Journal of Consciousness Studies: Open Access Articles
See all Open Access articles published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, in chronological order, on this page. If you are looking for a specific article, you can search for this on our online repository, Ingenta, here.
If you want to receive updates about new issues of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, subscribe to our mailing list here.
A Case for AI Consciousness: Language Agents and Global Workspace Theory
(Vol. 33, No. 7-8, 2026)
Author Name: Goldstein, Simon & Kirk-Giannini, Cameron Domenico
Abstract: One common attitude towards AI is that existing AIs are not phenomenally conscious, and that the construction of conscious Ais would require significant technological progress if it is possible at all. We challenge this assumption by arguing that if global workspace theory (GWT) — a leading scientific theory of phenomenal consciousness — is correct, then instances of one widely implemented AI architecture, the artificial language agent, might easily be made phenomenally conscious if they are not already. Moreover, we argue that artificial language agents have further properties that should allay the concerns of many who are sceptical of GWT as a complete theory of phenomenal consciousness. Along the way, we articulate an explicit methodology for thinking about how to apply scientific theories of consciousness to artificial systems and employ this methodology to arrive at a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for phenomenal consciousness according to GWT.
Inferring Affective Consciousness in an Artificial Agent: A Case Study
(Vol. 33, No. 7-8, 2026)
Author Name: Solms, Mark, et al.
Abstract: Creatures that display ‘hedonic place preference behaviour’ are thought by many scientists to experience feelings, on the assumption that their attraction to pleasure-producing substances which lack nutritional value (e.g. cocaine, morphine) cannot easily be attributed to unconscious instinctual behaviour. In this paper, we discuss how a simple artificial agent that instantiates attributes of an affective system engaging in felt uncertainty about its intrinsic needs in relation to environmental resources can similarly display hedonic place preference behaviour — through an apparently subjective form of information processing — while simultaneously being entirely deterministic. We outline some implications of this artificially engineered behaviour for our understanding of the physical basis of consciousness and the experience of free will.
Towards a Dynamic Ontology: The Philosophical Scope of Micro-phenomenology
(Vol. 33, No. 5-6, 2026)
Author Name: Petitmengin, Claire
Abstract: Micro-phenomenology, a research method dedicated to the study of lived experience, starts from the observation that a large part of it ordinarily remains invisible, concealed by tensions directed towards its objects. After describing the techniques used by the method to loosen these tensions, the article presents a surprising result: this gesture tends to soften or ‘subtilize’ the structures that characterize our ordinary experience, in particular the separation between a subject pole and an object pole that usually appears essential to it. In other words, the very process of becoming aware makes the dual structure of ordinary experience more subtle. The correlate of this result is that this dual structure is not simply given, but created and sustained from moment to moment by usually unnoticed micro-tensions — a process that micro-phenomenology allows us to investigate. Exploring this double process leads to what we describe as a ‘dynamic’ ontology.
Vedantic Idealism, the Structural Dynamics of Universal Consciousness, and the Mind-Body Problem
(Vol. 33, No. 5-6, 2026)
Author Name: Nader, Tony & Madry, Alan R.
Abstract: This paper contributes to recent efforts to mine Vedanta for a more complete and cogent theory of the nature of consciousness and a solution to the mind–body problem. Various non-dual interpretations of Vedanta share the idea that the sole existent is Consciousness and offer more or less detailed descriptions of the structural dynamics of that Consciousness including how it assumes myriad limited perspectives localized within a matrix of other limited perspectives. Here, we add two crucial ideas that fill gaps left by other recent theories grounded in Vedanta and resolve outstanding issues in those endeavours. The first is that the universal Consciousness experiences all of its manifestations as none other than itself, thus avoiding any debilitating cognitive dissonance from the limited, incompatible perspectives of limited subjects. Second, before assuming those perspectives, Consciousness imagines all possible subjects in all natural and logically possible universes, their orderly mutual relationships and transformations. The elements of those virtual universes are potential objects for every limited perspective thus providing something objective that is nonetheless perceived as other than Consciousness but is more than solipsistic qualia. The idea of virtual worlds also preserves the integrity and value of scientific insight into the structural dynamics of the phenomenal world.
Musicking, Consciousness, and Peacebuilding
(Vol. 33, No. 3-4, 2026)
Author Name: Urbain, Olivier & Golden, Michael
Abstract: In this article, we engage three fields of study — peacebuilding, musicking, and consciousness — in order to examine potential contributions of these diverse disciplinary perspectives, considered in conjunction, to our understanding of how musicking might contribute to peacebuilding. We first introduce a new, inclusive theory of peacebuilding which links broader concepts from peace studies to specific kinds of changes in awareness. Following that, we present representative examples of research in peacebuilding practice where musicking has been successfully incorporated. Based primarily on 4E and autopoietic theory, we next examine empathy and identity, considered as two specific aspects of consciousness connected to realizing interdependent relationships. Finally, based on these premises, we argue that musical behaviours are ideally suited to fostering the kinds of changes in our consciousness and relationships conducive to peacebuilding.
The Embodied Mind in Music Listening
(Vol. 33, No. 3-4, 2026)
Author Name: Tschacher, Wolfgang, et al.
Abstract: A study of participants attending public concerts that staged classical and contemporary chamber music had the goal to analyse the associations between self-reported experiences and physiological responses, hence addressing a core question of embodied cognition. A sample of 690 participants was recruited, whose physiological signals were recorded with wearable sensors during concerts. After the concerts, music segments were individually presented to participants. The segments were excerpts selected from the concert just attended. Eight segments were shown to each participant in a stimulated-recall procedure, and the participant's experiences of the music in the segment were obtained using rating scales. Cardiac, respiratory, and skinconductance responses were found linked with varying aspects of segment experience. Experiences of beauty and high valence of aesthetic emotions were associated with sympathetic activation and attenuated parasympathetic activation. We discuss the implications of empirical mind–body–music findings within the philosophy of mind and assess their compatibility with materialist, dualist, and emergentist conceptions of the mind–body debate and the science of consciousness.
The Quantum Darwinist Theory of Consciousness: Resonance, Space-time Emergence, and a Metric for What Makes Something Conscious
(Vol. 33, No. 1-2, 2026)
Author Name: Schneider, Susan; Bailey, Mark
Abstract: A reply to commentators on 'Superpsychism'.
Microtubules are 'Fractal Time Crystals': Implications for Life and Consciousness
(Vol. 33, No. 1-2, 2026)
Author Name: Hameroff, Stuart; Bandyopadhyay, Anirban; Lauretta, Dante S.
Abstract: Microtubules are cylindrical lattice polymers of the protein tubulin which organize purposeful activities in brain neurons and all eukaryotic cells. Here we report that microtubules behave as ‘fractal time crystals’, characterized by self-similar resonance oscillations, ‘clocks within clocks’ in a nested hierarchy of similar dynamics (‘triplets‐of‐triplets’) which repeat in hertz, kilohertz, megahertz, gigahertz, and terahertz frequencies. Megahertz triplets are detectable from human scalp beyond traditional EEG frequencies, and are suppressed by general anaesthetics, indicating a connection to consciousness. The Orch OR theory proposes that consciousness results from quantum state reductions in microtubules consistent with time crystal behaviour. We identify distinct microtubule oscillatory subsystems responsible for collective oscillations in 1) kilohertz (tubulin C-termini), 2) megahertz (tubulin lattice phonons, polaritons), 3) gigahertz (microtubule hollow core ordered water oscillations), and 4) terahertz (aromatic π-electron transitions within tubulins). Life may require microtubule time crystals for spatio-temporal organization, collective intelligence, causal agency, feelings, and consciousness. Microtubules are the first biological time crystals to be proposed, and time crystal behaviour may be a fundamental property of living systems, connecting condensed matter physics, quantum biology, and the science of consciousness. We conclude with an assessment of our approach with Schneider and Bailey’s target article, ‘Superpsychism’.
