Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour
September 1, 2026
Yiyan Jiang
ABSTRACT This study re‐examines Alexander Wendt's quantum consciousness theory, arguing that the explanatory aims attributed to quantum consciousness—particularly with respect to agency, teleology, intentionality and emergence—can be addressed more coherently within established nonquantum frameworks of self‐organisation theory. Drawing on thermodynamics, complexity theory and autopoietic...
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour
October 30, 2025
Rebecca Peng, Amit Hagar
ABSTRACT Cognitive science needs phenomenology, not despite, but because of the epistemic challenges posed by consciousness. This article argues that the pervasive presence of intuitive dualism, the empirical cognitive tendency to distinguish the mental from physical, is a widespread and entrenched feature of human experience. Drawing on work in developmental psychology and cognitive...
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour
May 9, 2025
Daniel Gyollai
It has been recently proposed that memory studies should move beyond focusing on explicit, identity‐creating and backward‐looking forms of collective memory, such as commemorative remembering, and pay more attention to implicit memory processes within social groups. This article demonstrates that, in taking this advice, one would throw the baby out with the bathwater. Revisiting Bartlett's...
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour
October 15, 2023
Dan Zahavi, Dominik Želinský
28 citations
Abstract Sociologists tend to see G. H. Mead's conceptualization of self as fundamentally correct. In this paper, we develop a critique of Mead's notion of the self as constituted through social interactions. Our focus will be on Mead's categorial distinction between the socially constructed self and subjective experience, as well as on the tendency of post‐Meadian sociologists to push Mead's...
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour
April 14, 2018
Douglas V. Porpora
11 citations
Abstract This paper is a response to the new book by Alexander Wendt (2015) entitled Quantum Mind. The paper commends Wendt on the book's contribution to our understanding, particularly of quantum mechanics, panpsychism, and externalism in the philosophy of mind. At the same time, it takes issue with Wendt's overall thesis, particularly as it relates to materialism, emergentism, and social...
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour
April 11, 2018
Daniel Little
14 citations
Abstract Alexander Wendt suggests that an emerging field of research on quantum consciousness may have important implications for our understanding of the social world as well. He wants us to consider that the operations of the brain are not “classical” but rather quantum‐mechanical, and that this sheds light on the social worker as well. This article casts doubt on these claims. First, the...
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour
March 1, 2018
Frédéric Vandenberghe
Abstract: William James's Varieties of Religious Experience is a classic psycho‐philosophical study of the experience of the sacred and of its practical effects on the ordinary life of extraordinary persons. In a pragmatic variation of Kant's proof of god's existence, James uses personal accounts of converts to empirically demonstrate that there's “something” that has causal effects on the...
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour
June 13, 2016
Chris Francovich
5 citations
Abstracts Issues of communication and the possibilities for the transformation of perspectives through an experimental dialogue resulting in a mutual, open, receptive, and non‐judgmental consideration of the other are addressed in this paper from transdisciplinary theoretical and conceptual standpoints. The warrant for cultivating this type of communicative ability is based on arguments...