Synthese
January 28, 2026
Jonathan Mitchell
The sense of touch, or haptic touch, is structured by an external spatial field called peripersonal space, which functions similarly to the visual field. Peripersonal space meets the necessary conditions for a spatial field, making it the external spatial field of haptic touch. This argument clarifies structural similarities and differences between the senses, focusing on how touch, like vision, operates within a spatial framework.
Synthese
January 26, 2026
Celia R. Blaise
A recurring finding in psychedelic-assisted therapy is that the subjective intensity and quality of the psychedelic experience contribute more to therapeutic outcomes than the administered dose. Many explanations appeal to what these experiences reveal or enable, such as acquiring mental representations, expanding awareness, or revising beliefs about the self and the world. This paper argues that even if psychedelics work by loosening beliefs or expanding awareness, this alone does not explain why resulting changes should be beneficial rather than neutral or harmful. Existing theories risk describing processes that could worsen distress as easily as alleviate it. The author argues that without a positive shift in affective valence, there is no clear reason why psychedelic experiences should lead to therapeutic outcomes.
Synthese
November 5, 2025
Christopher Kochevar
Psychedelic experiences, though linked to therapeutic benefits for depression and other mood disorders, remain poorly understood. This paper argues that the epistemic dimensions—how knowledge and understanding are gained—should be examined more closely. It proposes a tripartite framework of three phenomenological regularities: fascination, revelation, and improvisation, relating them to everyday epistemic phenomena like curiosity, insight, and intellectual playfulness. Using first-person accounts, the author argues that psychedelic experience, while extraordinary, is best understood as a modification of familiar cognitive processes. The paper concludes with recommendations for new clinical measurement approaches in psychotherapeutic settings.
Synthese
June 19, 2026
Danilo Manca
Neither minimal nor narrative conceptions of the self are inherently tied to either the manifest or the scientific image of the world; both can support either framework depending on how they are articulated. The article reconciles phenomenological–enactive accounts of minimal selfhood with non-eliminativist neurobiological models, arguing that neuroscience's appeal to mental images often uncritically transfers metaphors from the manifest image into the scientific one. It reconsiders the narrative self through niche construction theory, proposing that language is a form of second nature grounded in embodied sense-making rather than a break with biological selfhood. Four kinds of primacy are distinguished—ontological, epistemological, heuristic, and pragmatic—and a synoptic integration of both images is held to be both possible and philosophically necessary for an adequate account of selfhood.
Synthese
November 1, 2025
Andreas L. Mogensen
The Fading Qualia Argument claims that consciousness depends only on causal relations among a system's parts, not on what those parts are made of. This argument can be resisted by assuming that consciousness has vague boundaries and that conscious neural activity has a holistic structure. The paper shows how these two assumptions together provide a way to reject the argument's conclusion.
Synthese
June 12, 2025
Maxim Gorbachev, Keith Frankish
The illusionist theory of consciousness denies that experience has phenomenal properties—the qualities that supposedly make it conscious. Central to this view is the distortion thesis: introspective mechanisms systematically misrepresent neural processes, creating the illusion of phenomenality. This article maps possible patterns of such distortion, proposing a classification scheme based on three dimensions: positiveness, conceptuality, and dispellability. Eight distinct distortion patterns are described, each a hypothesis about how the illusion arises. The authors offer tentative plausibility assessments but do not advocate a specific view, aiming instead to stimulate further theorizing and empirical research on introspective distortion.
Synthese
June 1, 2025
Paul Smart, Robert Clowes, A. Clark
The paper presents Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) as an alternative to fine-tuning for incorporating philosophical knowledge into Large Language Models (LLMs). Unlike fine-tuning, which adjusts internal parameters, RAG retrieves information from an external store. The authors demonstrate this by creating Digital Andy, an LLM that answers questions about the extended mind using the works of philosopher Andy Clark. This approach highlights how philosophical knowledge can be integrated without additional machine learning. The reliance on external resources also prompts reflection on active externalist theorizing and Digital Andy's status as an extended cognitive system, revealing convergences between philosophical understanding of the extended mind and technological LLM development.
Synthese
January 1, 2025
Ben White, Andy Clark, Avel Guènin-Carlut et al.
The classical extended mind thesis, with its conditions of trust and glue and phenomenal transparency, poorly describes how people engage with ambient smart environments—spaces infused with background smart technology that operates without explicit user interaction. Drawing on active inference, a theory that frames cognition as embodied uncertainty minimization, the authors develop a process-based version of the extended mind in which mental boundaries are multiple and shifting. They argue that ambient smart environments function as extended allostatic control systems, invisibly supporting an agent's biological capacity to minimize uncertainty across interlocking timescales. This account reframes the classical extended mind thesis to better capture the fluid, background operation of such environments.