Theories on the Landscape: An Orthogonal Approach
(Vol. 33, No. 1-2, 2026)
Author Name: Kuhn, Robert Lawrence
Abstract: Assessing theories of consciousness is a challenge. Normative scientific methodology, including falsification and prediction, is notoriously difficult when addressing phenomenal consciousness. For example, it is often less than obvious that the claimed predictions of theories reflect the actual essences of those theories. I suggest two ‘orthogonal’ approaches that, while not dispositive in principle, might be insightful in practice. The first is a comparison with other theories using what I call a ‘landscape of consciousness’ to discern commonalities and differences in their foundations, arguments, evidence, ways of thinking, and prospects of progress. The second is to explore the implications of theories with respect to big questions of sentience, including AI consciousness, virtual immortality, free will, meaning/purpose, and life after death. Of course, the implications of a theory, no matter what they are, cannot affirm or deny the veracity of that theory directly. However, just perhaps, the implications might offer insights indirectly. I apply both orthogonal approaches to superpsychism.
Superpsychism
(Vol. 33, No. 1-2, 2026)
Author Name: Schneider, Susan; Bailey, Mark
Abstract: This paper proposes superpsychism, a new panpsychist framework that uses quantum entanglement to address the mysteries of consciousness and the emergence of space-time. Building on recent work in quantum gravity and quantum Darwinism, we develop the prototime interpretation (PI), according to which entangled systems in a pure state inhabit an aspatial, quasi-temporal ‘prototime’ arena, from which both space-time and time’s arrow emerge as environment-induced decoherence redundantly imprints information about preferred pointer states into surrounding degrees of freedom, yielding an effectively classical, temporally ordered world. In parallel, we integrate PI with the general resonance theory of consciousness, arguing that maximal coherence and resonance in prototime underwrite a unified form of experience. This yields ‘superpsychism’: the claim that the holistically entangled ‘megaobject’ at the prototemporal level realizes a higher form of consciousness than any spatio-temporal object (including brains), thereby diverging from cosmopsychism. We contend that this prototime-superpsychism package offers a parsimonious, weakly emergent account of how classical physics, temporal order, and macro-consciousness arise from a dispositional, nonspatio-temporal base, while also opening new avenues for interpreting emergence, dissolvence, and the informational efficiency of conscious systems in a potentially simulated or deeply structured universe.
Spelling Out the Problem of Self-Observation
(Vol. 32, No. 11-12, 2025)
Author Name: Giustina, Anna
Abstract: Maja Spener develops a greatly useful conceptual framework aimed at dissolving widespread ambiguities that have affected the debate around introspection’s reliability since its incipience. One application of this framework is to address the ‘problem of self‐observation’. Roughly, the problem is that, whenever one tries to ‘observe’ one’s conscious experience by focusing one’s attention on it, the very act of observation alters the experience it is supposed to target. Spener argues that the problem of self‐observation is primarily a problem of scientific inquiry, concerning the legitimacy of self‐observation as a scientific method, and that it should be addressed as such. To complement Spener’s treatment of the problem, however, I think that we also need a detailed analysis of the kind and extent of the experiential effects of self‐observation as a mode of introspective access – i.e. of inner attention. In this commentary, I offer a preliminary sketch of what seems to me a promising way to move forward in this direction.
Consciousness Aesthetics?
(Vol. 32, No. 9-10, 2025)
Author Name: Giustina, Anna
Abstract: In recent years, interest in the value of consciousness has gained momentum. Much of the debate has focused on the epistemic and ethical value of consciousness. At least in principle, there is a third kind of value that may be attributed to consciousness: aesthetic value. The question of the aesthetic value of consciousness concerns not (or not just) whether consciousness is a necessary condition for the existence or instantiation of aesthetic value, but whether consciousness itself instantiates some aesthetic value. Research on the aesthetic value of consciousness in this sense has been virtually inexistent until very recently. Due to its embryonic state, almost everything about this potential new research area is yet undefined. In this paper, I attempt a preliminary articulation of some of the questions an aesthetics of consciousness may investigate, suggest a tentative evaluation of possible answers and lines of investigation, and offer some reflections on whether an aesthetics of consciousness is a philosophical enterprise worth pursuing.
Ontological Diversity in Theoretical Physics and Its Significance for Consciousness Research
(Vol. 32, No. 9-10, 2025)
Author Name: Percy, Chris; Parra-Hinojosa, Alfredo
Abstract: Many modern theories of consciousness seek to be consistent with prevailing scientific theories of the physical. While ontological flexibilities and current uncertainties in physical laws permit many options, it remains valuable to monitor evolving scientific thinking, generating new constraints and ideas for consciousness research. A structured literature review identifies 24 distinct ontological positions regarding theoretical physics. Significant variety exists across them, partially captured along eight axes: Substrate perspective; Property ontology; Property plurality; Dimensional ontology; Dimensional plurality; Allowed interactions; World plurality; and Intuition rejection, e.g. which intuitions of classical mechanics they are willing to drop. We identify three main implications for consciousness theorists: (i) three strategies for maintaining an ‘enlightened agnosticism’ about physical ontologies; (ii) a default weakening of ontologically-grounded arguments, alongside a strategy for bolstering them; (iii) an exploitable parallel between physical ontologies and philosophy of mind concerning intuition prioritization, leading to potential cross-disciplinary collaboration. We close by suggesting ways this work could be extended and made more useful to consciousness researchers.
Quantum Consciousness, Brains, and Cognition
(Vol. 32, No. 9-10, 2025)
Author Name: Busemeyer, Jerome; Lu, Meijuan
Abstract: Quantum consciousness concerns both the possible role that quantum mechanics has for understanding consciousness as well as the role that consciousness has for interpreting quantum physics. Quantum brain theories hypothesize that quantum physical processes occur within and between the neurons of the brain and have important effects on cognition as well as consciousness. Quantum cognition is a growing new field in cognitive science concerned with the application of the mathematical principles of quantum theory to human judgment and decision-making behaviour. What do all these theories have to do with each other? Quantum theories of consciousness have more to say about quantum physics than cognitive psychology and conscious experiences. Quantum brain theories have not been sufficiently ‘scaled up’ to provide clear implications for how quantum physical processes generate more complex cognition. Quantum cognition theories have avoided addressing fundamental issues about consciousness and have remained agnostic with respect to the quantum brain hypothesis. This article will address the problem of connecting these ideas together by connecting quantum cognition to the other two topics.
Consciousness Aesthetics
(Vol. 32, No. 9-10, 2025)
Author Name: Niikawa, Takuya
Abstract: This paper explicates the idea of ‘consciousness aesthetics’, which explores the aesthetic properties of conscious experiences themselves, rather than the aesthetic properties of the external objects they represent. In particular, I address the following questions: what aesthetic properties can conscious experiences instantiate? How can we appreciate the aesthetic properties of conscious experiences? Can conscious experiences be artworks? By engaging with these questions, I introduce consciousness aesthetics as a promising area for further research.
An Appreciation of David Bohm
(Vol. 32, No. 5-6, 2025)
Author Name: Lama, The Dalai
Time, Memory, and the Physical Basis of Consciousness
(Vol. 32, No. 3-4, 2025)
Author Name: Reggia, James A.
