There are now dozens of very different theories of consciousness, each somehow contributing to our understanding of its nature. The science of consciousness needs therefore not new theories but a general framework integrating insights from those, yet not making it a still-born “Frankenstein” theory. First, the framework must operate explicitly on the stream of consciousness, not on its static description. Second, this dynamical account must also be put on the evolutionary timeline to explain the origins of consciousness. The Cognitive Evolution Theory (CET), outlined here, proposes such a framework. This starts with the assumption that brains have primarily evolved as volitional subsystems of organisms, inherited from primitive (fast and random) reflexes of simplest neural networks, only then resembling error-minimizing prediction machines. CET adopts the tools of critical dynamics to account for metastability, scale-free avalanches, and self-organization which are all intrinsic to brain dynamics. This formalizes the stream of consciousness as a discrete (transitive, irreflexive) chain of momentary states derived from critical brain dynamics at points of phase transitions and mapped then onto a state space as neural correlates of a particular conscious state. The continuous/discrete dichotomy appears naturally between the brain dynamics at the causal level and conscious states at the phenomenal level, each volitionally triggered from arousal centers of the brainstem and cognitively modulated by thalamocortical systems. Their objective observables can be entropy-based complexity measures, reflecting the transient level or quantity of consciousness at that moment.
The aim of this paper is to propose a model that can be compatible with philosophy of mind, psychology, neuroscience, and physics (with its regard to time and consciousness). It is mostly a structural-dynamical approach to consciousness by analogy with a causal approach in Relativity. Consciousness is studied in dynamics over time as a stream St that alternates instant mental acts and temporal quanta. Being a cause-like chain, St generates a trichotomy of personality P: self-alienability (SA), self-inadequacy (SI), and self-completeness (SC) between the past-present-future. Descartes' cogito is none other than a mental act of SA. The cogito can be obtained by consciousness with collapsing the brain's superposition over time through SA and SI mechanisms. The formalism is like a quantum-mechanical commutation in Heisenberg's description. latter can also provide us with the mechanisms of the altered states and neuro-mental disorder such as hallucination, hypnosis, schizophrenia and so. While St is open from above, its lower boundary reposes on its first mental act as the unconscious Jungian Self. The model endows the thermodynamic and causal arrow of time with anthropic one. The final conclusion suggests a reformulation of Wheeler's anthropic principle in a neuro-phenomenological manner.
The 'theory of everything' (TOE) is conceived to embrace all natural sciences Today the TOE is discussed mostly in physics. From Copenhagen interpretation to date, another discussion is widely unfolded on the role of consciousness in quantum experience and physical descriptions in general. The paper combines both the discussions and argues for a global theory of consciousness (GTC). It will be proven that the naturalistic postulate on the world's independent existence is not quite correct but requires independence of any privileged anthropic I-observer with regard to relational observer-dependent scenario. The stream ( ) of consciousness is introduced by analogy with causal set modeling in quantum cosmology as a Markov chain (or a Turing machine) taken to be a set of the instant I-World states. In dynamics, the cogito emerges to be an unclosed loop on ( ) related directly to ψ-ontology. Further, it can be naturally extended to the perpetum cogito mechanism that entangles the triple 'past-present-future'. In fact, it is a noncommutative algebra for physics on a boundary. I-observer moves in superposition through every current present and in 'back-position' towards the arrow of time.
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