Interdisciplinary Research in Counseling Ethics and Philosophy - IRCEP
December 24, 2025
John Vervaeke, Rick Repetti, Christopher Mastropietro et al.
In this paper we focus on describing two group philosophical practices, Dialectic into Dialogos (“DiD”) and the Socratic Search Space (“SSS”) (“these two practices”). In the discourse domain of philosophical practice, the closest analogue for purposes of contrastive understanding of these two practices is Nelsonian Socratic Dialogue (“NSD”). NSD aspires to reach consensus by extracting a...
Philosophical Psychology
December 16, 2025
Hüseyin Beyköylü, John Vervaeke, D. Meling
ABSTRACT Self-transcendent experiences (STEs) represent profound shifts in cognition and consciousness, possessing significant transformative potential. With growing scientific interest in these phenomena, we propose the cognitive continuum as a unifying framework. Grounded in enactive cognitive science and complex dynamic systems perspectives, this approach takes the embodied person, embedded...
September 25, 2025
Hüseyin Beyköylü, John Vervaeke, Daniel Meling
1 citation
preprint
The discipline of epistemology seeks to delineate the diverse forms of knowledge that inform our lives, from the concrete, embodied experiences that shape our everyday perceptions to the abstract, theoretical constructs that drive scientific inquiry. Cognitive science uniquely extends this project by exploring the human and non-human minds that afford knowing and understanding. Building on this...
Frontiers in Psychology
2024
Johannes Jaeger, Anna Riedl, Alex Djedovic et al.
35 citations
The way organismic agents come to know the world, and the way algorithms solve problems, are fundamentally different. The most sensible course of action for an organism does not simply follow from logical rules of inference. Before it can even use such rules, the organism must tackle the problem of relevance. It must turn ill-defined problems into well-defined ones, turn semantics into syntax....
Zach Buck, John Vervaeke, Mark Miller
preprint
Encounter with supernatural agents and other drug-occasioned immaterial entities are a common aspect of psychedelic experiences. However, existing theories offer incomplete explanations for this phenomenon. This paper proposes a theoretical model of psychedelic supernatural agent experiences grounded in active inference. We review recent theoretical models of psychedelic neurological activity...