Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences
November 13, 2025
Albert Newen, Carlos Montemayor
2 citations
The evolution of consciousness is a neglected topic that plays a surprisingly insignificant role in all major theories of consciousness. Furthermore, substantial disagreements can be observed in the dominant views on the neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs), which focus too much on cortical brain regions. In order to dissolve some of the contradictions among these views and to constrain...
Frontiers in Psychology
2025
Marc Wittmann, Carlos Montemayor, Mauro Dorato
1 citation
Building on the Stoic notion of self-regulation, we explore philosophical conceptualizations in relation to empirical evidence from psychology and cognitive neuroscience. We challenge the mainstream account that dismisses the possibility of free will based on contemporary scientific findings. Instead, we argue that these findings actually support and refine the Stoic view of free will,...
arXiv Preprint Archive
June 10, 2024
Azenet Lopez, Carlos Montemayor
preprint
The Integrated Information Theory (IIT) might be our current best bet at a scientific explanation of phenomenal consciousness. IIT focuses on the distinctively subjective and phenomenological aspects of conscious experience. Currently, it offers the fundaments of a formal account, but future developments shall explain the qualitative structures of every possible conscious experience. But this...
Psychology of Consciousness Theory Research and Practice
June 12, 2023
Harry H. Haladjian, Carlos Montemayor
This paper comprehensively examines how information processing relates to attention and consciousness. We argue that no current theoretical framework investigating consciousness has a satisfactory and holistic account of their informational relationship. Our key theoretical contribution is showing how the dissociation between consciousness and attention must be understood in informational terms...
Journal of Consciousness Studies
March 31, 2023
Albert Newen, Carlos Montemayor
8 citations
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...
Consciousness and Quantum Mechanics
July 18, 2022
J. Acacio De Barros, Carlos Montemayor
AbstractIn this chapter we argue that an access-consciousness version of panpsychism, which we call “panintentionalism” suffices, and is better equipped to account for the type of mentality involved in quantum mechanics than the standard one, based on phenomenal-consciousness. We provide details concerning the notion of “observer” in quantum mechanics to support our claims and conclude that,...
Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience
November 22, 2021
Carlos Montemayor
6 citations
Consciousness research has a cognitive-diversity problem. Any view that holds that attention is either necessary for consciousness or that attention precedes conscious awareness confronts the difficulty that the theoretical categorization of attention is as diverse as the categorization of intelligent cognition, but consciousness is typically referred to as a single and unified capacity. On the...
Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness
September 1, 2021
Carlos Montemayor
Contemporary debates on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) center on what philosophers classify as descriptive issues. These issues concern the architecture and style of information processing required for multiple kinds of optimal problem-solving. This paper focuses on two topics that are central to developing AGI regarding normative, rather than descriptive, requirements for AGIs epistemic...
Frontiers in Psychology
January 24, 2017
Carlos Montemayor, Harry H. Haladjian
70 citations
The main thesis of this paper is that two prevailing theories about cognitive penetration are too extreme, namely, the view that cognitive penetration is pervasive and the view that there is a sharp and fundamental distinction between cognition and perception, which precludes any type of cognitive penetration. These opposite views have clear merits and empirical support. To eliminate this...
Consciousness and Cognition
October 1, 2016
Harry Haroutioun Haladjian, Carlos Montemayor
Artificial Intelligence is at a turning point, with a substantial increase in projects aiming to implement sophisticated forms of human intelligence in machines. This research attempts to model specific forms of intelligence through brute-force search heuristics and also reproduce features of human perception and cognition, including emotions. Such goals have implications for artificial...