18 papers in the library · 513 citations · publishing 2000-2026
Behavioral and Brain Sciences September 17, 2026 Thomas Metzinger
Biological naturalism may collapse into eliminative materialism, and the ethics of synthetic phenomenology will remain.
DepositOnce 2026 Thomas Metzinger
This paper has a critical and a constructive part. The first part formulates a political demand, based on ethical considerations: Until 2050, there should be a global moratorium on synthetic phenomenology, strictly banning all research that directly aims at or knowingly risks the emergence of artificial consciousness on post-biotic carrier systems. The second part lays the first conceptual...
Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith February 18, 2025 Thomas Metzinger 6 citations
THE ELEPHANT AND THE BLIND: The Experience of Pure Consciousness--Philosophy, Science, and 500+ Experiential Reports by Thomas Metzinger. MIT Press, 2024. 648 pages. Paperback; $80.00. ISBN: 9780262547109. *What is consciousness and how can science fruitfully study it? In this book, Thomas Metzinger proposes that the experience of pure awareness occurs without "subjectivity" and will help...
Philosophical Perspectives on Psychedelic Psychiatry September 13, 2024 Thomas Metzinger
Abstract The ‘enculturation problem’ is the problem of how to integrate the psychedelic experience into culture and societal practice, in a way that is rational, evidence-based, and ethically convincing. In a first-order approximation, the enculturation problem can be framed as a problem for applied ethics and policy-making: How can the psychedelic experience be culturally integrated in a way...
February 6, 2024 Thomas Metzinger
An engaging and insightful journey into human consciousness. What if our goal had not been to land on Mars, but in pure consciousness? The experience of pure consciousness—what does it look like? What is the essence of human consciousness? In The Elephant and the Blind, influential philosopher Thomas Metzinger, one of the world's leading researchers on consciousness, brings together more than...
Cambridge University Press eBooks October 28, 2022 Thomas Metzinger 9 citations
In this chapter, the philosopher Thomas Metzinger lists five main problem domains related to AI systems. For each problem field, he proposes several measures which should be taken. Firstly, there should be worldwide safety standards concerning the research and development of AI. If not, Metzinger fears a ‘race to the bottom’ in safety standards. Additionally, a possible AI arms race must be...
Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness March 1, 2021 Thomas Metzinger
This paper has a critical and a constructive part. The first part formulates a political demand, based on ethical considerations: Until 2050, there should be a global moratorium on synthetic phenomenology, strictly banning all research that directly aims at or knowingly risks the emergence of artificial consciousness on post-biotic carrier systems. The second part lays the first conceptual...
PLoS One 2021 Alex Gamma, Thomas Metzinger
To develop a fine-grained phenomenological analysis of "pure awareness" experiences in meditators. An online survey in five language versions (German, English, French, Spanish, Italian) collected data from January to March 2020. A total of 92 questionnaire items on a visual analogue scale were submitted to exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Out of 3627 submitted responses, 1403 were...
Philosophy and the Mind Sciences March 24, 2020 Thomas Metzinger 133 citations
This is the first in a series of instalments aiming at a minimal model explanation for conscious experience, taking the phenomenal character of “pure consciousness” or “pure awareness” in meditation as its entry point. It develops the concept of “minimal phenomenal experience” (MPE) as a candidate for the simplest form of consciousness, substantiating it by extracting six semantic constraints...
Frontiers in Robotics and AI 2018 Thomas Metzinger
This article explores promising points of contact between philosophy and the expanding field of virtual reality research. Aiming at an interdisciplinary audience, it proposes a series of new research targets by presenting a range of concrete examples characterized by high theoretical relevance and heuristic fecundity. Among these examples are conscious experience itself, "Bayesian" and social...
Cognition September 2017 Roy Salomon, Jean-Paul Noel, Marta Łukowska et al.
Recent studies have highlighted the role of multisensory integration as a key mechanism of self-consciousness. In particular, integration of bodily signals within the peripersonal space (PPS) underlies the experience of the self in a body we own (self-identification) and that is experienced as occupying a specific location in space (self-location), two main components of bodily...
Cognitive Neuroscience April 3, 2014 Thomas Metzinger 39 citations
Seth develops a convincing and detailed internalist alternative to the sensorimotor-contingency theory of perceptual phenomenology. However, there are remaining conceptual problems due to a semantic ambiguity in the notion of "presence" and the idea of "subjective veridicality." The current model should be integrated with the earlier idea that experiential "realness" and "mind-independence" are...
Frontiers in Psychology 2013 Thomas Metzinger 165 citations
This metatheoretical paper investigates mind wandering from the perspective of philosophy of mind. It has two central claims. The first is that, on a conceptual level, mind wandering can be fruitfully described as a specific form of mental autonomy loss. The second is that, given empirical constraints, most of what we call "conscious thought" is better analyzed as a subpersonal process that...
Frontiers in Psychology 2013 Thomas Metzinger 84 citations
This metatheoretical paper develops a list of new research targets by exploring particularly promising interdisciplinary contact points between empirical dream research and philosophy of mind. The central example is the MPS-problem. It is constituted by the epistemic goal of conceptually isolating and empirically grounding the phenomenal property of "minimal phenomenal selfhood," which refers...
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences October 1, 2011 Krista Tippett, Thomas Metzinger, Evan Thompson et al. 4 citations
Moderated by Krista Tippett, creator and host of America Public Media's On Being, philosophers Thomas Metzinger (University of Mainz, Germany) and Evan Thompson (University of Toronto) join cardiologist and expert on near-death experiences Pim van Lommel (Hospital Rijnstate, the Netherlands) to examine recent developments in neuroscience and philosophy that shed light on whether our conscious...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences December 6, 2008 Olaf Blanke, Thomas Metzinger
We highlight the latest research on body perception and self-consciousness, but argue that despite these achievements, central aspects have remained unexplored, namely, global aspects of bodily self-consciousness. Researchers investigated central representations of body parts and actions involving these, but neglected the global and unitary character of self-consciousness, the 'I' of experience...
Science August 24, 2007 Bigna Lenggenhager, Tej Tadi, Thomas Metzinger et al.
Humans normally experience the conscious self as localized within their bodily borders. This spatial unity may break down in certain neurological conditions such as out-of-body experiences, leading to a striking disturbance of bodily self-consciousness. On the basis of these clinical data, we designed an experiment that uses conflicting visual-somatosensory input in virtual reality to disrupt...
The MIT Press eBooks August 28, 2000 Thomas Metzinger 73 citations
Abstract. Before one can even begin to model consciousness and what exactly it means that it is a subjective phenomenon one needs a theory about what a first-person perspective really is. This theory has to be conceptually convincing, empirically plausible and, most of all, open to new developments. The chosen conceptual framework must be able to accommodate scientific progress. Its ba-sic...