The Innate Coherence Theory (ICT)

Mint Achanaiyakul
30 minutes ago
5 min read

Universal Consciousness Grammar

Paper-cut style cover for The Innate Coherence Theory (ICT) in PolyglotMint colors: layered teal/mint/purple waves radiate from a bright center above a head silhouette with a glowing neural network. Text reads “The Innate Coherence Theory (ICT) — Universal Consciousness Grammar,” with “Perception / Emotion / Meaning” on the left, “Dissonance as a Correction Signal” and a waveform on the right, and “POLYGLOTMINT.COM” at the bottom. — Image generated using AI under the creative direction and composition of Mint Achanaiyakul.

The Innate Coherence Theory (Universal Consciousness Grammar) was developed by Mint Achanaiyakul as part of the Psychomedia framework.

Abstract

This paper proposes that the human mind contains an innate coherence engine: a built-in grammar that organizes perception, emotion, and meaning into a felt sense of reality. The Innate Coherence Theory reframes “something feels off” as a measurable signal of mismatch between incoming information and the nervous system’s internal model of truth. The core claim is not mystical. It is mechanistic: the brain is a prediction system that continuously seeks consistency, minimizes surprise, and stabilizes coherent experience. According to Friston (2010) in “The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory”, biological systems remain viable by reducing prediction error and maintaining adaptive internal models. According to Clark (2013) in “Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science”, perception is active inference: the brain does not passively receive reality, it continuously constructs it. ICT extends this predictive architecture into a coherence grammar: a universal syntax through which consciousness evaluates alignment between meaning and reality, then flags distortion as dissonance.

1. From Universal Grammar to Coherence Grammar

When Chomsky (1965) formalized generative grammar in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, the implication was explosive: human language is not learned from scratch. The mind arrives pre-structured, with rules that make meaning possible. ICT takes that same logic one layer deeper. If linguistic grammar governs how we form sentences, coherence grammar governs how we form reality.

This coherence grammar is not “positive thinking.” It is an internal architecture that continuously checks whether perception, emotion, and meaning align. It is the reason a lie feels unstable even when it sounds beautiful. It is the reason hypocrisy feels nauseating even when it is socially rewarded. It is the mind’s built-in demand for congruence.

2. Core Theory and Empirical Foundations of the Innate Coherence Theory

ICT begins with a blunt premise: the mind does not seek pleasure first. It seeks coherence first. Pleasure is one of many rewards the system can learn, but coherence is the condition that makes any reward feel safe, real, and stable.

Predictive processing makes this readable in scientific terms. According to Friston (2010) in “The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory”, brains must continuously reduce uncertainty to maintain viable functioning. According to Clark (2013) in “Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science”, prediction is not a feature layered on top of perception. It is perception.

ICT’s contribution is interpretive but testable: “coherence” is the felt signature of low-conflict integration across perception, emotion, and meaning. “Dissonance” is the felt signature of unresolved prediction conflict — a syntax error in consciousness.

3. Dissonance as a Syntax Error Signal

ICT treats dissonance as the mind’s native error-detection system. This is not pathology. It is diagnostic intelligence.

Neuroscience already contains a strong analogue: mismatch detection. According to Näätänen et al (2007) in “The mismatch negativity (MMN) in basic research of central auditory processing: a review”, the nervous system generates robust responses when sensory input violates expected patterns. MMN demonstrates something fundamental: the brain encodes expectation, then flags deviation.

ICT generalizes that logic beyond sound to meaning. When a story violates truth, when language violates integrity, when symbols violate the nervous system’s reality-map, coherence grammar throws an error. That error is experienced as dissonance: the inner conflict between reality as it is and reality as the mind has been programmed to perceive or require it to be.

4. How Media Teaches False Fluency

A coherence grammar can be trained wrong. A person can become fluent in distortion the way someone becomes fluent in a toxic dialect. When manipulation repeats long enough, it stops feeling like conflict and starts feeling like “normal.” That is false fluency: the nervous system adapting to incoherence until truth feels foreign.

This is where Psychomedia becomes necessary as a discipline. Media is not only representation. It is repetition. Repetition is rehearsal. Rehearsal becomes reflex. Over time, the nervous system learns what to expect — not from reality, but from patterned exposure. When a culture repeatedly aestheticizes humiliation, eroticizes control, or rewards numbness as “cool,” it installs a coherence grammar calibrated to unreality.

ICT frames this as a measurable hypothesis: sustained exposure to coherent input should stabilize regulation and integration; sustained exposure to dissonant input should increase internal conflict, prediction volatility, and fragmentation signatures.

5. Measurement Roadmap: Making Coherence Testable

ICT is not complete without measurement. Its goal is a bridge: from spiritual language to reproducible science, without flattening meaning into “just chemicals.”

A basic empirical roadmap is straightforward:

Coherence markers. Neural signatures of integration and stable attentional governance; autonomic markers of safety regulation; behavioral markers of reduced conflict and increased agency.
Dissonance markers. Mismatch and conflict signals; autonomic instability; elevated cognitive load; fragmentation and avoidance patterns; measurable divergence between stated beliefs and physiological response to the same cues.
Stimulus design. Inputs can be structured as coherent versus dissonant along multiple axes: grammatical integrity, moral congruence, spatial harmony, chromatic stability, symbolic consistency, and narrative truthfulness.
Ethical constraint. No causal “manipulation” studies that harm. ICT’s research frontier must prioritize consent, non-invasive observation, and protective design. The point is liberation, not control.

6. Integration: Why ICT Matters Inside Psychomedia

ICT explains why the nervous system can recognize truth before the intellect can argue it. It explains why propaganda works by training coherence grammar, not by “changing opinions.” It explains why people defend distortion: because their internal syntax has been re-tuned, and the system experiences truth as instability.

In Psychomedia terms, ICT is the foundational engine beneath the Dissonance Taxonomy. If the taxonomy maps types of fracture, ICT explains why fracture is even detectable — because consciousness has an innate grammar that expects coherence and flags corruption.

Liberation, then, is not invention. It is re-alignment. It is the recovery of native fluency. It is the nervous system returning to truth-recognition as its default language.

Mint Achanaiyakul, 2026. The Innate Coherence Theory (Universal Consciousness Grammar). (PolyglotMint)

Notes on Novelty

What’s established. Predictive processing frameworks describe the brain as an inference engine that reduces uncertainty and stabilizes internal models. According to Friston (2010) in “The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory”, prediction error minimization is central to biological self-organization. According to Clark (2013) in “Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science”, perception is active, model-based construction. Mismatch detection research shows expectation violation is measurable. According to Näätänen et al (2007) in “The mismatch negativity (MMN) in basic research of central auditory processing: a review”, the nervous system produces reliable mismatch responses when patterns deviate from expectation.

What’s new here. ICT formalizes these principles as a universal coherence grammar that applies to meaning, morality, and symbolic reality — not only sensory prediction. It reframes dissonance as a built-in syntax error signal rather than “overreaction,” and it specifies a measurement roadmap for coherence versus corruption across linguistic, symbolic, and environmental inputs. It also positions media saturation as a coherence-training environment, making “cultural conditioning” testable as nervous-system syntax adaptation over time.