Abstract: Electromagnetic field theories of consciousness have generally assumed that Maxwell's equations are complete, while many physicists have long suspected that they are not. Recently it has been shown that Maxwell's equations can be extended successfully by assuming that electromagnetic fields have complex-valued components. This assumption, while speculative, implies that electromagnetic fields extend into time as well as into space. Here I show that a consequence of this hypothesis, when applied to the brain's selfgenerated fields, associates conscious experience with the propagation of electromagnetic waves through time. Complex-valued fields account for the extended temporal duration of conscious experience and for the subjective flow-of-time experience that is not otherwise explained by existing physics. They also suggest a novel interpretation of the memory mechanisms underlying the recall of past conscious experiences (episodic memory), casting the re-experience of past events as in part a perceptual process rather than solely as a recallfrom-storage process. The explanatory power of any electromagnetic field theory of consciousness is substantially increased by the existence of complex-valued fields.
Emergent Will
(Vol. 32, No. 3-4, 2022)
Author Name: Scheffel, Jan
Abstract: The philosophical problem of free will has endured through centuries of enquiry. There is reason to believe that new factors must be integrated into the analysis in order to make progress. In the current physicalist approach, emergence and the physical limits of information representation are found to play crucial roles in the ontological dependence of volitional processes on their neural basis. The commonly invoked characterization of free will as 'being able to act differently' is shown to be problematic and is reframed as a more precise explicatum conducive to formal analysis. Subsequently, it is found that the mind operates as an ontologically open system — a causal high-level entity whose dynamics resist reduction to the states of its associated low-level neural systems, even under conditions of physical closure. An affirmative stance on free will for conscious agents is outlined.
Can Lists of Requirements Help Consciousness Research Navigate Its Epistemological Quandaries?
(Vol. 32, No. 1-2, 2025)
Author Name: Percy, Chris
Abstract: Frustration has been growing with mainstay epistemological methods of logical deduction and experimental falsification for assessing theories of consciousness. This paper explores one among several recent alternatives being explored, captured here under the term 'listed requirements'. This paper conducts a structured literature search and critical review of attempts to develop such lists, identifying five candidates. These five lists are analysed as a promising start, but insufficient to do the method justice. The longest list has 11 items, but 19 unique items are identified across the five lists, and a taxonomic analysis by category further surfaces at least 30 potential candidates. Four limitations of the method are discussed, arguing that it is best treated as one tool within a broader strategy for rigorously assessing theories and identifying avenues for future research. The conclusion describes a workplan for a sufficiently complete working taxonomy to support the field's collective endeavours.
Editorial Introduction
(Vol. 31, No. 9-10, 2024)
Author Name: Buckareff, Andrei A., Goff, Philip
Abstract: The articles in this issue are devoted to the question of whether consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality. In recent years the physicalist orthodoxy in the science and philosophy of consciousness has been challenged by a panpsychist insurgency (Chalmers, 2016; Goff, 2017; 2019), panpsychism being the view that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical universe. This new wave of panpsychists claim that their view avoids the deep challenges faced by physicalism as well as those faced by dualism, the traditional rival of physicalism. The best way to test whether panpsychism lives up to its promise is for philosophers and scientists to explore the pros and cons of panpsychism in discussion and in writing. Most of these articles were presented in some form at a workshop on the theme of 'Consciousness as Fundamental' at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, in September of 2023. This was one of two workshops that are part of a John Templeton Foundation funded project (Grant #62683) co-directed by Andrei A. Buckareff and Philip Goff on the theme of 'Panpsychism and Pan(en)theism: Philosophy of Mind Meets Philosophy of Religion'. Yanssel Garcia's article, entitled 'Is Consciousness Fundamental?', was the winner of an essay competition hosted by the project. These articles address the theme of whether consciousness is fundamental from a variety of perspectives, most focusing on different puzzles that arise if we assume a panpsychist framework in trying to explain consciousness.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Panpsychism
(Vol. 31, No. 9-10, 2024)
Author Name: Tye, Michael
Abstract: This article argues that the best explanation for the absence of borderline cases with respect to phenomenal consciousness is that phenomenal consciousness is irreducible. This, I argue, leads to a paradox, which is best resolved by adopting a form of panpsychism. The version of panpsychism I elaborate explains differences in the phenomenal character of experiences via differences in what the experiences represent. This aspect of the current view is compatible with representationalist claims I have made in the past with respect to phenomenal consciousness. It also provides a straightforward and satisfying solution to the problem of combination.
Perception, Evolution, and the Explanatory Scope of Scientific Theories
(Vol. 31, No. 9-10, 2024)
Author Name: Hoffman, Donald D., Singh, Manish
Abstract: According to the interface theory of perception, our perceptual systems have evolved to provide a species-specific interface to guide adaptive behaviour, and not to provide veridical representations of an observer-independent world. Results of simulations of evolutionary resource games, genetic algorithms, and multiple mathematical theorems have supported and fleshed out this claim in various ways. They indicate that the probability is zero that any perceptual system has been shaped by natural selection to represent the true structure of an observer-independent world. Bagwell (2023) thinks that this argument is self-defeating because it implies that organisms, resources, genes, etc. that are essential constituents of Darwin's theory do not provide an insight into the nature of observerindependent reality. Bagwell's argument relies on a false premise, however — namely, that the mathematical formulation of a scientific theory cannot dethrone its fundamental concepts. More broadly, his argument involves a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of scientific theories — of their explanatory scope and their necessary limits.
(Vol. 31, No. 9-10, 2024)
Author Name: Roelofs, Luke
Abstract: I analyse six different senses in which a conscious mind can be said to be either 'bounded' or 'unbounded', and evaluate how well they might capture what people mean when they say either that human consciousness is necessarily bounded, that it introspectively appears bounded, or that mystical and psychedelic experiences remove its apparent boundedness. I then argue that, although human consciousness is certainly bounded in one important sense (informational boundedness), this does not entail that it is phenomenally bounded, in the sense of being divided into separate fields of experience. In fact, if panpsychists are right that consciousness is fundamental and nature is uniform, it is likely that human consciousness is phenomenally unbounded: the whole universe is likely to be a single field of consciousness, with each of us being an informationally dense region of it. I close by noting some ways that this claim of phenomenal unboundedness ('continuism') impacts debates among panpsychists about how to solve the combination problem.
Against the Irreducibility of Subjects
(Vol. 31, No. 9-10, 2024)
Author Name: Garcia, Yanssel
Abstract: Panpsychism has a problem. We are subjects of experience and, according to panpsychism, we are also somehow the combination of the smaller subjects of experience that we comprise. But we have a seemingly unshakeable intuition that we are irreducible. If this is so, then combination is impossible, and panpsychism fails. The question, then, is: why believe that subjects are irreducible? A number of arguments have been offered in defence of the irreducibility of subjects. I consider five. The primary purpose of this paper is to show that none of them clearly succeed. For each argument, at least one premise is either false, likely false, or in serious need of defence. I end the paper by attempting to nudge us away from the intuition that we are neither reducible nor combinable through the use of a fanciful thought experiment.
Does Panpsychism Mean That 'We Are All One'?
(Vol. 31, No. 9-10, 2024)
Author Name: Mørch, Hedda Hassel
Abstract: Panpsychism is the view that all things are associated with consciousness. Panpsychism has a number of significant theoretical implications, with respect to the mind–body problem and other problems in metaphysics. Here I will consider one of its potential practical or ethical implications; specifically, whether, if panpsychism is true, it follows that 'we are all one', in a sense that implies that egoism (understood as bias towards what we normally take to constitute the self or ego) is not only immoral but fundamentally irrational (or imprudent).
