Cognitive Field Dynamics Is Now Public

December 22, 2025

Today I published the foundational paper for a new scientific field.

It's called Cognitive Field Dynamics.

I've spent years working on something that's difficult to explain in casual conversation.

When someone asks what I do, I usually give a simplified answer and move on. But today feels different. Today I want to try.

Cognitive Field Dynamics is a unified theory of consciousness. It proposes that consciousness isn't a byproduct of brain activity—it's a field that organizes reality through expectation. What you anticipate shapes what you perceive, what you feel, and ultimately who you become.

That's the simple version.

The full theory integrates four frameworks I've been developing:

• A nine-layer cognitive architecture mapping everything from pure awareness to observable behavior

• A 32-point expectation compass specifying how the mind orients toward the future

• A 57-qubit information-theoretic basis establishing that human experience operates within a space of 1.73 × 10¹⁷ possible configurations

• 12.5 Hz temporal dynamics explaining how consciousness updates roughly 12.5 times per second, with sleep providing the essential reset

If those numbers mean nothing to you, that's okay. What matters is this: the theory generates testable predictions. It can be proven wrong. That's what makes it science rather than philosophy.

Why This Matters to Me

I didn't set out to build a theory of consciousness. I started with a simpler question: Why do people stay stuck?

Why does insight alone rarely produce change? Why do the same patterns repeat across relationships, careers, lives? Why does knowing better so often fail to translate into doing better?

The answer, I eventually realized, lives at Layer 6—what I call the Anticipatory Model Engine. This is where expectation is generated. Everything below it shapes what we expect. Everything above it is shaped by those expectations.

Most self-help, most therapy, most attempts at change target the wrong layer. They work on thoughts and behaviors (Layers 7-9) while the real architecture sits deeper, running predictions that bias everything before conscious awareness even kicks in.

Once I understood that, the rest of the theory unfolded. The compass. The manifold. The temporal dynamics. The mathematics of how identity maintains coherence 12.5 times per second, and what happens when it can't.

The Relationship to Collapse Harmonics

For those who have followed my work on Collapse Harmonic Theory, CFD is the missing piece.

Collapse Harmonics describes what happens at population scale—how collective systems destabilize, reorganize, and reconstitute through harmonic collapse dynamics.

Cognitive Field Dynamics describes what happens at individual scale—how a single conscious field operates, anticipates, and maintains identity coherence.

The mathematics is the same. The signatures are the same. It's one system viewed at different scales.

What Happens Now

The paper is published. The DOIs are registered. The priority timestamp is locked.

• Zenodo DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18012483

• Figshare DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.30929714

• OSF Project: osf.io/j5836

• ResearchGate: Publication Page

• Official Field Definition: lifepillarinstitute.org/cognitive-field-dynamics

Now it meets the world.

Some will engage seriously. Some will dismiss it. Some will test pieces of it and find where it breaks. All of that is good. That's how science works.

I'm not attached to being right about every detail. I'm attached to the questions being asked clearly enough that we can find out.

A Personal Note

Publishing something like this is strange. You spend years in private development, refining ideas that feel increasingly obvious to you but remain invisible to everyone else. Then one day you press a button and it's public. Permanent. Your name attached to claims that will either hold up or won't.

There's vulnerability in that. And also relief.

The work isn't done—there are clinical applications to develop, empirical validation to pursue, and the Recursive Symbolic Sovereignty framework still to publish. But the foundation is laid.

Cognitive Field Dynamics exists now.

Whatever comes next, it starts from here.

— Don Gaconnet Founder, Cognitive Field Dynamics LifePillar Institute

December 22, 2025

For questions, collaboration inquiries, or citation guidance: don@lifepillar.org

ORCID: 0009-0001-6174-8384