Review of Philosophy and Psychology
January 1, 2017
Marie Guillot
115 citations
A distinction is sometimes drawn between the qualitative character of an experience (how it feels, e.g., blueish) and its subjective character (that there is anything it feels like). This paper argues that discussions of subjective character conflate three different notions: for-me-ness, me-ness, and mineness. These notions are not equivalent; there is no conceptual implication from for-me-ness to me-ness or mineness. Empirical evidence from clinical cases suggests they may correspond to different properties, though the conceptual point stands independently. The paper examines four existing arguments from subjective character that rely on an undifferentiated use of these notions and finds them flawed for this reason.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
January 1, 2022
Maxwell J D Ramstead, Anil K. Seth, Casper Hesp et al.
75 citations
A version of neurophenomenology is presented that uses generative modelling techniques from computational neuroscience and biology to formally model descriptions of lived experience from the phenomenological tradition (e.g., Husserl, Merleau-Ponty). The approach, called computational phenomenology, is situated within the broader project of naturalizing phenomenology. Philosophical objections to that project are evaluated, and the generative modelling framework is reviewed. The approach differs from previous uses of generative modelling for consciousness by constructing computational models of inferential or interpretive processes that best explain particular kinds of lived experience.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
April 1, 2021
Daniel S Shabasson
20 citations
Illusionism holds that phenomenal consciousness—the subjective, qualitative feel of experience—is an introspective illusion. This paper proposes a theory to explain why we are strongly disposed to mistakenly judge that we are phenomenally conscious. The explanation rests on three hypotheses: introspective opacity (we have limited access to our own mental processes), the infallibility intuition (we assume our introspective judgments are correct), and the justification constraint (we seek reasons for our judgments). These lead us to draw erroneous unconscious inferences about our sensory states, creating the illusion of phenomenal consciousness. The theory also accounts for common intuitions about consciousness—that it involves ineffable, private, non-physical qualities—and addresses why illusionism itself seems counterintuitive.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
December 22, 2021
Maja Spener
15 citations
The paper argues that current philosophers of perception rely on introspection in two distinct ways—introspective access and introspective method—without clearly distinguishing them. Concerns raised over a century ago by Introspectionist Psychologists about using introspection to gather data on consciousness apply to these contemporary philosophical uses but remain unacknowledged. Applying this distinction reveals that arguments based on introspective phenomenal descriptions are methodologically flawed. The critique does not reject introspection entirely but calls for more careful application in philosophical theorizing.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
January 1, 2017
Kathrin Glüer
13 citations
The word 'looks' in English has several distinct meanings: epistemic (inference from appearance), comparative (resemblance), and phenomenal (direct description of visual appearance). This paper argues these are genuinely different senses (polysemy). For phenomenal 'looks', the author contends it does not express a propositional attitude (like 'seems to me that...') but directly ascribes a relational property to an object—a 'look' that is ultimately phenomenal, involving the subject's experience. The paper endorses an argument that phenomenal 'looks' can apply to a wide range of properties beyond color, shape, and distance, raising a puzzle about how this works compositionally. These linguistic findings support phenomenal intentionalism, the view that visual experiences themselves are propositional attitudes with contents about how things look.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
October 10, 2023
Paweł Gładziejewski
11 citations
Psychedelic substances can produce powerful, strange conscious experiences that often change people's metaphysical beliefs about reality, including beliefs that seem bizarre from a naturalistic perspective. This paper argues that such altered states can be rationally integrated into a person's epistemic life, meaning that updating metaphysical beliefs based on these experiences does not necessarily involve epistemic irrationality.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
June 17, 2026
Darius Parvizi-Wayne, Rasmus Pedersen, Jules Rankin
People often judge whether time is passing quickly or slowly, yet the brain mechanisms behind these judgments are poorly understood. A leading explanation from predictive processing theory suggests that the speed of experienced time depends on how rapidly the perceptual system abandons its current hypothesis about the present. This account fails to explain existing experimental data and has internal flaws. An alternative theory proposes that the sense of time moving quickly arises when the cognitive system unconsciously detects that it is reducing prediction error faster than expected; time feels slow when prediction error is reduced slower than expected. This new model is internally consistent and can account for key empirical findings.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