Can Consciousness Have Blind Spots? : A Renewed Defence of Sri Aurobindo's Opaque Cosmopsychism
(Vol. 31, No. 9-10, 2024)
Author Name: Medhananda, Swami
Abstract: This article defends the cosmopsychist doctrine of the Indian philosopher-mystic Sri Aurobindo, arguing that it has distinct advantages over rival panpsychist positions. After tracing the dialectical trajectory of recent philosophical debates about panpsychism up to the present, I bring Aurobindo into dialogue with Miri Albahari, who has defended a form of panpsychist idealism based on the classical Advaita Vedānta philosophy of Śankara. I critique Albahari's panpsychist idealism from an Aurobindonian standpoint, arguing that its Śankaran metaphysical commitments and eliminativist implications make it an unsatisfactory account of consciousness. I then summarize Aurobindo's cosmopsychism and explain its distinctive solution to the individuation problem, which is widely considered to be the most serious problem for all forms of cosmopsychism. According to Aurobindo, Divine Consciousness individuates into multiple creaturely consciousnesses through the twin processes of 'self-limitation' and 'exclusive concentration'. I conclude the paper by addressing several potential objections to Aurobindo's cosmopsychism.
Cosmopsychism and the Laws of Physics: A Hylomorphic Perspective
(Vol. 31, No. 9-10, 2024)
Author Name: Simpson, William M.R.
Abstract: I outline a hylomorphic account of physical reality in which the cosmos as a whole has mental properties which explain its nomological order. According to this theory, the cosmos is directed in its temporal development toward certain ends or goals which it intends, and these ends are immanent to the cosmos rather than being imposed upon it. My object in doing so is to argue that, contrary to Sean Carroll (2021), a view of physical reality as having intrinsically mental aspects need not induce any modifications of the known laws of physics nor violate 'causal closure' under physical laws. Rather, this soft form of naturalism, which includes final causes within nature, provides a foundation for the laws of physics that is lacking in Carroll's hard form of naturalism, which excludes mind from fundamental reality. I propose a trilemma for Carroll in which he should either: abandon naturalism, by admitting that the laws of physics are imposed by a divine mind; abandon realism, by conceding that 'laws' are constructed by human minds; or embrace cosmopsychism, by acknowledging that the cosmos as a whole instantiates a mind. I argue that cosmic hylomorphism, which links consciousness with intentional cognition, is preferable to non-hylomorphic versions of cosmopsychism, which tend to prioritize consciousness over intentionality.
The Affective Engagement of Dancers: The Case of Kitt Johnson and Her Site-Specific Work
(Vol. 31, No. 9-10, 2024)
Author Name: Ravn, Susanne; Colombetti, Giovanna
Abstract: The article investigates how dancers can actively shape and handle the ways they are affected throughout their artistic practices. To do so, we adopt a phenomenological-ethnographic approach, analysing the dance-artist Kitt Johnson's site-specific performance production called Mellemrum ('the space between spaces'). We put ethnographically based interview data in a dialectical interaction with the existing notions of affectivity and affective scaffolding — showing their usefulness, while also noting the need for the further notion of what we call affective engagement. This notion, we argue, is needed to account for how artists actively handle their affective involvements. Specifically, as we show, in Mellemrum the dancers deliberately and strategically juggle between (i) a self-affective engagement, (ii) an affective engagement with the environment (space and people), and(iii) an affective-aesthetic engagement with the choreography and artistic ideas of the performance.
(Vol. 31, No. 7-8, 2024)
Author Name: Hudetz, Anthony G.
Abstract: Whether consciousness is unidimensional with states defined along a single scale or it consists of multiple fundamental dimensions has been debated. Clinical assessment of consciousness distinguishes the content of consciousness (awareness) and the level of consciousness (wakefulness or arousal), which conflates firstperson phenomenal properties with third-person observable properties. The state of consciousness is more appropriately defined in terms of subjective level and content which are interdependent. On this account, the state of consciousness is exclusively defined by the experienced mental content, i.e.awareness, whereas behaviour and cognition are overt expressions of the state. Wakefulness and arousal are predisposing factors for specific forms of conscious experience. Nevertheless, a unidimensional representation of consciousness fails to account for the variety of qualitatively different experiences in both normal and altered states of consciousness. To overcome this problem, cognitive and abstract multidimensional models of consciousness have been proposed, but such dimensions are interdependent and lack axiomatic support. A novel multidimensional characterization of consciousness based on the brain's macroscale functional geometry provides an alternative, empirically grounded model whose dimensions are defined by neurofunctional rather than behavioural attributes. The state of consciousness is then represented as a point in this functional multidimensional space.
The Nested States Model: An Empirical Framework for Integrating Brain and Mind
(Vol. 31, No. 3-4, 2024)
Author Name: Denfield, George H.; Kyzar, Evan J.
Abstract: Philosophy of mind has made substantial progress on biologically-rooted approaches to understanding the mind and subjectivity through the enactivist perspective, but research on subjectivity within neuroscience has not kept apace. Indeed, we possess no principled means of relating experiential phenomena to neurophysiological processes. Here, we present the Nested States Model as a framework to guide empirical investigation into the relationship between subjectivity and neurobiology. Building on recent work in phenomenology and philosophy of mind, we develop an account of experiential states as layered, or nested. We argue that this nested structure is also apparent in brain activity. The recognition of this structural homology — that both experiential and brain states can be characterized as systems of nested states — brings our views of subjective mental states into broad alignment with our understanding of general principles and properties of brain activity. This alignment enables a more systematic approach to formulating specific hypotheses and predictions about how the two domains relate to one another.
Intentional Feelings, Practical Agency, and Normative Commitments
(Vol. 30, No. 7-8, 2023)
Author Name: Carman, Mary
Abstract: A dominant approach to conceptualizing a role for emotions in practical agency has been to focus on a relation between emotions and reasons, whereby emotions are claimed to track reason-giving considerations via their intentional content. Yet, if we reflect on the phenomenology of emotional consciousness and take seriously a growing consensus that emotions involve intentional feelings then, I argue, such a reason-tracking approach at best only provides part of the story and at worst is fundamentally misguided. This does not mean that emotion has no role in practical agency, however. I tentatively propose that the normative category of commitments offers a promising alternative for thinking about the role of emotions in practical agency, an alternative that has the potential to do justice to intentional feelings while avoiding the problems of a reason-tracking approach.
(Vol. 30, No. 7-8, 2023)
Author Name: Silva, Laura
Abstract: In this paper I lay the foundations for the construction of an affective quality space. I begin by outlining what quality spaces are, and how they have been constructed for sensory qualities across different perceptual modalities. I then turn to tackle four obstacles that an affective quality space might face that would make an affective quality space unfeasible. After showing these obstacles to be surmountable, I propose a number of conditions and methodological constraints that should be satisfied in attempts to construct an affective quality space. Before concluding, I detail the high explanatory pay-off such a project promises.
(Vol. 30, No. 7-8, 2023)
Author Name: Silva, Laura
Abstract: In this paper I lay the foundations for the construction of an affective quality space. I begin by outlining what quality spaces are, and how they have been constructed for sensory qualities across different perceptual modalities. I then turn to tackle four obstacles that an affective quality space might face that would make an affective quality space unfeasible. After showing these obstacles to be surmountable, I propose a number of conditions and methodological constraints that should be satisfied in attempts to construct an affective quality space. Before concluding, I detail the high explanatory pay-off such a project promises.
