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LIT-1992: Decision-making through irruption theory: how to use and interpret the Haken-Kelso-Bunz model

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Properties5
StatusActive — read in full 2026-11-03 (NOTE-1506), from the publisher's open-access PDF; worth reading as the one place Irruption Theory is tied to a dynamical model and to data: the HKB potential with time-switched parameters, compared qualitatively with trial-to-trial variability in decision tasks, with the mind cast as setting the landscape rather than pushing the state. The fit is by eye; the model's late-time spread is misdescribed for the stated noise.
Version2
Tagsfree-will, complex-systems
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1506 — Sánchez-Cañizares — Decision-making through irruption theory
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-1301 — In the Haken–Kelso–Bunz potential V(φ) = −a cos φ − b cos 2φ, switching the parameters in time from no landscape (a = b = 0) to two wells (a = b = 1) to one well (a = 1, b = 0) makes the spread of the relative phase across trials rise while both wells are open and fall after one is removed, the pattern Sánchez-Cañizares compares qualitatively with post-stimulus quenching of trial-to-trial variability in decision tasks; under Gaussian white noise of the stated strength q = 1 the spread of cos φ settles near 0.40, not at 0, THEORY-1302 — Sánchez-Cañizares reinterprets Irruption Theory for binary decisions (IAT*): irruption is the onset of a landscape with one attractor per option and absorption the passage to a single attractor, both correlated in mind and brain, reversing the sign of Froese's variance hypothesis; the mind's causal role is to set the landscape's control parameters by "selecting the relevant physical coarse-graining", not to push the state, so on this account the mind controls which outcomes exist and not which one the state reaches

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Sánchez-Cañizares, J. (2026). Decision-making through irruption theory: how to use and interpret the Haken-Kelso-Bunz model. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. doi:10.1007/s11097-026-10164-0.

Key takeaways

Read in full on 2026-11-03 (NOTE-1506).

  • The time-switched HKB model and its rise-and-fall of variability, checked by re-simulation; under the stated noise q = 1 the spread settles near 0.40, not 0 as the paper says (THEORY-1301).
  • IAT*: the mind controls which outcomes exist (the landscape’s parameters), not which the state reaches (THEORY-1302).
  • No chaos and no Kane: the model is a one-dimensional gradient flow.

Standing in the record

The open-access follow-up LIT-1132’s status note already names. A22 summarizes what it concedes; NOTE-1506 lists the concessions in the paper’s words.

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