The Unified Cognitive Consciousness Theory for Language Models: Anchoring Semantics, Thresholds of Activation, and Emergent Reasoning

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2506.02139v4
• Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2025 16:28:34 GMT
• Title: The Unified Cognitive Consciousness Theory for Language Models: Anchoring Semantics, Thresholds of Activation, and Emergent Reasoning
• Authors: Edward Y. Chang, Zeyneb N. Kaya, Ethan Chang,
• Abstract summary: Unified Cognitive Consciousness Theory (UCCT) casts them as vast unconscious pattern repositories.<n>UCCT formalizes this process as Bayesian competition between statistical priors learned in pre-training and context-driven target patterns.<n>We ground the theory in three principles: threshold crossing, modality, and density-distance predictive power.
• Score: 2.0800882594868293
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Unified Cognitive Consciousness Theory} (UCCT) casts them instead as vast unconscious pattern repositories: apparent reasoning arises only when external anchoring mechanisms, few shot prompts, retrieval-augmented context, fine-tuning, or multi-agent debate, activate task-relevant patterns. UCCT formalizes this process as Bayesian competition between statistical priors learned in pre-training and context-driven target patterns, yielding a single quantitative account that unifies existing adaptation techniques. We ground the theory in three principles: threshold crossing, modality universality, and density-distance predictive power, and validate them with (i) cross-domain demonstrations (text QA, image captioning, multi-agent debate) and (ii) two depth-oriented experiments: a controlled numeral-base study (bases 8, 9, 10) that isolates pattern-density effects, and a layer-wise trajectory analysis that reveals phase transitions inside a 7B-parameter model. Both experiments confirm UCCT's predictions of threshold behavior, asymmetric interference, and memory hysteresis. By showing that LLM ``intelligence'' is created through semantic anchoring rather than contained within the model, UCCT offers a principled foundation for interpretable diagnostics and practical guidance for prompt engineering, model selection, and alignment-centric system design.

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