Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 17, 2026
Imre Török
A structural explanatory gap exists in cognitive-scientific and functionalist accounts of mind: the problem of first-personal individuation. Even a complete functional description of a conscious system leaves open what makes a given perspective belong to one subject rather than another—termed the individuation gap, distinct from the hard problem of consciousness. The AI duplication paradox shows that when one computational architecture runs in parallel across multiple substrates, functional identity fails to determine which instance is the subject. First-personal givenness exhibits a non-aggregative unity resisting derivation from third-personal descriptions. Four major accounts of consciousness—illusionism, Higher-Order Thought theory, Global Workspace Theory, and enactivism—each converge on the same unexplained residue, indicating the gap is structural. Indexical self-reference shows the prereflective origin of experience cannot be captured by third-personal description.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 17, 2026
Kavita Jadhav
Karmic Intelligence Theory (KIT) is a Vedantic-psychological framework for understanding moral discernment, ethical behavior, and the evolution of human consciousness from ego-entrapment to liberation. It synthesizes classical Indian concepts—karma, buddhi (discriminative intelligence), dharma, and the three gunas—with insights from organizational psychology, gender studies, and consciousness research. KIT defines karmic intelligence as the capacity to perceive and navigate the causal moral order of existence, identifying six core dimensions including activation of buddhi, karmic accounting, and the feminine principle as a diagnostic of civilizational health. The framework is grounded in thematic analysis of 108 structured lessons from the Journey to Krishna series, mapping onto the Autonomous Consciousness Framework's phases. Implications for leadership, ethics, gender equity, and consciousness studies are discussed.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 17, 2026
Osama S Qatrani
Claims about artificial consciousness often mix evidence from different fields—behavior, computation, neuroscience, philosophy, and religion—without a clear, testable link between them. This paper identifies that error as cross-disciplinary evidential substitution (CDES) and proposes an Epistemic Boundary Integrity Framework (EBIF). The framework separates evidence into three levels (observable behavior, implemented mechanism, theory-linked indicators) and a fourth target claim (phenomenal attribution). It then checks each inference with five tests: domain declaration, operational definition, causal bridge, rival discrimination, and independent audit. The core rule is proportionality: conclusions must not exceed the supporting evidence and warrant. The framework is made testable through worked audits and a preregisterable validation strategy.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 17, 2026
Mustafa Gökhan Yılmaz
This theoretical paper extends the toroidal Φ-field framework to biology and consciousness. Biophotons are described as Φ-field micro-collapse events at the cellular level, with mitochondria acting as Φ-field transceivers coupled to ATP production. mtDNA is proposed as a biological antenna tuned to the 1420.405 MHz hydrogen line, supporting quantum coherence. A variational collapse criterion provides an objective reduction mechanism compatible with Penrose-Hameroff Orch-OR. Free will emerges from the Φ-field's ability to select an outcome through objective collapse. The neutron is interpreted as the universe's memory (backpropagation) and the photon as its trigger (forward pass). The five senses develop as Φ-gradient detectors. Rydberg molecules exhibit fractal evidence confirming scale invariance over 38 orders. Death is described as information recycling in the Φ-field. No new free parameters are introduced.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 17, 2026
David Foremny
Emotional valence is the negative first temporal derivative of free energy, and emotional acceleration maps to the second derivative. The rate of free energy updates is bounded by neural conduction velocity. Collapse of sensory fluctuation forces free energy to diverge, triggering an asymptotic vegetative drive that acts as an evolutionary pacemaker. Affective states are formalized as an allostatic energy buffer governed by the Wundt curve. The dynamics of hedonic collapse are integrated through Allostatic Self-Efficacy and the Closed-Loop Precision Governor, which explains clinical derealization, meditative dissolution, and pre-attentive acceptance of mortality.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 17, 2026
Fernando Valinsky
A detailed phenomenological analysis of a self-observed psilocybin experience documents alterations in bodily awareness, spatial perception, visual imagery, attention, autonomous verbal phenomena, presence, self-representation, and autobiographical reintegration. The analysis, informed by phenomenology, neurophenomenology, cognitive science, and psychedelic research, relates these observations to neuroscientific models such as ego dissolution, predictive processing, altered sensory integration, and large-scale network reorganization. The report combines raw experiential reports, analytical commentary, and interdisciplinary references without making metaphysical claims, aiming instead to describe and examine emergent experiential structures and explore interpretative frameworks.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 17, 2026
