PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
May 25, 2026
José Caetano de Mattos
Presents the Theory of Absolute Self-Origination (ASO), deriving twelve formal theorems from a single ontological primitive — the fixed point O(O)=O. Contributions beyond the first formulation include: a rigorous derivation of the Unity Theorem grounded in Banach's Fixed-Point Theorem; the Quantum Measurement Theorem providing an ontological resolution of the von Neumann chain; and the...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
May 17, 2026
Marc Maibom
The contemporary consciousness debate contains sophisticated theories of integration, global availability, prediction, higher-order representation, recursive self-modeling, and functional organization. Yet no convergence has emerged. Integrated Information Theory, Global Workspace Theory, Predictive Processing, Higher-Order Theories, self-model theories, and functionalist approaches continue to...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
May 12, 2026
Lorand Bruhacs
One recurrent source of religious and mystical appearance lies in the way finite motifs resist finite closure and come to be inhabited under maximal, unconditioned, or unsurpassable forms. We call these forms limit-forms and argue that they are Husserlian horizonality under existential pressure: ordinary experience always exceeds what is presently given, but some horizons become...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
May 7, 2026
Iulia M. Comșa
As language-based AI systems become more anthropomorphic, the question of whether they can have subjective experience is increasingly pressing. I focus here on the tractability of research questions in the space of AI consciousness. I argue that the fundamental problem of whether AI systems can be conscious is currently intractable in its direct form, given the absence of a universally accepted...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
April 28, 2026
Yugo Matsumoto
This paper responds to Alexander Lerchner's "The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate But Not Instantiate Consciousness" (PhilArchive, 2026, https://philarchive.org/rec/LERTAF). Lerchner, writing from Google DeepMind, demonstrates that symbolic computation is a mapmaker-dependent description rather than an intrinsic physical process, and that the causal sequence assumed by computational...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
April 24, 2026
Matheus Vinicius Duarte de Souza
This essay examines the ontological limits of algorithmic mediation in the constitution of contemporary subjectivity. Drawing on the critiques of Han (2015, 2022), Zuboff (2019), and Turkle (2011), and grounded in the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty (1945) and the enactivism of Di Paolo (2005) and Fuchs and De Jaegher (2009), the central argument holds that technical hyperconnectivity...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
April 14, 2026
John B. Debrota, Christian List
Consciousness and quantum mechanics are among the most puzzling phenomena studied in the sciences. Some scholars suggest they are related, though others think this claim commits a "minimization of mystery" fallacy. The aim of this programmatic paper is to draw attention to a less widely discussed parallel between consciousness and quantum mechanics: both challenge the classical objectivist...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
April 5, 2026
Nathan M. Thornhill
What do market crashes, geomagnetic storms, and the loss of consciousness have in common? They are all moments when a system's organizational identity dissolves. This paper introduces a framework that makes that dissolution measurable, predictable, and universal. The Dynamic Existence Threshold (DET) provides a single coordinate system — the integration-differentiation balance zone — in which...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
April 2, 2026
Ally Delshad Tehrani
This paper develops a neurophilosophical account of rationality by arguing that what is commonly referred to as “reason” does not correspond to a unified or central faculty in the brain. Drawing on contemporary neuroscience, including predictive processing frameworks, distributed models of valuation, and prefrontal control systems, the paper shows that cognition emerges from the dynamic...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
March 24, 2026
Jeff Rohlfing
This monograph presents the Resonance Model of Consciousness (RMC), a framework proposing that consciousness is a fundamental field of reality received by biological systems through resonance coupling rather than generated by them. The framework rests on a substrate/projection architecture motivated by the holographic principle, the AdS/CFT correspondence, and the ER=EPR identity from...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
March 21, 2026
Steven Hays Wait
We present empirical validation of a Topological Field Theory of Consciousness (TFTC) wherein subjective awareness is modeled as a persistent topological soliton with winding number Q=1. Analyzing high-density EEG (62 channels, 5000 Hz) from 21 subjects undergoing propofol sedation, we demonstrate that the conscious state occupies a distinct universality class characterized by a hyperscaling...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
March 21, 2026
Serge Tochilov
We introduce the Tiered Social Recursion (TSR) framework, bridging the gap between functional neurobiology and subjective experience by framing consciousness as a tiered evolutionary adaptation of internal world modeling. Mapping the progression from basal reactive awareness to meta-aware social recursion, TSR identifies distinct computational leaps driven by social fitness demands. Aligning...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
March 20, 2026
Jeff Rohlfing
The Resonance Model of Consciousness (RMC) proposes that consciousness is not generated by the brain but received from a fundamental field through resonance coupling. This companion paper applies the framework to eleven unsolved problems across aesthetics, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, physics, biology, psychology, and linguistics. In each case, the same structural move -- reintroducing...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
March 19, 2026
Kenshiro Osada
This paper proposes a novel framework for understanding desire, drawing on Yogācāra Buddhist psychology, affective neuroscience, and the emerging conditions created by artificial intelligence. The central argument is threefold. First, desire is not a response to external lack but the morphology of an internal void—a structural feature of consciousness rather than a deficiency to be remedied....
