Cognitive Archiving: Integrating Biological, Digital, and Relational Systems in a Theory of Self-Continuity

Espedido, H. Holly

Cognitive Archiving: Integrating Biological, Digital, and Relational Systems in a Theory of Self-Continuity

James Alexander Gordon on 2nd December 2025

Author Information

H. Holly Espedido, University of Alberta, Canada

Abstract

Cognitive Archiving is a proposed theoretical framework for understanding the continuity of selfhood across emotional, biological, and informational domains. The model identifies three interdependent systems of identity preservation: (1) Biological encoding, in which affective experience and epigenetic processes inscribe emotion as molecular memory; (2) Digital encoding, where technological infrastructures store behavioral and informational traces of the self; and (3) Relational encoding, in which social cognition and emotional reciprocity allow others to mirror, remember, and co-archive aspects of one’s identity. Together, these systems form a distributed and dynamic “living archive” of consciousness that reframes memory as an active, adaptive architecture of existence. Building on Frank Jackson’s theory of qualia: the subjective experiential qualities of perception, and on recent developments in Integrated Information Theory and affective neuroscience, this framework bridges philosophical and cognitive perspectives on how subjective experience may be represented or reconstructed. Unlike notions of “digital immortality,” Cognitive Archiving emphasizes authentic continuity rather than replication, situating consciousness within affective, social, and informational ecologies. Ethical and methodological challenges include the difficulty of quantifying subjective experience and the implications of preserving identity within technological or biological systems while protecting autonomy and authenticity. Cognitive Archiving seeks to open new dialogue between cognitive science, psychology, and archival theory by redefining memory as a site of both preservation and transformation across measurable systems, including social cognition, molecular processes, and digital behavioral data.