Control Before Cognition: Nervous Systems as Logic-Gated Behavioral Architectures

Contemporary neuroscience and cognitive science typically treat nervous systems as information-processing substrates whose primary function is the generation of cognition, representation, or prediction. In this framing, behavior is assumed to emerge downstream of cognitive evaluation. However, across biological systems, inhibition, suppression, delay, and non-action are not secondary phenomena—they are dominant functional outcomes. This paper advances a control-first framework for understanding nervous systems and biological behavior. We argue that nervous systems are best understood as logic-gated behavioral control architectures whose primary role is to regulate action under constraint, rather than to compute meaning or represent the world. From this perspective, nervous systems function as control hardware: distributed, thresholded signaling networks that arbitrate between competing pressures, enforce vetoes, and stabilize behavior long before cognition could plausibly intervene. To formalize this view, the paper introduces the concept of a Behavioral Control Layer (BCL)—a substrate-agnostic functional abstraction describing how biological systems maintain behavioral coherence through continuous constraint enforcement. The BCL is shown to operate across neural and non-neural substrates, including bioelectric networks governing development and regeneration. Empirical evidence is drawn from basal ganglia research, response inhibition studies, and bioelectric regulation in morphogenesis and regeneration, demonstrating that control architectures precede and constrain cognition. The framework is grounded in Living Information Theory, which explains why control architectures are required for persistence under noise, and is formalized using SARBE, a species-agnostic model of behavioral regulation that captures constraint arbitration without invoking cognitive representation. By re-prioritizing control over cognition, this work resolves persistent ambiguities in neuroscience and developmental biology, clarifies the functional role of nervous systems, and establishes behavioral regulation as a first-order biological principle.