(Vol. 30, No. 5-6, 2023)
Author Name: Masi, Marco
Abstract: A view that emancipates free will by means of quantum indeterminism is frequently rejected based on arguments pointing out its incompatibility with what we know about quantum physics. However, if one carefully examines what classical physical causal determinism and quantum indeterminism are according to physics, it becomes clear what they really imply — and, especially, what they do not imply — for agent-causation theories. Here, I will make necessary conceptual clarifications on some aspects of physical determinism and indeterminism, review some of the major objections against libertarian conjectures, and show that there is no conceptual incompatibility preventing us from taking a 'quantum-libertarian' approach to the problem of free will. In particular, I will illustrate the possible role of self-causation (causa sui) as a potential solution to otherwise apparently incompatible or even paradoxical statements concerning free will and quantum indeterminism.
(Vol. 30, No. 5-6, 2023)
Author Name: Frecska, Ede; Birtalan, Ágnes; Winkelman, Michael
Abstract: Soul belief is a universal of human culture and belief in multiple souls is common, especially in pre-modern traditions. This essay illustrates how a three-folded structure appears in the soul concepts of Mongolian shamanistic traditions. The reported accounts of the three souls among various Mongolian ethnic groups are somewhat divergent — especially in their consciousness-related attributes — which may reflect the cultural bias of data collectors, inconsistencies between data providers, and the evolution of these concepts due to historical events, socio-economic changes, and external cultural influences. Despite these confounding effects, the soul concept of Mongolian shamanism is similar in its pluralism to the beliefs of many other cultures. Mongolian Indigenous concepts and their descriptions reveal key elements of consciousness. Although these soul concepts evoke spiritual interpretations, they nevertheless reflect aspects of an innately-disposed mindset which extends conceptualizations of consciousness beyond mind-body dualism.
(Vol. 30, No. 3-4, 2023)
Author Name: Cea, Ignacio; Martínez-Pernía, David
Abstract: In consciousness studies there is a growing tendency to consider experience as (i) fundamentally affective and (ii) deeply interlinked with interoceptive and homeostatic bodily processes. However, this view still needs further development to be part of any rigorous theory of consciousness. To advance in this direction, we ask: (1) is there any affective type that is always present in consciousness?, (2) is it related to interoception and homeostasis?, and (3) what are its properties? Here we analyse and compare Jim Russell's core affect and Thomas Fuchs' concept of vitality, and propose a more encompassing notion that subsumes both: continuous organismic sentience. It provides affirmative answers to questions 1 and 2, and, regarding question 3, a preliminary list of thirteen properties divided into ontological, phenomenological, and functional categories. This is the first of a series of studies that will systematically address different notions of a fundamental, homeostatically-rooted affective type, to achieve a rigorous, unified concept for consciousness science.
(Vol. 30, No. 3-4, 2023)
Author Name: Gligorov, Nada
Abstract: The use of brain technology that contributes to psychological changes has spurred a debate about personal identity. Some argue that neurotechnology does not undermine personal continuity (Levy, 2011) while others argue that it does (Kreitmair, 2019; Schechtman, 2010). To make these assessments, commentators fail to identify psychological changes that cause personal discontinuity. In this paper, I present a view that identifies personal continuity with the maintenance of a self-concept. I argue that a concept of self requires the ability to self-ascribe physical and psychological features and that the diachronic self emerges with self-ascriptions of features that require endurance over time. I maintain that an adequate concept of self does not depend on the maintenance of any particular combination of self-ascriptions and that it can be maintained despite even significant changes in psychological or physical traits. Finally, I apply the self-concept view to identify changes that can result in discontinuity of self.
(Vol. 30, No. 3-4, 2023)
Author Name: Newen, Albert ; Montemayor, Carlos
Abstract: The scientific investigation of consciousness generates new findings at a rapid pace. We argue that we need a novel theoretical framework, which we call the ALARM theory of consciousness, in order to account for all central observations. According to this theory, we need to distinguish two levels of consciousness, namely basic arousal and general alertness. Basic arousal functions as a specific alarm system, keeping a biological organism alive under sudden intense threats, and general alertness enables flexible learning and behavioural strategies. This two-level theory of consciousness helps us to account for (i) recent discoveries of subcortical brain activities with a central role of thalamic processes, (ii) observations of differences in the behavioural repertoire of non-human animals indicating two types of conscious experiences. Furthermore, the framework enables us (iii) to unify the neural evidence for the relevance of subcortical processes, on the one hand, and of cortico-cortical loops, on the other, and finally (iv) to clarify the evolutionary and actual functional role of conscious experiences.
(Vol. 30, No. 3-4, 2023)
Author Name: Rechardt, Pekka
Abstract: The dimensional structure of phenomenal space and its relation to the brain have not been widely focused on in brain and consciousness studies. This paper postulates that focusing on the dimensional structures displayed in the relation between phenomenal space and the brain is necessary for understanding the integration of distributed brain events in binding. A related issue is why items and events of phenomenal space and consciousness as they appear in experience seem to be beyond the reach of natural scientific empirical observation. The proposed solution to these issues is postulated to require a fourth spatial dimension. A transcendence principle of detection (TPD) is introduced, which states that transcendent degrees of freedom of an n+1 dimension are a necessary condition for experiencing or detecting an n-dimensionally extended physical structure as an n-dimensionally extended phenomenal structure. It is postulated that the phenomenal outcome of binding, i.e. the threedimensionally distributed and extended phenomenal structure of human experience, is the expected first-person outcome of threedimensionally distributed neurophysical structures being monitored at the domain of a fourth spatial dimension.
(Vol. 30, No. 1-2, 2023)
Author Name: Høeg, Mette Leonard
Abstract: The paper proposes to integrate literary studies in consciousness research to develop a strong ethical and existential dimension in the field. More specifically, it considers the value of fictional narrative for developing concepts of selfhood and personal identity that cohere with the reductionist explanations of human consciousness and self in modern empirical consciousness research. My central claim is that looking to the literary representations of human consciousness and existence that reject or are free from conventional essentialist ideas of self, agency, and anthropocentrism can help 'normalize' the reductionist scientific descriptions of humans and reduce their psychologically and socio-culturally disruptive impact. The paper uses Virginia Woolf's The Waves as an example, showing how the novel's non-anthropocentric and non-essentialist conceptions of self and consciousness overlap with materialist theories in neuroscience and -philosophy but present these in a distinctive narrative framework and poetic terms that bring out the inherent emancipatory potential of the materialist explanation of human existence and offer the reader the possibility of relating to these experientially and emotionally.
(Vol. 30, No. 1-2, 2023)
Author Name: Langfur, Stephen
Abstract: The notion of a mental interior has been derided as a Cartesian relic, the 'ghost in the machine' (Ryle, 1963). Yet there is a mental interior — indeed, there are two — only not where we tend to look. When a toddler talks to herself before sleep, she often plays the part of a parent toward herself, mitigating the dread of separation. She thus creates a pretend space between herself-as-parent and herself-as-child. Growing up, she plays others toward herself as well. She and her simulated interlocutors are experienced by her as an expanded self with an inside, namely the place of inner speech. This pretend space is the first non-bodily interior. The second develops as a consequence. The simulated others diminish the dependence on actual others, who therefore cease to appear in their former importance. One yearns for them as they were, but the yearning is blocked — and banished from awareness — by dread of reverting to the earlier dependence. This second interior is the space between the unconscious self and the full kind of other for whom it yearns. The yearning enters conscious life indirectly and unthreateningly, for example in the fictive frame of art and in the relational frame of conversation.