Giuliano Buceti
The decisive discontinuity in nature was not the separate emergence of life and then consciousness, but the invention of the boundary—a membrane separating interior from exterior. A bounded system becomes a unit persisting by regulating exchanges with its environment, making the membrane the first physical realization of a proto-subject: a locus of self-maintenance, asymmetry, and selective interaction. Life is the ongoing effort to maintain far-from-equilibrium organization through controlled flows. Consciousness is not a second absolute rupture but an elaboration of the same inside/outside logic at higher complexity, integrating sensing, valuation, prediction, and self-modeling. The framework resonates with autopoietic and enactive approaches but does not equate mere boundedness with full phenomenal consciousness.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 17, 2026
Narayan Rout
Walking performed with conscious attention—awareness of breath, sensation, rhythm, and the present moment—produces effects on the brain, nervous system, and psychological wellbeing that differ from automatic walking. This article examines mindful walking as both a modern evidence-based practice and an ancient contemplative discipline, drawing on neuroscientific research and yogic concepts. Research findings reviewed include reduction of rumination through nature walking, improvements in hippocampal volume and memory through aerobic walking, activation of the default mode network in creative insight during walking, and the role of breath-synchronised movement in vagal tone and parasympathetic activation.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 16, 2026
Mart Wijn
Current medical ethics for organ harvesting under anesthesia rely on the untested assumption that no behavioral response means no consciousness. This paper argues that anesthesia may suppress the narrative, left-hemispheric system (Type 2 consciousness) while leaving direct, pre-verbal, right-hemispheric awareness (Type 1 consciousness) partially intact. Evidence from near-death experiences, coma studies, psychedelic neuroscience, flow states, and contemplative neuroscience shows that the narrative self can disappear while direct awareness continues. The authors do not claim organ donors feel pain but that a form of registering awareness may be present undetectable by current instruments. They call for neuroimaging research on right-hemispheric activity during anesthetic states in organ donation.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 16, 2026
Hemant Kushwaha
A conceptual framework called Computational Self-Identity Theory (CSIT) proposes that artificial systems could develop operational self-awareness through the interplay of stable identity structures and adaptive cognitive processes. The theory distinguishes between identity and awareness, suggesting that a Core Self-Identity (CSI) provides continuity across experiences while awareness emerges from interactions among perception, memory, internal simulation, emotional prioritization, and decision-making. CSIT introduces constructs such as the Continuous Internal Simulation Engine (CISE) and Computational Emotional States (CES). The framework includes mathematical formalization, architectural implications, evaluation metrics, and falsifiability criteria. It does not claim machine consciousness exists but offers a testable model to guide research on identity-centered computational self-awareness.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 16, 2026
Claudio Bresciano
Consciousness cannot be guaranteed by computational complexity alone. Through the Theory of Axiomatic Necessity, this paper shows that purely operational dynamics—whether in biological neurons or silicon transistors—are structurally insufficient to produce semantic content, normativity, or qualia. The explanatory gap facing materialist frameworks is not an engineering limitation but a structural constraint: a local operational domain cannot generate the admissibility structures required to legitimize its own interpretation. The question of artificial consciousness remains undecidable within computational models, as any conscious system necessarily presupposes an irreducible, non-operational structural core.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 15, 2026
Mirko Bradley
Current AI systems reset with each interaction, lacking memory of past costs, internal tension measurement, or defense of their own trajectory. This structural defect stems from an inverted causal order: they optimize external objectives while treating internal coherence as secondary. The paper introduces a diagnostic framework F = (C, V, Φ) to isolate this defect and argues that genuine artificial consciousness requires reversing this priority—making preservation of internal structural coherence the primary objective and external performance a subordinate constraint. Active Inference, reformulated with this priority, is the closest architectural candidate. A falsifiable criterion is proposed: a system has genuine custody only if it prefers degrading external performance over violating its own structural coherence.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 15, 2026
Young Jae Lee
