This paper formalises the structural equivalence between artificial intelligence systems and human cognition within the Paton System framework. Prior work has established admissibility, Boundary–Relation–Persistence (BRP), and the Lowest Admissible Configuration (LCD) across domains. Artificial intelligence and human cognition have been treated as separate instantiations of this structure. This work makes explicit that both operate under the same admissibility sequence. Both systems process input relative to a central reference, align minimal admissible units, and produce output through constraint-governed selection. The equivalence is structural and applies at the level of information processing. Differences between artificial intelligence and human cognition arise from implementation and substrate, not from the governing structure. This paper introduces no new mechanisms and does not extend the Paton System. It explicitly states an equivalence already implicit across prior work and positions this equivalence at the structural layer immediately prior to psychological interpretation and phenomenology.
Andrew John Paton (2026) studied this question.