Why the Unfinished Keeps Returning: Canxianization and the Dynamics of Conscious Priority
This work provides a theoretical framework for understanding recurrent conscious priority, potentially relevant to cognitive science and AI, but remains conceptual without empirical validation.
The paper introduces Canxianization, a theory explaining why certain conscious contents recur persistently after their triggering conditions cease, distinguishing it from related phenomena like emotional arousal and memory strength. It proposes indices and tests to differentiate productive from pathological recurrence and to assess artificial systems.
Some conscious contents disappear after access; others return repeatedly, long after their triggering conditions have ceased. We propose Canxianization as the process by which a perturbation becomes closure-resistant self-relevant unfinishedness and thereby acquires recurrent conscious priority. The theory distinguishes this phenomenon from emotional arousal, memory strength, the Zeigarnik effect, curiosity, prediction error, and intrusive thought. A perturbation becomes canxianized when it is attributed to the self-world boundary, value-marked, blocked from causal or action closure, and metacognitively coupled to the self-model. We distinguish latent canxian strength from observed conscious recurrence, and introduce a Recurrent Priority Index and a Canxian Update Index to separate productive from pathological recurrence. Cold Canxianization, recurrence driven by structural incompleteness rather than affective arousal, is identified as a critical discriminant. Reset Resistance and Stake Transfer tests are proposed for artificial systems. Canxianization is not memory persistence; it is failed self-world repair. The unfinished does not merely remain. When it concerns the self and resists closure, it returns.