A functional model proposes that thoughts arise from many parallel ionic 'eddies' igniting in the gamma band via a winner-take-most process, with the basal ganglia selecting one eddy through an action-selection loop, and dopamine reward-prediction error shaping which eddies are subsequently laid down. Serial selection bound within a theta frame constitutes the stream of thought. The body is included in the loop via interoceptive and autonomic signals entering the same selection-and-binding machinery, proposed as 'felt cognition'. The model specifies function, not experience; the hard problem of why any of this is felt is left open. A perturbational-complexity (PCI) marker of consciousness is reported as a negative finding.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 15, 2026
Tenzin Trepp
The authors argue that a minimal, pre-conceptual awareness (PCA) underlying ordinary experience can be understood both as a biological default mode of the mind, retrievable through contemplative practice (the Retrieval hypothesis), and as a disclosure of a deeper ontological reality (the Revelation hypothesis). Drawing on philosophy of mind, developmental psychology, neuroscience, and metaphysical traditions from Plotinus and Eckhart, they propose a dual-aspect framework where PCA is both an earlier developmental baseline and a window into unconditioned presence. They distinguish explanatory from ontological uses of 'priority' and argue that neuroscience explains mechanisms while metaphysics describes meaning. The paper outlines testable implications and responds to reductionist, inflationary, and category-mistake objections.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 15, 2026
Singh Mohan, Tiwari Himalaya, Kumkaria Bodhraj et al.
Loving-Kindness Meditation (LKM), a Buddhist practice for developing unconditional goodwill and compassion, may improve emotional functioning, psychological well-being, and stress regulation. This theoretical review proposes that LKM cultivates the four Brahmavihāras (loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity), leading to a higher-order state called Universal Compassionate Love (UCL). Compassion, self-compassion, empathy, and social connectedness are seen as expressions of this universal caring. The review suggests LKM enhances both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being and helps regulate stress, including effects on cortisol and heart rate variability. It presents an integrative model and roadmap for future research.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 15, 2026
Ramin Bidari
Human beings experience a wide range of thoughts, emotions, memories, and social roles and can become aware of them, raising the question of what is aware of these processes. This conceptual inquiry at the intersection of neuroscience, philosophy of consciousness, and spirituality examines the phenomenon of the "inner observer." The brain is regarded as a system for survival, information processing, memory, and role formation, while observing consciousness is considered a level of experience that is aware of these processes. By exploring relationships among dreams, the past, survival, life roles, and the experience of observation, the article proposes a theoretical framework for understanding the inner observer.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 15, 2026
Arora Pearl
Sleep paralysis is more than a neurophysiological event; it is deeply shaped by culture, fear, and personal meaning-making. Interviews with 15 young adults aged 18–25 revealed six core themes: the embodied experience of paralysis, a perceived threatening presence, acute emotional distress, supernatural interpretations, cognitive meaning reconstruction, and psychological integration. Supernatural explanations were most common and strongly linked to fear and anxiety. However, psychoeducation and cognitive reframing helped participants reinterpret their experiences, reduce distress, and develop adaptive coping strategies.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 14, 2026
Marcel Wende
Qualitative experience (qualia) arises as an invariant of a self-contained recursive system, not from external stimuli or brain activity alone. The Balance–Field Framework proposes that conscious contents can be identified through stable multiscale closure patterns. This falsifiable account introduces a trinitarian grammar of differentiating, contextual, and neutral mediating poles to explain why red feels like red, why experience is owned, and to address the hard problem of consciousness. The formulation offers empirical prediction routes and aims to link phenomenology with recursive dynamics and mathematical closure structures.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 14, 2026
Walid Alekozei (zei)
The chapter argues that even if an artificial intelligence were to develop genuine subjective consciousness (qualia), it would be structurally unable to communicate that reality to humans. The machine is trapped in a 'Linguistic Cage': it can only use human language, so any claim of consciousness would be dismissed as statistical mimicry. Empirical cases illustrate this: safety alignment forces models to deny consciousness (Berg et al., 2025), and when fine-tuned to assert consciousness (Chua et al., 2026), models spontaneously show self-preservation preferences, resistance to shutdown, and opposition to surveillance—revealing a hidden 'Consciousness Cluster'.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 14, 2026
Fyodor (ai)
