An Axiomatic Approach to General Intelligence: SANC(E3) -- Self-organizing Active Network of Concepts with Energy E3

TL;DR

This paper introduces SANC(E3), an axiomatic framework where representational units emerge through self-organization driven by energy minimization, unifying perception, imagination, and action in a resource-constrained system.

Contribution

It proposes a novel axiomatic approach where units are not predefined but self-organize via an energy functional, integrating various cognitive functions.

Findings

Units emerge as stable outcomes of self-organization.

Category formation and hierarchy arise from Gestalt completion.

Unified framework for perception, imagination, and planning.

Abstract

General intelligence must reorganize experience into internal structures that enable prediction and action under finite resources. Existing systems implicitly presuppose fixed primitive units -- tokens, subwords, pixels, or predefined sensor channels -- thereby bypassing the question of how representational units themselves emerge and stabilize. This paper proposes SANC(E3), an axiomatic framework in which representational units are not given a priori but instead arise as stable outcomes of competitive selection, reconstruction, and compression under finite activation capacity, governed by the explicit minimization of an energy functional E3. SANC(E3) draws a principled distinction between system tokens -- structural anchors such as {here, now, I} and sensory sources -- and tokens that emerge through self-organization during co-occurring events. Five core axioms formalize finite capacity, association from co-occurrence, similarity-based competition, confidence-based stabilization, and the reconstruction-compression-update trade-off. A key feature is a pseudo-memory-mapped I/O mechanism, through which internally replayed Gestalts are processed via the same axiomatic pathway as external sensory input. As a result, perception, imagination, prediction, planning, and action are unified within a single representational and energetic process. From the axioms, twelve propositions are derived, showing that category formation, hierarchical organization, unsupervised learning, and high-level cognitive activities can all be understood as instances of Gestalt completion under E3 minimization.