ISSN 1355-8250
150 papers in the library · 172 citations · publishing 2021-2026
Journal of Consciousness Studies June 1, 2025 H. Schipper
The last century has witnessed a remarkable conflation of thought between contemporary physics and the Jewish mystical tradition or Kabbalah. Nowhere does this merger resonate more cogently than with ideas promulgated by the influential and iconoclastic physicist, David Bohm. Notwithstanding the radically different lexicons invoked, there exist striking conceptual parallels between the...
Journal of Consciousness Studies June 1, 2025 William Seager
David Bohm is famous for inventing a ‘hidden variables’ interpretation of quantum mechanics, in which particles possess definite positions and momenta, but nonetheless preserve distinctively quantum phenomena perfectly in line with orthodox quantum mechanics. Bohm achieved this by interpreting the quantum wave function as a kind of universal ‘guidance wave’. But his particulate model does not...
Journal of Consciousness Studies June 1, 2025 Giorgio Gronchi, Marco Raglianti, A. Lazzeri et al.
Integrated information theory (IIT) is one of the most advanced formal theories of consciousness, featuring a Python toolbox (PyPhi) which allows us to analyse a system according to the corresponding theoretical framework. Computational and empirical limitations make it hard to test the hypothesis that higher values of integrated information are associated with a higher level of consciousness....
Journal of Consciousness Studies June 1, 2025 D. Costache
This article sets out to locate the contributions of David Bohm within the cultural history of efforts to overcome the problems generated by the Copernican system and Cartesian dualism. After deploring the marginalization of Bohm’s contributions by thinkers whose purposes correspond to his own, the article summarizes the issues that led to the modern quest for unified knowledge. In the process,...
Journal of Consciousness Studies June 1, 2025 P. Pylkkänen
Perhaps more so than any other twentieth-century physicist, David Bohm was trying to develop an ontological interpretation for quantum theory, i.e. an interpretation which tells us what quantum theory says about the nature of reality. He is best known for presenting in 1952 an improved version of de Broglie’s ‘pilot-wave’ theory, which says that an electron is a particle always accompanied by a...
Journal of Consciousness Studies April 1, 2025 James A. Reggia
Electromagnetic field theories of consciousness have generally assumed that Maxwell's equations are complete, while many physicists have long suspected that they are not. Recently it has been shown that Maxwell's equations can be extended successfully by assuming that electromagnetic fields have complex-valued components. This assumption, while speculative, implies that electromagnetic fields...
Journal of Consciousness Studies April 1, 2025 Marina Weiler, R. F. Casseb, David J Acunzo
An out-of-body experience (OBE) is a phenomenon in which an individual experiences a detachment of their consciousness from their physical body. The neural mechanisms underlying OBEs remain elusive, primarily due to their unpredictable and spontaneous nature, making their study particularly challenging. Using individuals who can self-induce OBEs in a laboratory setting could be a fruitful...
Journal of Consciousness Studies April 1, 2025 Charles Siewert
To include conceptual understanding in the phenomenal character of experience is to say there's no sense in which what it's ordinarily like for you to understand what you read or hear could be held completely constant, while switching off all understanding, or switching out all actual differences in understanding for very different ones. Endorsing this sort of inclusion implies at least partial...
Journal of Consciousness Studies April 1, 2025 Angela Mendelovici
David Pitt's The Quality of Thought defends a hardcore version of phenomenal intentionalism, the view that at least the most basic kind of intentionality is nothing over and above phenomenal consciousness. The book is focused on the case of thought, advancing the view, roughly, that thoughts' contents are identical to their phenomenal characters. But the view is meant to apply more broadly to...
Journal of Consciousness Studies April 1, 2025 Matthew W. Schelke
While many theories focus on consciousness as a feature of individual brains, some instead situate it in a social context as an adaptation for the cognitive demands of human group life. Though these social approaches to consciousness provide an evolutionarily compelling and parsimonious account of its origins, it is less clear how the social basis of consciousness affects the phenomenological...
Journal of Consciousness Studies February 1, 2025 A. Hilton
The term 'cosmic consciousness' is mostly used either as an ontological fundamental in metaphysics or to name a mystical experience (event). It was first popularized as a psychological state, an evolutionary attainment following the event, while extension of the mystical experience over time comprises another state, for which the term is also used. Drawing on a personal journey of discovery...
Journal of Consciousness Studies February 1, 2025 P. Craffert
Within the neuroscience of consciousness there are two incompatible views of human beings: you are your brain (neurocentric) and you are not your brain but you have a brain (humanistic). Neurocentric views are trapped in the Cartesian legacy of the mental– physical duality as well as the mind–body dualism that manifests in the mind–brain and brain–body dualisms. A version of physicalism coupled...
