European Journal of Philosophy
May 29, 2026
Takuya Niikawa, Pablo Fernandez Velasco
One of the central questions in philosophy of mind concerns the intentionality of moods. While it is standard to take the intentional object of moods as either ‘everything’ or ‘nothing’, neither view seems to be explanatorily inadequate. Given this, this paper develops and motivates a positive account of the intentionality of moods, according to which moods are directed at atmospheres. We first...
Ergo an Open Access Journal of Philosophy
May 27, 2025
Takuya Niikawa
Does consciousness have non-instrumental aesthetic value? This paper answers this question affirmatively by arguing that consciousness is sublime. The argument consists of three premises. (1) An awe experience of an object provides prima facie justification to believe that the object is sublime. (2) I have an awe experience about consciousness through introspecting three features of...
European journal of cell biology
March 1, 2025
Masanori Kataoka, Takuya Niikawa, Naoya Nagaishi et al.
22 citations
This study aims to provide a comprehensive review of the ethical, legal and social issues in human brain organoid research, with a view to different types of research and applications: in vitro research, transplantation into non-human animals, and biocomputing. Despite the academic and societal attention on the possibility that human brain organoids may be conscious, we have identified diverse...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
July 7, 2024
Satoshi Nishida, Hiro Taiyo Hamada, Takuya Niikawa et al.
2 citations
preprint
Phenomenology is one of the most promising approaches to study conscious experience. It holds that a rigorous study of conscious experience requires a transition in the subject from the “natural attitude” (NA) to the “phenomenological attitude” (PA). NA describes our ordinary stance, in which our attention is directed at external objects and events. PA is a distinctive, reflective stance in...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2022
Takuya Niikawa, Katsunori Miyahara, H. Hamada et al.
Abstract There are many theories of the functions of consciousness. How these theories relate to each other, how we should assess them, and whether any integration of them is possible are all issues that remain unclear. To contribute to a solution, this paper offers a conceptual framework to clarify the theories of the functions of consciousness. This framework consists of three dimensions: (i)...
Frontiers in Psychology
2020
Takuya Niikawa
18 citations
This article aims to present a map of consciousness studies, which consists of a list of fundamental questions about consciousness and existing approaches to them. The question list includes five fundamental categories: Definitional, Phenomenological, Epistemological, Ontological, and Axiological. Each fundamental category is divided into more determinate questions. Existing approaches to each...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2020
Takuya Niikawa, Katsunori Miyahara, Hiro Taiyo Hamada et al.
3 citations
Abstract The subjective features of psychological phenomena have been studied intensively in experimental science in recent years. Although various methods have been proposed to identify subjective features of psychological phenomena, there are elusive subjective features such as the spatiotemporal structure of experience, which are difficult to capture without some additional methodological...