Temporal Integration, Bidirectional Criticality and Emergence of Consciousness Hierarchy Condensed English Version V123
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) July 9, 2026 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21765536 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Criticality Qualia Core optical fiber Constraint computer-aided design Hierarchy Consciousness Forgetting Axiomatic system Theoretical computer science Information theory Artificial intelligence Coding social sciences Artificial neural network Information processing Encoding memory Causality physics |
| Key points | Argues that consciousness emerges hierarchically from finite resources, non-equilibrium maintenance, and discrete input, leading to temporal unidirectionality, information hierarchy, bidirectional criticality, resource priority, and forgetting. Proposes that qualia are a compressed representational format and provides unified consciousness-level criteria and AGI safety boundaries across substrates. |
Abstract
Against the core limitations of Integrated Information Theory, the Free Energy Principle, and Global Workspace Theory—namely deficient temporal dynamics, ambiguous hierarchical boundaries, and evasion of the hard problem of consciousness—this paper constructs a unified framework for the hierarchical emergence of consciousness via first-principles derivation, with three axioms as the exclusive starting point: finiteness of resources, tendency to maintain non-equilibrium states, and discrete input. It proposes the core concept of the information capacity frame, and proves that temporal unidirectionality, the unidirectional constraint of information hierarchy, the bidirectional criticality effect, the resource priority rule, and the forgetting mechanism are all inevitable manifestations of the same constraint across different dimensions, from which the B and S dual-configuration architecture and five-level consciousness spectrum are endogenously derived. This study resolves the hard problem of consciousness from an engineering coding perspective, clarifies that qualia are a highly compressed representational format under the finite capacity frame, and provides unified consciousness-level criteria and AGI safety boundaries for both carbon-based and silicon-based systems. All conclusions in this paper are strictly derived from the axiomatic system, independent of specific neural structures, and possess cross-substrate universality. This condensed English version corresponds to the Chinese condensed Version 109 titled Temporal Integration, Bidirectional Criticality and Hierarchical Emergence of Consciousness, which was first released on June 18, 2026.