Cognitive neuroscience has accumulated robust findings (e.g., order effects in judgment, multi-path motor preparation, perceptual binding, attentional selection, and the recursive construction of self and time) that systematically resist explanation within classical probabilistic and causal frameworks. We argue that these are not anomalies but signatures of a deeper, non-commutative...
We develop the mathematical and physical formulation of cognitive cost optimization that underlies the path-integral model of consciousness. The goal-directed cognitive process is modeled as imaginary-time evolution (ITE) under a projector Hamiltonian that rewards configurations consistent with a target concept. We establish three results. First, this ITE coincides with a double-bracket flow...