It is assumed that a useful theory of consciousness (ToC) will explain why consciousness is associated with brains. However, the findings of evolutionary biology, developmental bioelectricity and synthetic bioengineering reveal ancient pre-neural roots of many mechanisms and algorithms occurring in brains: minds may have preceded brains. Most work in the emerging field of diverse intelligence...
The target article by Van Gyseghem et al. (2026) surveys discussions of consciousness in papers involving human brain organoids (HBOs). They rightly point out that there are many divergent concepts...
Discussions of free will often center on the question of whether actions are determined, with a special focus on causes, effects, and when subjects experience the desire to act relative to neural events. However, because the only evidence for the existence of free will is the subjective experience itself, explanation must center on the phenomenal: why do we feel free? Here, we propose a...
The physical properties of water, particularly the nature of interfacial water and pH shifts associated with dynamics of the hydronium ion near any surface, may be a primary source of the complex electromagnetic patterns frequently correlated with consciousness. Effectively all of the major correlates of consciousness, including the 40 Hz and 8 Hz coupling between the cerebral cortices and...