(Vol. 29, No. 11-12, 2022)
Author Name: Dings, Roy; McCarroll, Christopher Jude
Abstract: There is thought to be a rich connection between the self and the phenomenology of episodic memory. Despite the emphasis on this link, the precise relation between the two has been underexplored. In fact, even though it is increasingly acknowledged that there are various facets of the self, this notion of the multifaceted self has played very little role in theorizing about the phenomenology of episodic memory. Getting clear about the complex phenomenology of episodic memory involves getting clear about various components that contribute to the sense of self. Inspired by work on 4E cognition, and focusing on the phenomenological feature of felt connections, we show that the phenomenology of episodic memory can be modulated by focusing on different facets — embodied, extended, embedded, and ecological — of the self.
(Vol. 29, No. 11-12, 2022)
Author Name: Leblanc, Marine; Huet, Benoît; Saury, Jacques
Abstract: Chemero's concept of sensorimotor empathy offers a relevant introduction to the study of human/non-human relationships. This article proposes an empirical characterization of this phenomenon occurring in human–horse interactions through the notion of 'contact', which is a core concept in the technical tradition of the equestrian world. According to the assumptions of 4E cognition, we approach the notion of contact with a broader meaning than how it is usually defined, i.e.as the connection of the rider's hand with the horse's mouth. We state that contact involves the whole body and that it is not a passive touch but a dynamic one. Contact is intersubjective, meaning that its quality depends on the two agents of the interaction: the human and the horse. Within such an interaction, sensorimotor empathy allows the human and the horse to understand through the body and to fine-tune with each other to bring about 'good contact'.
(Vol. 29, No. 11-12, 2022)
Author Name: Loorits, Kristjan
Abstract: It has been argued, most famously by David Chalmers, that all objects of the so-called traditional sciences (from physics to neuroscience) are analysable in structural terms, whereas consciousness has qualitative properties that are irreducibly non-structural. From that it has been concluded that consciousness cannot be explained by traditional sciences. Some illusionists have responded by proposing that the apparently non-structural features of consciousness are in fact fully structural and merely seem to be non-structural. I argue that such a position is tenable, but only if the non-structural 'seemings' are interpreted as perspectival phenomena and not as theorists' fictions or absolute nothingness. The resulting view allows us to ignore sensory qualities in the context of natural sciences while acknowledging their importance in the moral and philosophical domains. The proposed perspectivist interpretation also provides an account of how sensory qualities can be observed and talked about despite having no autonomous causal powers.
(Vol. 29, No. 9-10, 2022)
Author Name: Debus, Dorothea; Richardson, Louise
Abstract: Memory can play two quite different roles in grief. Memories involving a deceased loved one can make them feel either enjoyably present, or especially and painfully absent. In this paper, we consider what makes it possible for memory to play these two different roles, both in grief and more generally. We answer this question by appeal to the phenomenological nature of vivid remembering, and the context in which such memories occur. We argue that different contexts can make salient different aspects of memory's phenomenological nature, thus making what is remembered sometimes feel pleasantly 'present' again, and sometimes painfully absent.
(Vol. 29, No. 9-10, 2022)
Author Name: Cole, Jonathan ; Ratcliffe, Matthew
Abstract: This paper explores similarities and differences between grief over the death of a person and other experiences of loss that are sometimes termed 'grief', focusing on the impact of serious illness and bodily injury. It takes the form of a dialogue between a physician/ neurophysiologist and a philosopher. Adopting a broad conception of grief, we suggest that experiences of lost or unrealized possibilities are central to all forms of grief. However, these unfold in different ways over prolonged periods. Experiences of grief are complex, diverse, difficult to articulate, and frequently under-acknowledged. This diversity, we note, complicates discussions of how to distinguish typical from pathological forms of grief. We raise the concern that thinking of grief through the lens of bereavement eclipses other circumstances in which people are required to comprehend and adapt to loss. With this lack of acknowledgment, the phenomenology of grief is characterized in ways that are overly tidy and people are deprived of important interpretive resources.
(Vol. 29, No. 3-4, 2022)
Author Name: Birch, Jonathan; Broom, Donald M.; Browning, Heather; Crump, Andrew; Ginsburg, Simona; Halina, Marta; Harrison, David; Jablonka, Eva; Lee, Andrew Y.; Kammerer, François; Klein, Colin; Lamme, Victor; Michel, Matthias; Wemelsfelder, Françoise; Zacks, Oryan
(Vol. 29, No. 3-4, 2022)
Author Name: Crump, Andrew; Birch, Jonathan
Abstract: We consider the relationship between neural and behavioural evidence for animal consciousness. We critically examine two recent studies: one neural and one behavioural. The first, on crows, finds different neural activity depending on whether a stimulus is reported as seen or unseen. However, to implicate this neural activity in consciousness, we must assume that a specific conditioned behaviour is a report of conscious experience. The second study, on macaques, records behaviours strikingly similar to patterns of conscious and unconscious perception in humans. However, confounds are only ruled out in human subjects, presupposing substantial neural similarity between humans and macaques. Taken together, the two studies reveal a sense in which neural and behavioural research rely on each other. Looking ahead, these two types of evidence could prove to be either mutually reinforcing or mutually undermining. The science of animal consciousness needs both neural and behavioural evidence, ideally obtained as part of a single coordinated programme.
(Vol. 29, No. 3-4, 2022)
Author Name: Browning, Heather
Abstract: One of the most challenging questions surrounding subjective animal welfare is whether these states are measurable: that is, is subjective welfare an appropriately quantifiable target for scientific enquiry and ethical and deliberative calculation? The availability of several different types of measurement scale raises important questions regarding whether subjective experience has the right properties to be meaningfully represented on the types of scale required for different applications. This methodological question has so far received scant attention in the animal welfare literature. In this paper, I address this omission by examining the types of measurement scale we can reasonably expect to apply to animal welfare measurements, and which we will actually need for our applications. I argue that our different applications will require variously ordinal, interval, and ratio scales, and that we have sufficient reason to believe that subjective welfare is a target with the appropriate characteristics to justify the practice of representing it using each of these types of scales.
(Vol. 29, No. 3-4, 2022)
Author Name: Sutherland, Keith
Abstract: The paper opens with a brief overview of 'limerence' or obsessive love disorder (OLD) from the perspectives of psychology, neurology, anthropology, and sociology, but concludes that certain unique characteristics of the condition suggest that it is better understood as a form of 'divine madness', resulting from the failure of the Platonic ascent of love to follow its natural trajectory. The paper focuses on Plotinus's model of the erotic ascent from the one to the ONE, drawing parallels with the Indian bhakti tradition and other models derived from transpersonal psychology. The final section explores the distinction between pagan and Christian Platonism and the entailments of the latter for secular perspectives on love.
(Vol. 28, No. 9-10, 2021)
Author Name: Harris, A.
Abstract: This paper supports the scientific position that panpsychism is a valid category of possible resolutions to the hard problem of consciousness, and it focuses on a solution to the 'combination problem' in panpsychism. I argue for a new way of thinking about consciousness in which consciousness is not viewed in reference to subjects, and that the concept of a 'subject' is borne of the illusion of self. Therefore, we don't face a combination problem if the notion of a subject is superfluous and consciousness itself is pervasive in the form of a field. The paper is also a more general discussion about the importance of pursuing this scientific question in the twenty-first century: is consciousness a more fundamental aspect of the universe than we have previously assumed?
(Vol. 28, No. 5-6, 2021)
Author Name: Diamantis, M.E.
