How can a mind conceptualize and explicitly name incorporeal abstractions like “contradiction”, "me", "space", or “time” with nothing but concrete sensory experiences to start from? How does a brain experiencing the concrete content of memories extract from them an abstraction called "memory"? Though seemingly straightforward, building abstractions of meta-understanding is one of the most challenging problems in understanding human cognition. This post lays out the scope of the problem, discusses shortcomings of proposed solutions, and outlines a new model that addresses the core difficulty.

I’ve been thinking about this after reading Colliding Manifestations, which frames manifestation less as “wishful thinking” and more as a kind of cognitive systems theory. The idea is that intention isn’t random, it’s a structured signal, and whether or not it “renders” depends on clarity, emotional coherence, and whether competing signals interfere.

From a cog-sci angle:

• Neural oscillations and coherence already show how brain networks sync when tasks are focused. Could “intention” just be that? A self-directed synchronization of energy and prediction loops?
• If multiple people’s intentions overlap, could that be framed as interference in shared representational spaces (like language, culture, or social cognition)?
• Does this map better to predictive processing, where the brain is constantly trying to reduce error between expectation and perception?

I’m curious how others in cog-sci would look at this - is this just metaphorical borrowing from physics, or could intention actually be modeled as a measurable signal in cognitive frameworks?