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
March 16, 2026
Kwan Hong Tan
The question of whether consciousness can be computationally simulated has profound implications for artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind. While previous theoretical frameworks have proposed various approaches to consciousness simulation, significant gaps remain in empirical validation, formal axiomatization, and methodological rigor. This paper addresses these...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
March 16, 2026
James Wyngarde
No longer applicable.
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
March 16, 2026
James Wyngarde
Living systems maintain themselves against dissolution under irreversible thermodynamic constraint. As some of these systems develop increasing internal coherence, they become more complex, and their coordination demands increase. In sufficiently complex systems, coordination is globally integrated, self-relevant, and valenced. This paper argues that consciousness is this coordination....
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
March 15, 2026
Denis Bailey
The Structure of Consciousness identifies the generative layer that unifies the scientific and philosophical study of consciousness. Instead of treating consciousness as a property, process, or neural signature, the paper shows that consciousness is a structural relation: an oriented, boundary‑maintaining, coherence‑preserving modeling relation between a system and the world. This relational...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
March 15, 2026
Philip Rey
Stability Before Structure: Active Memory Engineering as a Methodological Constraint on Theories of Mind Philip Rey, 2025 Every theory of mind begins one step too late. This paper introduces Active Memory Engineering (AME) as a meta-methodological criterion that contemporary theories of mind — from functionalism and Predictive Processing to Integrated Information Theory and enactivism — have...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
March 13, 2026
Akira Hattori
This paper reconsiders the conditions under which conscious experience arises, challenging approaches that treat consciousness primarily as a capacity of the subject or as a form of information processing. It argues that when a coherence structure reaches a level of complexity that includes self-reference, complete closure becomes impossible and a structural gap inevitably emerges. This gap is...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
March 9, 2026
Darren Hearst
Contemporary physics increasingly represents reality in structural terms. Quantum theory replaces classical intrinsic properties with relational states in Hilbert space, entanglement reveals nonseparable organisation across systems, and several research programmes in quantum gravity reconstruct spacetime geometry from deeper patterns of correlation and constraint (Bell, 1964; Kochen & Specker,...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
March 8, 2026
Kwan Hong Tan
This thesis addresses one of the most fundamental questions in consciousness studies: whether the subjective, qualitative aspects of conscious experience—qualia—can be computationally simulated. Through a comprehensive analysis of existing theoretical frameworks, including Integrated Information Theory, Global Workspace Theory, and electromagnetic field theories of consciousness, this work...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
March 3, 2026
Vaitheeswaran Ranganathan
Temporal Depth and Intrinsic Dominance: A Dynamical Completion of Integrated World Modeling Theory Abstract Integrated World Modeling Theory (IWMT) proposes that consciousness arises from integrated generative architectures capable of constructing spatially, temporally, and causally coherent world models. While IWMT specifies the representational structure required for conscious modeling, it...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
March 1, 2026
Den Brause
The Information Coherence Hypothesis (ICH) is a comprehensive ontological framework proposing that information — understood not as Shannon-theoretic data, but as a fundamental substrate of distinctions and relations — constitutes the primary fabric of reality. The paper presents a multi-level architecture of nested informational spaces connected through informational resonance, governed by...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
February 28, 2026
Steven Tyler
This preprint establishes a formal Mechanical Law of Consciousness, identifying subjective experience ("The Glow") as the internal registration of recursive self-audit ("The Grind"). By applying Landauer's Principle and the Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem, the author derives the Phenomenal Compression Index (PCI)—a quantitative measure of recursive integration. The paper provides a mathematical...