The Ladder of Emergence I; The Dual Emergence of Time: Economic Constraints on Cognitive Time and the Coding Dynamics of Physical Time
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2026
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| author | zhou, changzheng zhou, ziqing |
| author_facet | zhou, changzheng zhou, ziqing |
| contents | <p>The explanatory gap between subjective temporal experience and the arrow<br>of physical time has long posed a persistent problem spanning cognitive science<br>and theoretical physics. This paper proposes that both can be understood as pro<br>jections of the same deep principle of information economy onto two interfaces,<br>but the realization of this unification depends upon explicit ontological premises.<br>The paper first decomposes “time” into three ontological levels—meta-time (the<br>logically prior principle of order), physical time (an external parameter condensed<br>under information-capacity constraints), and cognitive time (the subjective repre<br>sentation of information-processing costs)—in order to dissolve the self-referential<br>trap of the explanatory activity itself. Within this three-level structure, the arrow<br>of cognitive time is modeled as the cumulative cost representation of irreversible<br>information erasure in a sequence of cognitive operations under finite resource con<br>straints, and only serialized processing that enters the global workspace and receives<br>meta-representation contributes to the subjective feeling of temporal flow. The<br>emergence of physical time, in turn, is argued to be the result of the hierarchical<br>dimension reduction of a causal partial-order network under information-capacity<br>constraints, its hierarchical structure being strictly isomorphic to the dimensional<br>sequence of finite-dimensional normed division algebras (1, 2, 4, 8), with the Lan<br>dauer limit serving as the minimal cost unit for each level transition. The two<br>are locked at the coupling interface by the same thermodynamic conversion fac<br>tor, forming a bidirectional feedback loop. The hierarchical ladder of cognitive<br>learning maps strictly onto the dimensional levels of physical causal coding in al<br>gebraic structure and operational complexity, and the incompressible partial order<br>between levels is falsifiable. The paper presents seven testable predictions at the<br>interfaces of quantum information, cognitive science, and thermodynamics, and<br>frankly discusses their technical boundaries and the conditions for falsifiability.</p> |
| format | Recurso digital |
| id | zenodo_https___doi_org_10_5281_zenodo_20033491 |
| institution | Zenodo |
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| publishDate | 2026 |
| publisher | Zenodo |
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| spellingShingle | The Ladder of Emergence I; The Dual Emergence of Time: Economic Constraints on Cognitive Time and the Coding Dynamics of Physical Time zhou, changzheng zhou, ziqing time emergence; information-processing cost; causal coding; Landauer's principle; hierarchical learning; meta-time; quantum time <p>The explanatory gap between subjective temporal experience and the arrow<br>of physical time has long posed a persistent problem spanning cognitive science<br>and theoretical physics. This paper proposes that both can be understood as pro<br>jections of the same deep principle of information economy onto two interfaces,<br>but the realization of this unification depends upon explicit ontological premises.<br>The paper first decomposes “time” into three ontological levels—meta-time (the<br>logically prior principle of order), physical time (an external parameter condensed<br>under information-capacity constraints), and cognitive time (the subjective repre<br>sentation of information-processing costs)—in order to dissolve the self-referential<br>trap of the explanatory activity itself. Within this three-level structure, the arrow<br>of cognitive time is modeled as the cumulative cost representation of irreversible<br>information erasure in a sequence of cognitive operations under finite resource con<br>straints, and only serialized processing that enters the global workspace and receives<br>meta-representation contributes to the subjective feeling of temporal flow. The<br>emergence of physical time, in turn, is argued to be the result of the hierarchical<br>dimension reduction of a causal partial-order network under information-capacity<br>constraints, its hierarchical structure being strictly isomorphic to the dimensional<br>sequence of finite-dimensional normed division algebras (1, 2, 4, 8), with the Lan<br>dauer limit serving as the minimal cost unit for each level transition. The two<br>are locked at the coupling interface by the same thermodynamic conversion fac<br>tor, forming a bidirectional feedback loop. The hierarchical ladder of cognitive<br>learning maps strictly onto the dimensional levels of physical causal coding in al<br>gebraic structure and operational complexity, and the incompressible partial order<br>between levels is falsifiable. The paper presents seven testable predictions at the<br>interfaces of quantum information, cognitive science, and thermodynamics, and<br>frankly discusses their technical boundaries and the conditions for falsifiability.</p> |
| title | The Ladder of Emergence I; The Dual Emergence of Time: Economic Constraints on Cognitive Time and the Coding Dynamics of Physical Time |
| topic | time emergence; information-processing cost; causal coding; Landauer's principle; hierarchical learning; meta-time; quantum time |
| url | https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20033491 |