March 28, 2026
Mcarthur Mingon, Alexander James Gillett, John Sutton
Negative assessments of GPS as causing 'de-skilling' and disrupting spatial memory are widespread, but a broader perspective shows human spatial memory has always been incomplete and dependent on culture, social practices, and environment. GPS effects are better understood as reconfigurations of wayfinding ecologies—distributed cognitive systems used for navigation. Negative effects are not inevitable but emerge from longer historical processes of cognitive-technological coevolution. Individual and group variability in spatial cognition and technology use matters: some users become passive, while others develop expert strategies of skillful incorporation. The key is not whether GPS is used, but how, and opportunities exist for deliberate ecological design to shape future wayfinding ecologies.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
March 3, 2026
Mads J. Dengsø
Human temporality and temporal cognition have always been hybrid structures that combine biological and sociotechnological components. Contrary to common assumptions that modern sociotechnology causes temporal disruption through integration, disruptions actually result from the disintegration of these biological and sociotechnological components. Drawing on neuroanthropology and neuroscience of temporal cognition, the paper argues that human temporal capacities like memory and sense of time have always been partly sociotechnological. Reviewing sociological research on technology and time, recognizing this hybrid structure provides theoretical resources for identifying and addressing temporal disruption.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
March 1, 2026
Francesca Righetti, Bastien Perroy
Temporal disorientation in episodic memory involves recalling events that are difficult to place in time. This paper argues for a constrained functional analogy between mental time travel and spatial navigation, characterizing temporal orientation as coordination between egocentric anchors and temporal structure (order, interval, and calendrical constraints). Temporal disorientation arises when this coordination breaks down. Drawing on constructive accounts of episodic memory, specifically the Scenario Construction Framework, the authors identify two distinct experiences: uncertainty whether an event occurred, and difficulty constructing the temporal sequence of remembered content. They propose that navigation in mental time and the feeling of temporal disorientation scaffold episodic construction, opening new paths for investigating mental navigation's role in memory.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
November 11, 2025
Gabriel Siegel
The sense of agency—the experience of predicting, initiating, or controlling actions—appears in perceptual consciousness. This paper proposes a novel account: the perceptual sense of agency (PSoA) is underpinned by self-monitoring processes that compare sensory predictions based on motor commands with actual sensory feedback, distinguishing self-caused from other-caused perceptual changes. The PSoA is not explained by specific contents represented in perceptual experience; instead, it is modeled as a type of intentional mode that perceivers bear to contents. The account is defended against objections and contrasted with alternative views.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
February 3, 2025
Victor Lange
Mindfulness research spans philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and Buddhist studies, yet it remains unclear what psychological capacity is essential to mindfulness and sets it apart from other mental activities. The leading idea—that mindfulness is a special form of metacognitive control—is examined and found inadequate in current formulations. A novel account is proposed, based on metacognitive goals, which explains the explicit self-awareness and self-regulation in mindfulness and distinguishes it from ordinary cognitive control. On this account, metacognitive control is necessary but not sufficient for mindfulness. The account further suggests that the metacognitive control of mindfulness can be reduced to other psychological capacities and that this control is a form of mental action.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
November 22, 2022
Daniel Wehinger
The paper critically examines the transcendental argument for universal mineness, which claims that phenomenal consciousness essentially involves self-consciousness in the sense of mineness—that every experience is given as mine. The author discusses the argument's potential but highlights its limitations, showing that even if successful, it cannot establish an essential connection between phenomenal consciousness and self-consciousness. Because the transcendental argument is considered the central support for universal mineness, its failure leaves the claim insufficiently substantiated, calling into question the idea that all experiences are necessarily given as mine.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
January 1, 2025
Julian Kiverstein, Mark Miller, Erik Rietveld