Synthese
January 22, 2024
Nino Kadić
Panpsychism holds that consciousness is fundamental and everywhere, but faces the subject combination problem: how simple conscious subjects could combine into complex ones. Assuming that problem cannot be solved, this paper proposes a version of panpsychism that avoids talk of combination entirely. Inspired by Leibniz's monads, it offers a relational explanation of how simple subjects could constitute complex experiences without merging their subjectivity. Called monadic panpsychism, the view does not rely on emergence and thus avoids problems faced by emergentist accounts. The author argues monadic panpsychism is preferable to combinatory and emergentist versions because it faces a less worrisome set of objections and has tools to address other combination problems.
Synthese
August 1, 2022
P. Smart, Gloria Andrada, Robert W. Clowes
Some philosophers argue that for an external tool to count as part of the mind, it must be used so automatically that it becomes phenomenally transparent—like a blind person's cane that is felt as an extension of the body. This paper challenges that claim, arguing that phenomenal transparency is neither necessary nor sufficient for cognitive extension. Instead, transparency is a feature of situations that lead us to ascribe mental dispositions to ourselves and others. The authors clarify the role of transparency in debates about the extended mind, showing it is relevant to understanding when extended cognition occurs but not a decisive criterion.
Synthese
July 16, 2022
Andrea Cimino
A philosophical analysis argues that hallucination can be understood as a distinctive intentional phenomenon irreducible to other sensory experiences. Drawing on Husserlian phenomenology, the author proposes a morphological description of the intentional structures of consciousness that generate hallucinatory appearances. The account supports the possibility of hallucination in a strict sense, elucidating the claim that in hallucination we are conscious of something while nothing truly appears. The author contends that hallucinations do not affect perceptual intentionality as a dyadic, relational structure.
Synthese
December 1, 2021
Sabrina Coninx, Peter Stilwell
Pain remains a major societal problem without fully effective treatment. This paper develops an enactive account of pain and its transition to chronicity. Acute and chronic pain are distinguished by changes in the field of affordances—the possibilities for action perceived by someone in pain. The dynamic process of chronification involves behavioral learning, neural reorganization, and socio-cultural practices that generate and maintain pain. An enactive approach avoids reductionist and fragmented accounts, offering a comprehensive understanding that respects patients' lived experience. It serves as a useful heuristic for pain therapy by addressing the heterogeneous yet dynamically intertwined factors contributing to pain and its chronification.
Synthese
January 29, 2020
K. Dołęga, Joe E. Dewhurst
The predictive processing or prediction error minimization (PEM) framework, which models the brain as performing probabilistic inference and unconscious hypothesis testing, lacks a clear criterion for distinguishing conscious from unconscious mental states. The popular view that conscious experience corresponds to the 'winning hypothesis'—the one with the highest posterior probability that drives behavior—fails because some states controlling behavior (as in blindsight or subliminal priming) are not conscious. This problem can be resolved by augmenting PEM with Daniel Dennett's multiple drafts model of consciousness, a move justified by the similar roles attention and internal competition play in both frameworks.
Synthese
September 25, 2019
Matthew Owen
A philosophical problem known as the causal pairing problem threatens to show that nonphysical minds cannot cause anything. This article argues that a dualist view called neo-Thomistic hylomorphism can avoid this problem. After explaining the problem and the hylomorphic framework, the author offers an account of how causal pairing works based on a core hylomorphic principle. The article then suggests that integrated information theory, a leading neuroscientific theory of consciousness, can adopt a similar approach to solve the causal pairing problem for itself.
Synthese
May 11, 2018
David Jenkins
Timothy Williamson's anti-luminosity argument claims that no significant mental states are luminous—that is, whenever one is in such a state, one must know that one is. This paper argues that even if Williamson's argument succeeds for mental states, it does not rule out luminous mental events and processes, such as judging or deliberating. These are plausibly self-conscious: if one is judging, one must know that one is. The author contends that Williamson's argument fails to address this possibility, limiting its scope. A misplaced focus on mental states, rather than events and processes, has obscured this limitation. The paper concludes that attempts to extend the anti-luminosity argument to judgment are unsuccessful.
Synthese
January 16, 2018
E. Okon, M. Sebastián
An objective collapse model is proposed in which the collapse operator depends on integrated information, a proposed measure of consciousness. This scheme dynamically suppresses superpositions of conscious states, making it empirically adequate. Unlike earlier proposals where consciousness causes wave function collapse, this model is fully consistent with a materialistic view and does not require entities outside the quantum realm.
Synthese
January 1, 2017
Hajo Greif
The paper argues that the Extended Mind Hypothesis, which claims that cognitive processes can extend beyond the brain into the environment, is best understood through an aetiological (historically grounded) functionalist approach. This adds historical depth to Clark and Chalmers' active externalism and counters key criticisms. Drawing parallels with environmental constructivism, niche construction, and developmental systems theory, the author contends that environmentally extended cognitive traits are grounded in evolved biological functions. Two distinct ways environmental coupling can be constitutive of cognitive functions are identified, and it is argued that the historically prior environmental counterparts in such coupling are features of the natural environment, with language and linguistic artifacts descending from more basic environmental relations.