Conscious Experience and Designing User Experiences

The mathematical construct of 'collection of elements' continues to inform neuroscientific discourse on consciousness. For example, Albright speaks of deconstructing "perceptual experience into a collection of simple sensory elements" (Leonardo 46: 19, 2013), while Kandel asserts that "mind is a set of processes carried out by the brain" (Neuron 80: 546, 2013). This state-of-affairs prevails in spite of the fact that sensations, unlike the structure-less elements of sets, are structured, and conscious experiences, unlike the cohesion-less sets, are characterized by cohesion or unity.

Building on a naïve understanding of the notion of 'category', wherein every object of a category partakes in the essence defining the category and every transformation of objects preserves the essence of the category, I show how 'category of objects' provides the conceptual repertoire needed to characterize the nature of conscious experiences. Equally importantly, when viewed in light of the category of experiences, designers of user experiences appear to be well situated to contribute to the advancement of consciousness science.

Summing up, I present a conceptual advance—from 'set of elements' to 'objects of category'—in a concise manner.  Equally importantly, I wrote my manuscript in a manner that makes the mathematics of categories, which is the basis of my claims, intuitively-accessible to multidisciplinary audience. As such, my manuscript will inspire further studies of the category of experiences as an objectification of consciousness.