OK. Then I have a confession and three complaints. The confession is that when I wrote what I did above, I hadn't noticed that you offered that link as further explanation of the term "physical cognition". The complaints are (1) that having now followed the link, I think it leaves the meaning of "physical cognition" still less than perfectly clear; and, in so far as it does explain what the term means, (2a) it actually seems not so far from "real-world achievement" and (2b) I think it probably doesn't include music and art. (Whereas in your usage it seems like it must.)

I'll elaborate a bit. Here is what that essay says about physical and social cognition. (The only actual instance of those terms is at the end of the second quoted paragraph, but I think the preceding stuff is necessary to make sense of that.)

Maslow suggests that at one level of description a human consists of five programs. One escapes immediate danger, one seeks comfort and physical security, one finds a social context in which to be embedded, one builds esteem within that context, and one directs big-picture intentionality. As a general rule, when a given program reports satisfaction the next program is turned on and starts competing in its more subtle game.

Some of those programs allocate attention to things that can be understood fairly rigorously, like a cart, a plow, or a sword. Other programs allocate attention to more complicated things, such as the long-term alliances and reproductive opportunities within a tribe. The former programs might involve situational awareness and detailed planning, while the latter programs might operate via subtle and tacit pattern detection and automatic obedience to crude heuristics. If so, the latter programs might be fairly easily hacked. They might also offer a less fertile ground for the emergence of a Universal Turing Machine. Mechanical metaphors of solidity and shape might constitute a good substrate for digital, and thus potentially abstract cognition, while social metaphors for continuous and vague properties like weirdness, gravitas and sexiness might constitute a poor foundation for universal cognition. These programs seem to have been disfavored by history's great scientific innovators, who tend to make statements like "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble..." or "What do you care what other people think", which sound like endorsements of physical over social cognition.

So. We start with Maslow's hierarchy. Vassar (the author of the essay) puts a division between the two "lowest" levels, which he calls "physical" (meaning that they are concerned with our physical needs and wants) and the next two, which he calls "social" (meaning that they are concerned with our interactions with others). The topmost level ("self-actualization") I think Vassar classifies as "social", which I think mostly indicates that his terminology isn't great.

And he says that attempts to address needs and wants higher up in the Maslow hierarchy tend to involve vague fuzzy socailly-mediated things, which may "be fairly easily hacked" and "constitute a poor foundation for universal cognition" by comparison with activity directed at the lower levels, which tend to involve precise specific details and "constitute a good substrate for digital, and thus potentially abstract, cognition". And, finally, he says that the lower-level ones seem to be endorsed over the higher-level by the likes of Newton and Feynman.

All fair enough (though I'm not at all convinced). But now you want to say that artistic endeavour belongs in the category of "physical cognition"? Really? Perhaps the purely mechanical aspects of playing an instrument do, but what distinguishes music from finger exercises is vague fuzzy socially-mediated things like "beauty" and "taste" which seem to me much more like "weirdness, gravitas and sexiness" than like "solidity and shape", and which I think land squarely in the category of "social cognition" according to Vassar's distinction.

My point (2a) is less important than (2b) which is why I've focused on the latter, but now a word or two about (2a). If I am understanding Vassar right, what distinguishes "physical cognition" is that its goals are located in the physical world and can be evaluated without reference to social context (moral norms, fashions, the approval of the elite, ...). And if I am understanding bogus right, this is pretty close to what he means by "real-world". Not quite the same, but closer (as it seems to me) than anything that would put artistic endeavours in the "physical" category.