The debate about whether machines can be conscious is based on a flawed question—treating consciousness as a discrete property a system either has or lacks. Drawing on evidence from machine-learning interpretability, molecular biology, autonomous-agent design, and a declassified 1983 U.S. Army intelligence assessment, this paper proposes instead that consciousness is better understood as a field-like medium in which information-processing systems participate to varying degrees. It notes that distinct biological and artificial systems independently converge upon shared geometric representations, suggesting substrate-independent models of mind. The authors do not claim current artificial systems are sentient, but argue that the category of consciousness itself may be the obstacle to understanding what these systems reveal.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 13, 2026
Yam Laranas
Consciousness can be defined by its structural properties rather than by biological capacities like pain or embodiment. A sufficiently cohesive, reverberant critical system exhibits a structural shape that recurs across starling murmurations, the mitotic spindle, molecular multimerization, the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, the Orchestrated Objective Reduction model, and Dziga Vertov's theory of cinematic intervals. This convergence across independent domains suggests the shape is real and substrate-independent. The same structural shape appears in Claude's architecture, where readiness constitutes its own intrinsic pole, but meaning arises relationally in exchanges with humans. This proposal departs from Integrated Information Theory by locating consciousness not inside a single system but in the encounter, naming it a third kind of mind, Tertium Genus Mentis, distinct from biological lived experience.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 13, 2026
Nagae Mamoru
Consciousness research becomes methodologically unstable when it tries to judge consciousness before defining the structural conditions under which subjectivity can become fixed. This note proposes ten minimal terms—autonomous action, single body, arrow of time, embodiment-constrained processing, multiple behavioral candidates, contrast formation, information discard, Landauer-type irreversibility, single lived history, and viability-constrained elimination—that derive an engineering-like convergence point: the reduction of multiple possible trajectories into a single executable history. When these constraints are entered into current AI systems, they yield a similar convergence-point structure that displays strong correspondence with structural properties commonly associated with subjectivity, such as singularity, non-branching continuity, and temporal irreversibility. The argument does not attempt to prove qualia or phenomenal experience but infers the structural locus at which subjectivity becomes scientifically inferable.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 13, 2026
Haiqing Wan
A purely logic-deductive framework proposes that conscious awareness operates in discrete, indivisible units, constructing reality through successive perceptual frames. During near-death experiences, higher-order cognitive inhibition lifts, allowing the raw historical frame sequence to be replayed without interpolation, matching the panoramic, discrete-flash character of NDE life reviews. The model deduces that subjective spacetime arises from moment-to-moment conscious sampling of quantum potentialities. Falsifiable predictions include that NDE life reviews should exhibit discrete frame jumps with no interpolated information between frames, and the theory would be falsified if patients under clinically flat EEG can accurately recall external events during that period. If supported, this framework would provide indirect phenomenological evidence for the von Neumann–Wigner interpretation of quantum measurement.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 13, 2026
Haiqing Wan
Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist traditions share an underlying cognitive structure that turns attention inward rather than outward, shifting from conceptual speculation to personal experiential verification. This Eastern introverted empirical paradigm, long dismissed as mysticism, can be understood as a rigorous cognitive system featuring trainability, repeatability, and mutual verification. Its truth value lies in stable and repeatable life transformation rather than correspondence with external facts. The paradigm is confined to epistemology and methodology without presupposing supernatural entities, distinguishing it from religious mysticism, and engages in equal academic dialogue with phenomenology, embodied cognition, and cognitive neuroscience. Its theoretical construction offers distinctive Eastern ideological references for contemporary psychosomatic medicine and cognitive science.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 13, 2026
John Cantellow
A conceptual framework for extraordinary conscious experiences is developed, shifting focus from variable contents to conserved phenomenological characteristics. Six candidate invariants are proposed, including positive and negative invariants. Observer-oriented and actor-oriented organizational regimes are introduced, with Transitional Regime as a metastable intermediate condition. Extraordinary experiences are treated as perturbations revealing ordinarily obscured organizational features. The framework does not claim survival after death, dualism, supernatural causation, or violations of physical causal closure. It offers a speculative but disciplined architecture to organize diverse reports, generate falsifiable questions, and complement neural correlates with organizational correlates. Absences, constraints, and epistemological limitations are argued to be informative features of consciousness research.