The Cognitive Coherence Engine: A Stability-Preserving Architecture for Cognition

The Cognitive Coherence Engine (CCE) is an original theoretical framework proposing that human cognition is organized around a single principle: the coherence of local reality. The framework introduces a two-agent architecture consisting of the ideomorph (ψ), which composes and manages a local reality from external sensory data, and the local mind (η), which experiences that local reality and returns instability feedback. All representational units (cognifacts) are stored in a non-destructive memory (λ). The framework includes a proof-of-concept mathematical formalization (the Napkin Formula), and a comprehensive review of supporting evidence from cognitive science, neuroscience, philosophy, and physics. CCE accounts for a wide range of well-documented cognitive phenomena — including selective attention, belief rigidity, memory distortion, dreaming, dissociation, and collapse-recovery cycles — as natural consequences of a single instability-management architecture. This is an independent theoretical contribution by a sole author, offered as a proof-of-concept framework inviting empirical testing and extension.