Journal of Philosophical Investigations
January 26, 2026
Zeinab Mahdavi, Bakhtiar Shabani-Varaki, Tahereh Javidi-Kalateh-Jafarabadi
Contemplative pedagogy, grounded in a neurophenomenological understanding of consciousness as irreducible, embodied, and emergent, can reframe educational paradigms by integrating first-person experiential insights with third-person perspectives on neural, bodily, and environmental dynamics. The framework operates across four dimensions: internal awareness through self-exploration techniques, embodied action via autopoiesis and enaction, intersubjective empathy and compassion, and engagement with social and institutional contexts. This multidimensional approach cultivates consciousness holistically, suggesting education can foster deeply embodied and relational understanding, transforming learning into a process rooted in contemplative consciousness.
Journal of Philosophical Investigations
November 30, 2025
Tayyebeh Gholami, Hassan Hosseini-Sarvari
Cognitive science has undergone three major revolutions since the mid-20th century. Classical cognitivism, which relies on computational representation and symbolic processing, struggles to explain interactions between mind, body, and environment. The 4E approach—embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended—views cognition as dynamic, situated, and interactive, emphasizing the role of the body, tools, and environmental context. Integrating classical views with the 4E perspective may guide future research toward a more comprehensive and interdisciplinary framework, though methodological and operational challenges persist.
Journal of Philosophical Investigations
November 30, 2025
Saeid Karimi, Morteza Tabatabaie
Philosophical discussions of consciousness often distinguish between phenomenal consciousness—the subjective, inner experience of sensations like pain or pleasure—and psychological or access consciousness, which involves cognitive capacities such as reasoning and behavior. This article argues that this distinction can guide ethical judgments about moral status. Beings with only access consciousness, such as some advanced artificial intelligences, might deserve functional autonomy but not the right to avoid suffering. In contrast, infants and animals, who possess phenomenal experience, deserve the right not to suffer even without higher cognition. The analysis suggests that determining whether artificial intelligence could have phenomenal consciousness carries significant philosophical and ethical implications.
Journal of Philosophical Investigations
February 26, 2022
Samad Hosseini, Abbas Yazdani
Neuroscience's success in explaining mental states has led many scientists and philosophers to adopt physicalist methods, aiming to explain human nature solely through physical concepts. The main challenge to this view is consciousness, specifically the mind-body problem. This article argues that phenomenal awareness is the most important challenge to materialism. By dividing consciousness into "perceptual consciousness" and "phenomenal consciousness," it contends that scientific theories can at best explain perceptual consciousness, but phenomenal consciousness remains beyond the reach of physical sciences due to the inherent nature of mentality, unless a first-person perspective science is recognized.
Journal of Philosophical Investigations
November 30, 2025
Alireza Farnam
Language, particularly inner speech, may serve as a bridge between the brain's material processes and conscious mental experiences such as emotions and thoughts. Drawing on linguistic, neurological, and evolutionary evidence, the article argues that language enables sensory synchronization, conceptualization of sensory input, memory organization, continuous narrative formation, and modulation of arousal. These processes occur within memory, which acts as a platform for language and, through evolution, can retrieve images and information. By influencing internal arousal, language creates moods that align with retrieved memories, thereby contributing to the formation of qualia. The article suggests that human language evolved from an interpersonal tool into an internal language, as described by Vygotsky, and now influences all psychological functions including perception.
Journal of Philosophical Investigations
March 19, 2025
Mohsen Japani, Masood Seif, Mohammad-Hassan Heidari et al.
Husserl transformed Brentano's inadequate account of perceiving temporal things into a layered theory of time-consciousness. He first examined consciousness of temporal objects, then the temporal consciousness of that consciousness, and finally the absolute stream of consciousness. By introducing concepts such as primary memory, primary expectation, retention, and protection, Husserl moved away from the centrality of the actual present now and the metaphysics of presence. Although he challenged the dominance of presence, he stopped short of bypassing absolutely present consciousness entirely.
Journal of Philosophical Investigations
September 10, 2024
Amita Valmiki
Four thinkers—Kierkegaard, Gandhi, Ranade, and Ambedkar—each linked ethics and religion in distinct ways. Kierkegaard saw faith as a realm beyond rational commitment, reached after passing through aesthetic and ethical stages. Gandhi held that truth and morality are inseparable from religion, which underlay his political and social work. Ranade emphasized that mystical experience includes universality, intellect, emotion, intuitive spiritual realization, and morality. Ambedkar, rejecting Christianity and Islam, adopted Buddhism because it aligns with reason and science, critiquing Brahmanism; his conversion was a political movement, resulting in Neo-Buddhism. The article compares these views toward an ethical religion that appeals to the author's conscience.
Journal of Philosophical Investigations
September 2, 2023
Tohid Hadinejad, Mahdi Behniafar
Functionalism, the dominant view in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, treats the mind as a processor and the body as a mere supplier of raw data, leading to problems such as the problem of meaning. This paper argues that an embodied approach resolves these issues by rejecting the body-as-machine view. The embodied mind consists of three systems: the perception-motor system, which provides meaningful perception; the conceptualization system, which unifies that information; and metaphors, which enable thinking and talking about everyday and mathematical concepts. Concepts are simulators rooted in the body's interaction with the world, not symbolic representations. Human beings are embodied beings whose existence and interaction with the world give concepts their meaning.
Journal of Philosophical Investigations
December 19, 2022
Nafiseh Mostafavi
Mulla Sadra introduces a new type of intelligence called Wisdom intelligence (WI), or Al-Hikma al-Ghriziyya, proposing three general spectrums of its relationship with education; only one spectrum requires education in theoretical reason and training in behaviors, emotions, inclinations, and moods as prerequisites for attaining wisdom. Emmons pursues spiritual intelligence (SI) as the ability to enter higher spiritual states of consciousness and to solve problems for well-being, expanding a five-factor model of SI. The concept of spiritual intelligence is more general than Wisdom intelligence, and Emmons's three-factor model resembles criteria of WI, though Mulla Sadra takes a cognitive and philosophical approach to intelligence, focusing on the source and manner of achieving consciousness.
Journal of Philosophical Investigations
June 11, 2022
Ehsan Moraveji, Parviz Zia Shahabi, Malek Hosseini
The concept of atmosphere in Hermann Schmitz's New Phenomenology overcomes the subject-object duality and reveals hidden realities in lived experience. Atmosphere connects the felt-body (Leib), space, and emotion as core concepts in his philosophical system. The analysis shows atmosphere's special place in establishing Schmitz's method of New Phenomenology.
Journal of Philosophical Investigations
November 29, 2021
Hamid Faghanpour Azizi, Mehdi Golshani, Kourosh Nozari
Quantum mechanics offers features like non-locality and indeterminacy that align with properties of consciousness, such as unity and irreducibility, which classical physics cannot accommodate. Four contemporary quantum approaches to consciousness are examined: the Eccles-Beck, Stapp, Penrose-Hameroff, and Avicenna-Bohm theories, each rooted in distinct metaphysical principles. The article argues that all scientific theories depend on the worldview of their proponents. It concludes by discussing Top-Down Causation as a promising philosophical framework for understanding the mind-brain relation and quantum consciousness.