Abstract: This article challenges the orthodox position that some smells are pleasantly fragrant and some tactile sensations are painful. It proposes that the affective components of our experiences are a kind of illusion. Under this alternative picture, experiences that seem to have positive or negative affect never actually do. Rather, the affective component is hyper-illusory, a second-order misrepresentation of the way things actually seem to us. While perceptual hyperillusions have elicited scepticism in other contexts, affective hyperillusions can withstand common critiques. Focusing on the paradigmatic affective experience -- pain -- the article situates the hyperillusory account within the existing scientific and philosophical literature. Several theoretical advantages of positing a hyper-illusory structure to affective experiences emerge from the discussion.
(Vol. 28, No. 5-6, 2021)
Author Name: Williams, G.R.
Abstract: The inherently subjective nature of consciousness severely limits our ability to make progress on the problem of consciousness. The inability to acquire objective, publicly available data on the phenomenal aspect of consciousness makes evaluating alternative theories very difficult, if not impossible. However, the anomalous nature of subjective states with respect to our conventional theories of the physical world suggests the possibility of considering other anomalous data around consciousness that happen to be objective. For such purposes, I propose that we examine the psi data gathered under laboratory conditions, which generally receive little attention. I wish to consider whether we have theories or frameworks of consciousness that attempt to account for subjective qualia but also fit the psi data. I argue that Russellian monism can be combined with an argument regarding quantum holism to arrive at a version of cosmopsychism that fits very well with the psi data. While I do not argue that such a framework exhausts the theoretical possibilities, I do suggest we can move forward with a framework that has attractive theoretical features and is also consistent with objective data currently on the table.
(Vol. 28, No. 5-6, 2021)
Author Name: Diamantis, M.E.
Abstract: This article challenges the orthodox position that some smells are pleasantly fragrant and some tactile sensations are painful. It proposes that the affective components of our experiences are a kind of illusion. Under this alternative picture, experiences that seem to have positive or negative affect never actually do. Rather, the affective component is hyper-illusory, a second-order misrepresentation of the way things actually seem to us. While perceptual hyperillusions have elicited scepticism in other contexts, affective hyperillusions can withstand common critiques. Focusing on the paradigmatic affective experience -- pain -- the article situates the hyperillusory account within the existing scientific and philosophical literature. Several theoretical advantages of positing a hyper-illusory structure to affective experiences emerge from the discussion.
(Vol. 27, No. 9-10, 2020)
Author Name: Coninx, S.
Abstract: According to pure imperativism, pain experiences are experiences of a specific phenomenal type that are entirely constituted by imperative content. As their primary argument, proponents of imperativism rely on the biological role that pain experiences fulfil, namely, the motivation of actions whose execution ensures the normal functioning of the body. In this paper, I investigate which specific types of action are of relevance for an imperative interpretation and how close their link to pain experiences actually is. I argue that, although imperative theories constitute an apparently promising version of strong intentionalism, they cannot provide an imperative content that meets their own criteria of sufficiency and necessity. I further argue that this issue cannot be solved by impure imperative theories either.
(Vol. 27, No. 9-10, 2020)
Author Name: Thonhauser, G.
Abstract: This article aims to explicate the concept of emotional sharing against the background of interactive and situated approaches to affectivity, and to contextualize emotional sharing within the broader context of emotion research. It brings together research on situated affectivity with the debate on collective emotion. Emotional sharing is defined via four requirements and distinguished from other phenomena in the broad field of collective emotion, especially from mechanisms of emotional convergence and other forms of affective we-experience. The paper makes use of the recently proposed concepts of affective scaffolding and affective arrangement to explore how emotional sharing is always enacted in sociorelational dynamics and embedded in socio-material contexts which enable, shape, and modulate the unfolding of emotional sharing and regulate who is likely to participate.
(Vol. 27, No. 5-6, 2020)
Author Name: Kirkeby-Hinrup, A.
Abstract: I present two caveats to the meta-problem challenge to theories of consciousness. Chalmers suggests that a theory of consciousness that solves the hard problem should also inform us about the meta-problem, and vice versa. The first caveat is the view that mechanism M, the mechanism through which content becomes conscious, may be neutral with respect to the content it renders conscious. This means that there can be no systematic connection between M and conscious content. The second caveat concerns how we should treat the problem intuitions fuelling the meta-problem. I argue that we should award them no special status with respect to their explanatory power in relation to the hard problem.
(Vol. 26, No. 7-8, 2019)
Author Name: Lindahl, J.R.; Britton, W.B.
Abstract: A change in sense of self is an outcome commonly associated with Buddhist meditation. However, the sense of self is construed in multiple ways, and which changes in self-related processing are expected, intended, or possible through meditation is not well understood. In a qualitative study of meditation-related challenges, six discrete changes in sense of self were reported by Buddhist meditators: change in narrative self, loss of sense of ownership, loss of sense of agency, change in sense of embodiment, change in self-other or self-world boundaries, and loss of sense of basic self. Changes in sense of self could be transient or enduring, positive or distressing, enhancing or impairing. These changes were also given varied appraisals, ranging from insights associated with Buddhist doctrines to psychopathologies such as depersonalization. In this study of practitioners reporting meditation-related challenges, more global changes in sense of self were associated with higher levels of impairment. These results have implications for both Buddhist meditation as well as mindfulness-based interventions.
(Vol. 25, No. 5-6, 2018)
Author Name: Kastrup, B.
Abstract: I propose an idealist ontology that makes sense of reality in a more parsimonious and empirically rigorous manner than mainstream physicalism, bottom-up panpsychism, and cosmopsychism. The proposed ontology also offers more explanatory power than these three alternatives, in that it does not fall prey to the hard problem of consciousness, the combination problem, or the decombination problem, respectively. It can be summarized as follows: there is only cosmic consciousness. We, as well as all other living organisms, are but dissociated alters of cosmic consciousness, surrounded by its thoughts. The inanimate world we see around us is the extrinsic appearance of these thoughts. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other dissociated alters.
(Vol. 25, No. 5-6, 2018)
Author Name: Tanaka, S.
Abstract: So long as I maintain the ordinary modes of experience such as walking or eating, the body appears to me as something inseparable from myself. Through and with the body I act in the world, and through and from the body I perceive the world. However, this is not the case in the pathological condition known as depersonalization/ derealization disorder (DD). People with DD frequently claim that their self is disconnected from the body and their bodily actions feel like those of a robot. This symptom raises an important question about the paradigm of the embodied self, which is whether the union of body and self is contingent or not. In this paper, I describe the split between the self and body experienced in DD, then compare it with experiences of the full-body illusion, in which the self is perceived to be located out of the physical body. Through this comparison, it is made clear that the self in DD is not totally disembodied even though the basic sense of self has gone through a qualitative change.
(Vol. 25, No. 1-2, 2018)
Author Name: Wright, J.J.; Bourke, P.
Abstract: Freeman's pioneering work -- and neurodynamics in general -- has largely ignored specification of an anatomical framework within which features of coherent objects are represented, associated, deleted, and manipulated in computations. Recent theoretical work suggests such a framework can emerge during embryogenesis by selection of neuron ensembles and synaptic connections that maximize the magnitude of synchrony while approaching ultra-small-world connectivity. The emergent structures correspond to those of both columnar and non-columnar cortex. With initial connections thus organized, spatio-temporal information in sensory inputs can generate systematic and specific patterns of synchronous oscillation, with consequent synaptic storage. The theoretical assemblies of connections resemble experimentally observed 'lego sets', while facilitation and interference among synchronous patterns, particularly when executed by fast synapses under metabolic entanglement, imply powerful parallel computation.
