Concepts as Elementary Constituents of Human Consciousness

TL;DR

This paper proposes that human consciousness fundamentally consists of concepts, which are elementary, irreducible mental units formed through a phase transition process, distinguishing humans from animals.

Contribution

It introduces the idea that concepts are minimal constituents of consciousness and suggests a phase transition mechanism for their creation and acquisition, highlighting a unique human ability.

Findings

Concepts are irreducible mental entities encoded as sensory images.

The creation and acquisition of concepts are modeled as phase transitions.

Humans uniquely develop and expand concepts through learning and imagination.

Abstract

It is asserted that consciousness functionally is a vision. Biologically it is a sensation of work of a brain that converts external and internal signals into visual output. However, as we well know, human consciousness includes meaning (interpretation), and therefore functionally possesses an additional level of complexity. It consists of concepts which are its minimal components (elementary constituents). A concept is an abstract (i.e. non-existent in nature) common property of different observables, as perceived by humans. It is an irreducible entity since it cannot be divided into any other functional components. At the biological and physical level each concept is a unique sensation encoded in a nervous system as a sensory and visual image. Concepts evolve throughout one's lifetime. We continuously create and acquire new concepts, develop and expand the existing ones, and eliminate and abandon some others. 'I' ('self') is one of the concepts. To acquire a concept one has to learn (to teach one's nervous system) feeling or sensing it, and to connect it to existing concepts, if any. We make a conjecture that both the creation and the acquisition of a concept is a phase transition. The ability to generate and acquire concepts is unique to humans and is the only principal difference between human and animal. We offer scenarios for how this ability could have been acquired by our predecessors, thus making them humans. It is suggested that the animal's brain, being a processor of visual signals that converts them into internal images, has developed this ability as a result of "guessing" or imagining details that are missing in the actual visible picture.