One in a series of talks from the 2019 Models of Consciousness conference. Paul Baird

Université de Bretagne Atlantique

I will present a mathematical model which encapsulates 3D perception from planar 2D data: to a combinatorial graph, we associate its "geometric spectrum"; eigenstates then correspond to local realizations of the graph in Euclidean 3-space as "invariant" frameworks. In this way geometry emerges from the structure, rather than being imposed upon it.

One may attempt to construct a model universe based on such structures, in which state realization enacts change; change being synonymous with time, which at an elementary level, we hypothesize, is the realization of temporal states. A coherent time should then emerge from a "survival of the fittest" principle. Conscious entities might then be considered as systems which possess "higher order universality", that is, which process potential information (rather than hard information) such as a "potential" 3D cube, to enact their own change.