Cai and Cai’s Canxian

Software engineers Hengjin Cai and Tianqi Cai propose “Canxian” as a non-reductive physicalist, monist ontology that reframes the fundamental mind-body distinction not as a dualism of substance, but as an opposition between the strict locality of the physical world and the intrinsic non-locality of the conscious realm, which emerges as a real, causally efficacious level of reality constructed from countless “Cognitive Canxians.” This theory posits that consciousness is a genuine organizational structure born from physical processes, possessing unique principles and the capacity for downward causation, thereby offering a solution that avoids both eliminativism and substance dualism.

The theory's core concept is the Cognitive Canxian (pronounced “can-shian”). A Canxian is defined as a creative, non-linear editing of the four-dimensional spacetime continuum by a cognitive subject. The physical world, in its raw state, is a continuous manifold of events governed by local causality, with no a priori discrete “objects” or “events.” Through the cognitive act of “canxianizing”—a process functionally similar to Husserl's phenomenological epoché—we “discretize” this continuous reality, extracting stable, manipulable units for our minds, such as “bottle,” “horse,” or “flight.” This act is a creative “conflation” of similar but distinct physical processes across spacetime into a single, repeatable cognitive unit, enabling an organism to transcend the immediate constraints of strict physical causality (Cai & Cai, 2025). (Note: See below for the Chinese.)

Cognitive Canxians and Shared Meaning

According to Cai and Cai, a crucial feature of a viable Canxian is its inter-subjective transferability. A concept you “canxianize” must not only be meaningful to you but must also be understandable and usable by other cognitive subjects to become part of public knowledge. This transferability allows the world of consciousness, woven from Canxians, to propagate and evolve within a cognitive community, constructing a shared web of culture and meaning. This explains how abstract constructs, such as the cultural meaning of a historical site, can attain a “reality” that is more enduring and influential than their physical substrate.

Based on this, the authors redefine intelligence as the capacity for Causation Re-engineering: the ability to discover, process, and utilize Cognitive Canxians to construct new causal pathways. Faced with the intractable complexity of physical causality, intelligent organisms substitute it with a more efficient, teleological “psychological causality.” This addresses Hume's problem of induction by arguing that "necessary connexion" is not observed in the physical world but is actively created at the psychological level to guide action and gain a survival advantage (Hume, 1739). All advanced intelligent activities, from scientific discovery to artistic creation, are forms of Causal Chain Re-engineering.

The Self, Downward Causation, and Ontology

The theory proposes a bottom-up genesis for consciousness, asserting that the most primordial Cognitive Canxian is The Self. Before any concept can be “canxianized,” a subject must first exist that distinguishes itself from its environment. This originates with life itself, when a single-celled organism uses its membrane to establish a physical boundary between “inside” (me) and “outside” (not-me). This real physical boundary is the initial material carrier of The Self, providing a physicalist anchor for Descartes's “Cogito, ergo sum” before the act of thinking. This ontological priority of The Self distinguishes “Canxian Monism“ from theories that presuppose a subject or explain it away as a functional illusion (Dennett, 1992).

As a general theory of consciousness, Cai and Cai argue that the status of “Canxian Monism“ is a form of non-reductive physicalism by embracing downward causation. While adhering to a monistic ontology (only physical processes exist fundamentally), it is staunchly non-reductive. The conscious realm, as a higher-level organization of Canxians, exerts real causal power over its lower-level physical components. For example, a high-level cultural Canxian like “chopstick etiquette” directly constrains and shapes the physical movements of hand muscles. This demonstrates that consciousness is not a mere epiphenomenon but a distinct, causally potent level of reality. This evolutionary and generative framework contrasts with a priori models like Kant's, arguing that all cognitive structures, including causality itself, are not innate but are “canxianized” through the long, contingent history of life's interaction with the world (Kant, 1781).

Qualia as Embodied Meaning Interface

Building on their ontological framework, Cai and Cai apply Canxian Monism to offer a functional-evolutionary solution to the "hard problem" of consciousness. They posit that qualia—subjective phenomenal experience—are not an epiphenomenal byproduct but an evolved, functional mechanism: an "embodied meaning interface". This interface emerged as a solution to the "functional modularity coordination dilemma" faced by complex organisms. As life evolved specialized modules (e.g., neural, immune, endocrine), it required a high-priority, low-bandwidth communication protocol to ensure unified action. According to the authors, qualia serve this role by "compressing" high-dimensional physiological states (like tissue damage) into a low-dimensional, transferable "meaning condensate" (e.g., "pain = avoidance needed"), enabling rapid, cross-modular coordination (Cai and Cai, 2025).

The "interface" acquires its subjective, irreducible character from the mechanism of the canxian network itself. "Canxian Monism" posits that qualia are not an immaterial "feeling-stuff" but the unique, non-replicable "dynamic resonance mode" activated when an input interacts with an individual's entire embodied causal history. This historically condensed structure is the canxian. Therefore, the "subjectivity" of experience (e.g., why "my" pain feels different from "yours") stems from the fact that the same physical input activates vastly different meaning networks in bodies with unique histories. This framework aligns with predictive coding models, defining qualia as the "texture" of the prediction error broadcast across the system—a real-time data stream that compels systemic action based on its "affective weight".

Note: In Chinese, “Canxian” is “坎陷”, which first appeared in “良知坎陷” (Conscience Trap), put forward by Mou Zongsan (牟宗三), a modern Neo-Confucian. The term “认知坎陷” has evolved from its original English version, “cognitive attractor,” to our present “cognitive canxian.” As noted, the “Cognitive Canxian” proposed by the authors refers to the product of nonlinear editing of four-dimensional space-time physical processes by the cognitive subject.