. A recent meta-analysis suggests that the prefrontal control network (including the medial/superior prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, insular cortex, and left inferior frontal gyrus) is involved during task performance based on dual process theory; however, the distinction between the two thinking modes remains ambiguous (Gronchi et al., 2024). This lack of clarity may support a hierarchical model where Type 1 and Type 2 processes share and utilize the same neural circuitry, rather than suggesting distinct neural bases for the two processes.
Such theoretical developments suggest that treating the Type 1/Type 2 distinction as a difference in computational methods rather than as fixed modules represents a promising direction (Solman, 1996;Bellini-Leite, 2022).
This paper proposes the dual-laws model, a non-reductive, coarse-grained account of dual-process phenomena. Dual-laws model was originally constructed as an inter-level causal model for theories of consciousness and agency (Ohmura & Kuniyoshi, 2025;Ohmura et al., 2026), but a similar hierarchical model has also been proposed for dual-process theory (Carruthers, 2019;Frankish, 2019). Our model focuses on causal mechanisms, leaving a gap with cognitive processes. Meanwhile, traditional dual-process theory is a cognitive theory, presenting the challenge that causal mechanisms and the interaction mechanisms between Type 1 and Type 2 processes remain unclear. Integrating both approaches is expected to compensate for each other’s shortcomings.
The key idea is that, above the neural substrate, there exists a coarse-grained level governed by higher-level laws that independent of lower neural-level laws-dual laws-that (a) are independent of specific neural implementations, (b) can nonetheless exert downward causal influence on neural dynamics, and (c) naturally accommodate shared circuitry across tasks.
Within this framework, Type 1 and Type 2 processes are defined by differences in the control mechanism of feedback errors, which are independently determined by both higher-level states and lower-level neural states. Our model directly addresses the specification problem by supplying an ontologically modest but causally potent level of theory.
We have proposed the dual-laws model as a framework for constructing a testable theory of consciousness (Ohmura & Kuniyoshi, 2025). Subsequently, we suggested that this model can also explain important features of agency (Ohmura et al., 2026).
The distinctive aspect of this model is that it attempts to solve the problems of mental causation (Davidson, 1970;Searle, 1980;Mayer, 2018) and agent causation (Chisholm, 1982;O’Connor, 2009;Steward, 2012) by appealing to an inter-level causation mechanism.
Although arguments have been made claiming that inter-level causation is impossible (Kim, 1998), such arguments mistakenly conflate the physical causal closure with the intra-level causal closure, and are therefore incorrect (Ohmura & Kuniyoshi, 2025).
A causal mechanism (Salmon, 1985) is defined by a cause and a causal transmission mechanism. A cause must not directly bring about an effect without a causal transmission mechanism; that is, one must be able to intervene on the cause independently of the effect. Ohmura et al. (2026) refer to a cause at the whole-system level that can be intervened upon independently as a supervenient cause, and mathematically clarify why such intervention is possible. Suc
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