Desire motivates action through affective sense-making within the brain's predictive processing framework. The brain implements a hierarchical predictive model to minimize prediction errors, but philosophers have questioned how belief-like predictions account for desire's conative role. The authors introduce 'first priors'—prioritized predictions—and argue that agents use them for affective sense-making, which has been overlooked in understanding desire. Affective sense-making modulates precision expectations (estimates of prediction reliability) in context-sensitive ways, causing agents to experience their environment through desire as a field of inviting affordances. Predictive processing thus bridges first-person phenomenological descriptions of desire with third-person ecological-enactive analysis.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
March 1, 2024
Adriana Alcaraz-Sánchez
The concept of 'lucid dreamless sleep' has been proposed to explain the 'clear light' state described in Tibetan Buddhist traditions, a special consciousness during deep sleep where one recognizes the nature of mind. Some authors link this to lucid dreaming, appealing to a non-conceptual form of lucidity without reflective awareness or propositional thought. This paper argues that the term 'lucidity' used for this state is imprecise and distinguishes two theoretical notions: a technical notion requiring recognition of the hallucinatory character of experience, and a broader notion involving seeming recognition of direct acquaintance with the phenomenal character of experience. Only the broader notion could apply to clear light sleep.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
August 3, 2022
Niccolò Negro
In consciousness science, theories differ in whether they start from experimental data or phenomenological data. The Integrated Information Theory (IIT), a prominent phenomenology-first approach, uses a self-evidencing explanation that begins with consciousness itself to explain consciousness. While this circular reasoning can be virtuous, IIT faces a data-fitting problem: there is insufficient information to determine whether its explanatory hypotheses are the best available. This issue, termed the self-evidencing problem, parallels the roadblock faced by experiment-driven approaches, where no current model is clearly superior. A possible solution for IIT is proposed.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
March 18, 2022
Michiru Nagatsu, Mikko Salmela
Collective affective niche construction extends the extended mind thesis from cognition to emotion but lacks a detailed psychological account of how collective affectivity is scaffolded and has been criticized for assuming an autonomous user of affective resources. The authors propose that the social motivation hypothesis, grounded in empirical psychology and the classic theory of moral sentiments, explains the basic mechanisms of human social orientation in collective affective niche construction. They also begin addressing normative criticisms by adopting a we-mode approach to collective emotion, using social media as a case study of collective affective niches and its impact on subjective well-being. Future directions for a normative theory are identified.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
August 14, 2021
N. Nikolova, Peter Thestrup Waade, K. Friston et al.
The mainstream science of consciousness includes several prominent theories about how the brain produces awareness, such as Higher Order Thought Theory, Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, and Integrated Information Theory. Meanwhile, predictive processing approaches are providing concrete mechanisms for how interoceptive inference shapes selfhood, affect, and perception. This work examines what these newer approaches can contribute to empirical, phenomenological, and philosophical understanding of consciousness and its neurobiological foundations.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
August 10, 2021
M. Vilas, R. Auksztulewicz, L. Melloni
Active inference, a mechanistic framework, has been proposed as a foundation for a unified theory of consciousness, but current proposals need refinement to become a process theory. Computational modeling can help by implementing and validating theoretical concepts. Existing models show promise but remain preliminary; they require testing against new empirical neural data to improve predictive and structural validity. A key challenge is generalizing the model to cover the full range of consciousness phenomena, especially phenomenological aspects of experience. Despite these gaps, the approach is valuable for advancing theory and holds potential for future research.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
February 27, 2021
Krzysztof Sękowski, Wiktor Rorot
The debate about consciousness is stuck, with the "hard problem" at its center and opposing realist and eliminativist camps unable to agree. Recent attempts to move the debate by focusing on "intuitions" have used the term loosely. This paper argues that the ontological and epistemological status of intuitions limits arguments that rely on them. The authors propose a way forward by studying a specific, "positive" kind of intuition, adopting elements of the methodological "Canberra Plan" in an approach they call "The Canberrish Plan for Consciousness."