We don’t need to understand cognition, nor for it to work the same as machine learning models, to say it’s essentially a statistical model
It’s enough to say that cognition is a black box process that takes sensory inputs to grow and learn, producing outputs like muscle commands.
Yes, that's physics. We abstract things down to their constituent parts, to figure out what they are made up of, and how they work. Human brains aren't straightforward computers, so they must rely on statistics if there is nothing non-physical (a "soul" or something).