Admissibility Compression: From Constraint to Minimal Expression in Cognitive Systems

This paper presents a minimal structural account of how complex cognitive and environmental input is reduced to a simple, actionable form through admissibility-based constraint filtering. Rather than interpreting intuition, clarity, or “knowing” as emergent from full informational processing, the paper proposes that such states arise from compression: only the minimal admissible path survives constraint gating. The mechanism is framed within the Paton System as a transition from high-dimensional formation (Tier 2), through constraint filtering (Tier 3), to a simplified observable output (Tier 4), followed by recursive re-evaluation (Tier 5). The result is a transparent, low-complexity representation that appears subjectively as clarity or immediate understanding. Notes Part of the Paton System framework. This work defines admissibility compression as the structural mechanism by which high-dimensional input is reduced to the lowest-complexity viable expression that supports continuation under constraint.