Higher Cognitive Abilities (Toward a Physical Theory of the Mind)

Higher cognitive abilities of the mind are described mathematically. Few "first principles" are elucidated, including the knowledge instinct, an inborn drive to increase the knowledge. It leads to understanding of higher cognitive abilities of the mind, including conceptual thinking, emotional evaluation, consciousness and unconscious, intuition, imagination, experiences of beautiful and sublime. The mathematical descriptions correspond to intuition, psychological and neural data, philosophical analyses. We discuss theoretical predictions and testing of the theory.