(Vol. 24, No. 7-8, 2017)
Author Name: Silverman, D.
Abstract: The sensorimotor theory is an influential account of perception and phenomenal qualities that builds, in an empirically supported way, on the basic claim that conscious experience is best construed as an attribute of the whole embodied agent's skill-driven interactions with the environment. This paper, in addition to situating the theory as a response to certain well-known problems of consciousness, develops a sensorimotor account of why we are perceptually conscious rather than not.
(Vol. 24, No. 1-2, 2017)
Author Name: Makin, A.D.J.
Abstract: For over a century we have attempted to understand human aesthetic experience using scientific methods. A typical experiment could be described as reductive and quasi-psychophysical. We vary some aspect of the stimulus and systematically measure some aspect of the aesthetic response. The limitations of this approach can be categorized as problems on the Y axis (what we measure) and the X axis (what we manipulate). The most enigmatic components of aesthetic experience include inclination to cry, aesthetic rapture, a sense of the sublime, and intense fascination. However, we cannot evoke these 'hot' aesthetic emotions in the lab, at least not with well controlled stimuli on multiple trials. We thus resort to measuring cold, cognitive preference ratings. There are also problems on the X axis. The reductive psychophysical approach explicitly assumes that there are lawful relations between different stimulus dimensions and preferences. It also tacitly assumes that these dimensions are independent and orthogonal. The second assumption is implausible. Whatever stimulus-preference laws we discover are likely to be twisted and modulated when another dimension is added to the stimuli. This 'gestalt nightmare' has long been recognized, but never resolved. This matters, because human aesthetic faculties are probably tuned to the balance and relationship of parts which make up a whole and are indifferent to the parts presented in isolation. I conclude that the future of scientific aesthetics depends on how successfully we can transcend reductive, quasi-psychophysical approaches.
(Vol. 23, No. 9-10, 2016)
Author Name: Farrell, J.
Abstract: 'What it is like' talk ('WIL-talk') -- the use of phrases such as 'what it is like'-- is ubiquitous in discussions of phenomenal consciousness. It is used to define, make claims about, and to offer arguments concerning consciousness. But what this talk means is unclear, as is how it means what it does: how, by putting these words in this order, we communicate something about consciousness. Without a good account of WIL-talk, we cannot be sure this talk sheds light, rather than casts shadows, on our investigations of consciousness. The popular technical account of WIL-talk (see e.g. Lewis, 1995, and Kim, 1998) holds that WIL-talk involves technical terms-- terms which look like everyday words but have a distinct meaning-- introduced by philosophers. I argue that this account is incorrect by showing that the alleged technical terms were not introduced by philosophers, and that these terms do not have a technical meaning.
(Vol. 23, No. 5-6, 2016)
Author Name: Di Paolo, E.
Abstract: Social factors have so far been neglected in embodied theories of perception despite the wealth of phenomenological insights and empirical evidence indicating their importance. I examine evidence from developmental psychology and neuroscience and attempt an initial classification according to whether social factors play a contextual, enabling, or constitutive role in the ability to perceive objects in a detached manner, i.e. beyond their immediate instrumental use. While evidence of cross-cultural variations in perceptual styles and the influence of social cues on visual attention could not be said to play more than a contextual role, other factors such as the intricate developmental links between dyadic and triadic interactions in infancy, as well as episodes of peer-learning in children, play enabling roles. A common element in these factors is the presence and resolution of interpersonal conflict. Detached object perception could not develop without these social factors. I argue, in addition, that social skills such as managing partial social acts which are addressed to and completed by others, linguistic mediation, makebelieve play, and the ability to control perspectival switches are constitutive -- i.e. are of the essence -- of the ability to see objects as present with a detached attitude. I discuss the prospects of incorporating such social elements into dynamical interpretations of the sensorimotor approach through the enactive notion of participatory sense-making.
(Vol. 22, No. 11-12, 2015)
Author Name: Ratcliffe, M.; Wilkinson, S.
Abstract: 'Thought insertion' in schizophrenia involves somehow experiencing one's own thoughts as someone else's. Some philos-ophers try to make sense of this by distinguishing between ownership and agency: one still experiences oneself as the owner of an inserted thought but attributes it to another agency. In this paper, we propose that thought insertion involves experiencing thought contents as alien, rather than episodes of thinking. To make our case, we compare thought insertion to certain experiences of 'verbal hallucination' and show that they amount to different descriptions of the same phenom-enon: a quasi-perceptual experience of thought content. We add that the agency/ownership distinction is unhelpful here. What requires explanation is not why a person experiences a type of intentional state without the usual sense of agency, but why she experiences herself as the agent of one type of intentional state rather than another. We con-clude by sketching an account of how this might happen.
(Vol. 22, No. 11-12, 2015)
Author Name: Metzinger, T.
Abstract: What we traditionally call 'conscious thought' actually is a subpersonal process, and only rarely a form of mental action. The paradigmatic, standard form of conscious thought is non-agentive, because it lacks veto-control and involves an unnoticed loss of epistemic agency and goal-directed causal self-determination at the level of mental content. Conceptually, it must be described as an unintentional form of inner behaviour. Empirical research shows that we are not mentally autonomous subjects for about two thirds of our conscious lifetime, because while conscious cognition is unfolding, it often cannot be inhibited, suspended, or terminated. The instantiation of a stable first-person perspective as well as of certain necessary conditions of personhood turn out to be rare, graded, and dynamically variable properties of human beings. I argue that individual repre-sentational events only become part of a personal-level process by being functionally integrated into a specific form of transparent con-scious self-representation, the 'epistemic agent model' (EAM). The EAM may be the true origin of our consciously experienced first-person perspective.
Thought Insertion Clarified
(Vol. 22, No. 11-12, 2015)
Author Name: Ratcliffe, M.; Wilkinson, S.
Abstract: 'Thought insertion' in schizophrenia involves somehow experiencing one's own thoughts as someone else's. Some philos-ophers try to make sense of this by distinguishing between ownership and agency: one still experiences oneself as the owner of an inserted thought but attributes it to another agency. In this paper, we propose that thought insertion involves experiencing thought contents as alien, rather than episodes of thinking. To make our case, we compare thought insertion to certain experiences of 'verbal hallucination' and show that they amount to different descriptions of the same phenom-enon: a quasi-perceptual experience of thought content. We add that the agency/ownership distinction is unhelpful here. What requires explanation is not why a person experiences a type of intentional state without the usual sense of agency, but why she experiences herself as the agent of one type of intentional state rather than another. We con-clude by sketching an account of how this might happen.
(Vol. 22, No. 11-12, 2015)
Author Name: Metzinger, T.
Abstract: What we traditionally call 'conscious thought' actually is a subpersonal process, and only rarely a form of mental action. The paradigmatic, standard form of conscious thought is non-agentive, because it lacks veto-control and involves an unnoticed loss of epistemic agency and goal-directed causal self-determination at the level of mental content. Conceptually, it must be described as an unintentional form of inner behaviour. Empirical research shows that we are not mentally autonomous subjects for about two thirds of our conscious lifetime, because while conscious cognition is unfolding, it often cannot be inhibited, suspended, or terminated. The instantiation of a stable first-person perspective as well as of certain necessary conditions of personhood turn out to be rare, graded, and dynamically variable properties of human beings. I argue that individual repre-sentational events only become part of a personal-level process by being functionally integrated into a specific form of transparent con-scious self-representation, the 'epistemic agent model' (EAM). The EAM may be the true origin of our consciously experienced first-person perspective.