The Antagonism Hypothesis: A New View on the Emergence of Consciousness.
Brain and behavior December 1, 2024 Weirui Xiong, Lu Yu 1 citation
Consciousness remains scientifically unexplained, with no hypothesis yet ruled out or universally accepted. This paper argues that consciousness is fundamentally first-person perception. It proposes the antagonism hypothesis: consciousness arises from conflicts in mature individual experiences that cannot be seamlessly integrated, and the function of consciousness is to address and navigate these conflicts. The hypothesis draws on predictive processing, information theory, thermodynamics, and neuroscience.