Journal of Consciousness Studies February 1, 2025 Chris Percy
Frustration has been growing with mainstay epistemological methods of logical deduction and experimental falsification for assessing theories of consciousness. This paper explores one among several recent alternatives being explored, captured here under the term 'listed requirements'. This paper conducts a structured literature search and critical review of attempts to develop such lists,...
Journal of Consciousness Studies February 1, 2025 V. O’Reilly-Shah
This paper introduces the state space theory of consciousness, positing that the cortex processes information through delay coordinate embedding operationalized by recurrent neural network engines. This leverages the power of Takens' theorem, giving rise to representations of reality as points within state space. Consciousness is posited to arise at the highest order engines amongst...
Journal of Consciousness Studies December 1, 2024 Perry Hendricks
P-zombies are creatures that are physically (functionally, behaviourally) like you and I and yet lack phenomenal consciousness. If such creatures are possible, it’s (typically) taken to show property dualism is true: phenomenal consciousness isn’t reducible to – nor does it supervene on – physical states. If inverted qualia are possible, it’s possible that you and I have identical physical...
Journal of Consciousness Studies December 1, 2024 Antoine Beaudoin
A fundamental question in the field of consciousness is how and why physical processes in the brain give rise to consciousness, a problem named the ‘hard problem of consciousness’ by David Chalmers. Despite numerous studies, neuroscience has yet to agree on a single account that addresses the hard problem of consciousness. Here, I introduce the energy-information generation (EIG) theory to...
Journal of Consciousness Studies December 1, 2024 Joseph Gottlieb
Birch (2022a) proposes a theory-light methodology for studying whether invertebrates have the capacity for (phenomenal) consciousness. The success of any such methodology turns on the positive markers it proposes, and whether they are genuinely ecumenical. After providing an account of what it is for a marker to be ecumenical, it is argued that one of the more influential set of markers offered...
Journal of Consciousness Studies December 1, 2024 André R. LeBlanc
The work of Joseph Delb??uf (1831‐1896), a philosopher, psychologist, and mathematician, provides fresh insights on the relationship between agency, consciousness, and evolution. Without agency, Delb??uf argued, the distinction between the self and the external world would be impossible, the function of feelings such as pain and pleasure would be incomprehensible, and consciousness would not...
Journal of Consciousness Studies December 1, 2024 Francis Heylighen, Shima Beigi
We propose a new theory to explain the nature and function of subjective experience, as a mechanism that guides the organism towards beneficial outcomes. In simple animals, that guidance takes the form of an affect producing a fitness-enhancing response. In human consciousness, there is not a single response, but a range of potential developments allowing a free choice. That range can be...
Journal of Consciousness Studies December 1, 2024 Julien Tempone-Wiltshire, Tra-Ill Dowie
Due to a lack of engagement with the embodied dimensions of mindfulness, third-wave CBT has misleadingly construed mindfulness interventions as cognitive restructuring and behavioural modification agents. When the relationship between the mind and body is understood according to the model of embodied cognition, however, mindfulness’s process of change can be better articulated. We propose a...
Journal of Consciousness Studies December 1, 2024 Charles Aaron Beasley
While the science of animal consciousness has seen a surge of new work, its most basic methodology remains highly disputed. In this paper I identify four candidate norms of inquiry that have been implicitly introduced in the recent literature. I call these (1) expansive theorizing, (2) indirect inquiry, (3) lowering epistemic standards, and (4) inflating epistemic standards. In each section, an...
Journal of Consciousness Studies December 1, 2024 S. Siddharth, Tejas Bhojraj
Russellian panpsychism, the view that concrete reality is entirely physical and fundamental physical entities are intrinsically experiential, is faced with the combination problem – the challenge of explaining how the experiences of microphysical entities combine to form the experiences of macro-physical entities such as humans. While such combination is deemed impossible by critics of...
Journal of Consciousness Studies October 1, 2024 S. Medhananda 2 citations
This article defends the cosmopsychist doctrine of the Indian philosopher-mystic Sri Aurobindo, arguing that it has distinct advantages over rival panpsychist positions. After tracing the dialectical trajectory of recent philosophical debates about panpsychism up to the present, I bring Aurobindo into dialogue with Miri Albahari, who has defended a form of panpsychist idealism based on the...
Journal of Consciousness Studies October 1, 2024 Michael Tye
This article argues that the best explanation for the absence of borderline cases with respect to phenomenal consciousness is that phenomenal consciousness is irreducible. This, I argue, leads to a paradox, which is best resolved by adopting a form of panpsychism. The version of panpsychism I elaborate explains differences in the phenomenal character of experiences via differences in what the...
Journal of Consciousness Studies October 1, 2024 Hedda Hassel Mørch
Panpsychism is the view that all things are associated with consciousness. Panpsychism has a number of significant theoretical implications, with respect to the mind–body problem and other problems in metaphysics. Here I will consider one of its potential practical or ethical implications; specifically, whether, if panpsychism is true, it follows that 'we are all one', in a sense that implies...