Pith Number

pith:RQWJ2ZP6

pith:2026:RQWJ2ZP6FJXFM6QK66DHHQSS57

not attested not anchored not stored refs resolved

Why the Unfinished Keeps Returning: Canxianization and the Dynamics of Conscious Priority

Hengjin Cai, Tianqi Cai

A perturbation gains recurrent conscious priority when turned into closure-resistant self-relevant unfinishedness.

arxiv:2605.12543 v1 · 2026-05-09 · q-bio.NC · cs.AI

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\usepackage{pith}
\pithnumber{RQWJ2ZP6FJXFM6QK66DHHQSS57}

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Record completeness

1 Bitcoin timestamp

2 Internet Archive

3 Author claim open · sign in to claim

4 Citations open

5 Replications open

✓ Portable graph bundle live · download bundle · merged state

The bundle contains the canonical record plus signed events. A mirror can host it anywhere and recompute the same current state with the deterministic merge algorithm.

Claims

C1strongest claim

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.

C2weakest assumption

That Canxianization constitutes a distinct mechanism separable from emotional arousal, memory strength, the Zeigarnik effect, curiosity, prediction error, and intrusive thought, and that the proposed indices can measure it independently.

C3one line summary

Canxianization converts self-relevant unfinished perturbations into recurrent conscious priority by blocking causal closure and coupling to the self-model.

References

19 extracted · 19 resolved · 0 Pith anchors

[1] Baars, B. J. (1988). A cognitive theory of consciousness. Cambridge University Press 1988

[2] Brewin, C. R., Gregory, J. D., Lipton, M., & Burgess, N. (2010). Intrusive images in psychological disorders. Psychological Review, 117(1), 210–232 2010

[3] Brosschot, J. F., Gerin, W., & Thayer, J. F. (2006). The perseverative cognition hypothesis. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 60(2), 113–124 2006

[4] Christoff, K., Irving, Z. C., Fox, K. C. R., Spreng, R. N., & Andrews-Hanna, J. R. (2016). Mind-wandering as spontaneous thought. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 17(11), 718–731 2016

[5] Clark, A. (2013). Whatever next? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(3), 181–204 2013

Receipt and verification

First computed	2026-05-18T03:10:02.291554Z
Builder	pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1
Signature	Pith Ed25519 (`pith-v1-2026-05`) · public key
Schema	pith-number/v1.0

Canonical hash

8c2c9d65fe2a6e567a0af78673c252efd69bf70a58a94f6a01d75c551b9d2434

Aliases

arxiv: 2605.12543 · arxiv_version: 2605.12543v1 · doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2605.12543 · pith_short_12: RQWJ2ZP6FJXF · pith_short_16: RQWJ2ZP6FJXFM6QK · pith_short_8: RQWJ2ZP6

Agent API

Resolver JSON Graph JSON Events JSON Schema Signing key

Verify this Pith Number yourself

curl -sH 'Accept: application/ld+json' https://pith.science/pith/RQWJ2ZP6FJXFM6QK66DHHQSS57 \
  | jq -c '.canonical_record' \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json,hashlib; b=json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), sort_keys=True, separators=(',',':'), ensure_ascii=False).encode(); print(hashlib.sha256(b).hexdigest())"
# expect: 8c2c9d65fe2a6e567a0af78673c252efd69bf70a58a94f6a01d75c551b9d2434

Canonical record JSON

{
  "metadata": {
    "abstract_canon_sha256": "f701c8cc76a8d4aed0e9af490e4b63e380e8330165530b1cfdeaa5a7c54e67a3",
    "cross_cats_sorted": [
      "cs.AI"
    ],
    "license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/",
    "primary_cat": "q-bio.NC",
    "submitted_at": "2026-05-09T08:52:04Z",
    "title_canon_sha256": "94fa02845e0687e4f3e9dfe5e6f4d81d2dad086071ff3499ae988fc463e2846e"
  },
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "source": {
    "id": "2605.12543",
    "kind": "arxiv",
    "version": 1
  }
}