Philosophia
October 3, 2026
Rasmus Gahrn-Andersen
Abstract In Science and Technology Studies (STS), performativism is a research strand which in focusing on the interrelation between human activity and technology use seems to share certain basic affinities with Radical Enactivism (REC) that emphasizes the embodied, non-representational and world-involving nature of cognition. Yet, the connection between the two has not been thematically...
Philosophia
June 23, 2026
Paweł Grad
Abstract In this paper, I attempt to uncover motivations for the main premise that supports essential representationalism about perceptual experience (ER), namely the Immediacy thesis . ER claims that for every phenomenal property in the class Φ, there is some representational property R such that, necessarily, having Φ entails having R. The Immediacy thesis is that, roughly, the very...
Philosophia
April 7, 2026
Hugo Luzio, Ricardo Santos
Abstract According to animalism, each of us is essentially a human organism. As such, the number of persons corresponds to the number of organisms. Dicephalic conjoined twins, such as the Hensel twins, challenge this view, as they appear to be two persons but only one organism. This is the dicephalus objection to animalism. In this paper, we address this problem. First, we introduce the Hensel...
Philosophia
March 1, 2026
Walter Veit
It is my pleasure to respond to three thoughtful commentaries on A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness in this issue (Veit 2023a ). The commentaries by Pober ( 2025 ), as well as Barrett and Fischer ( 2025 ), both focus on the relationship between valence, common currencies of value, and consciousness, and so I will largely respond to their arguments together. Afterwards, I will...
Philosophia
December 5, 2025
Ori Beck
Abstract Neil Mehta puts forward a pluralist theory of conscious perception, on which to consciously perceive is to deploy not just one, but two distinct kinds of sensory awareness in concert. Here I present three reservations regarding one of these kinds awareness - deep awareness. First, Mehta introduces deep awareness as a relation whose deployment explains the putative fact that conscious...
Philosophia
November 1, 2025
Gustavo Oliva de Oliveira
Abstract Cosmopsychism is the view that the Cosmos is conscious. In this paper, I will argue that Goff’s atheistic cosmopsychism can neither fully account for the existence of evil by denying omnipotence nor for the fine-tuning of the universe by denying omnibenevolence. I will then offer a theistic version of cosmopsychism that can account for the problem of consciousness but also does a...
Philosophia
July 22, 2025
Tom McClelland
Devlin Brown takes on the weighty task of determining the existentially relevant consequences of physicalism. He delivers on this project over three parts that consider in turn: whether physicalism is compatible with various metaphysical consolations obtaining; whether the case for existential optimism defeats the case for existential pessimism; and whether there’s a version of physicalism we...
Philosophia
April 1, 2025
G. Cruz, M. Heras-Escribano
In his work, Hubert L. Dreyfus identified Heidegger’s notion of being-in-the-world with skillful bodily adjustment, i.e. skillful coping. This interpretation has been very influential in the literature, especially for embodied and situated cognition. In this article we challenge such identification, as we think that it overlooks the hermeneutic dimension of Heidegger’s thought in which...
Philosophia
April 1, 2025
Hedda Hassel Mørch
In Phenomenalism: A Metaphysics of Chance and Experience (2023), Michael Pelczar argues that phenomenalism offers a superior account both of the nature of matter and of the relation between matter and consciousness, compared to traditional, Kantian and structural realism (when it comes to matter) and traditional materialism, traditional dualism and Russellian panpsychism (when it comes to...
Philosophia
January 16, 2025
W. Veit
A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness aims to advance Donald Griffin’s vision of the “final, crowning chapter of the Darwinian revolution” by firmly integrating animals within the science of consciousness. Although this field has largely neglected the questions of when and why consciousness evolved, this book champions a Darwinian philosophy where the experiences of other animals...
Philosophia
March 1, 2022
Luca Dondoni
Abstract: One of the most pressing challenges that occupy the Russellian panpsychist’s agenda is to come up with a way to reconcile the traditional argument from categorical properties (Seager Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13(10–11), 129–145, 2006; Alter & Nagasawa, 2015) with H. H. Mørch’s dispositionalism-friendly argument from the experience of causation (2014, Topoi, 39, 1073–1088,...
Philosophia
February 26, 2022
Joe Higgins
2 citations
Abstract The health benefits of practising mindfulness are well documented, yet the phenomenological mechanisms of such practice remain under-theorised from both ontogenetic and social perspectives. By leveraging an enactive perspective on selfhood, these lacunae can be addressed: firstly, it is argued that proper understanding of mindfulness – and the health benefits that mindfulness practices...
Philosophia
2020
J Brian Pitts
Since Leibniz's time, Cartesian mental causation has been criticized for violating the conservation of energy and momentum. (Non-epiphenomenalist property dualism is analogous.) Many dualist responses clearly fail. But conservation laws have important neglected features generally undermining the objection. Conservation is local, holding first not for the universe, but for everywhere separately....
Philosophia
January 13, 2017
Sasha Lawson-Frost
Cartesian scepticism poses the question of how we can justify our belief that other humans experience consciousness in the same way that we do. Wittgenstein's response to this scepticism is one that does not seek to resolve the problem by providing a sound argument against the Cartesian sceptic. Rather, he provides a method of philosophical inquiry which enables us to move past this and...
Philosophia
2017
Heleen J. Pott
3 citations
William James's reputation in the field of emotion research is based on his early psychological writings where he defines emotions as 'feelings of bodily changes'. In his later work, particularly in his study of mystic emotion (1902), James comes up with what looks like a completely different approach. Here his focus is on positive feelings of inspiration and joy, but also on downbeat moods...
Philosophia
2017
Owen Earnshaw
Starting from a comparison of the similarities between a poem by Sylvia Plath called Tulips and the words of someone in the thrall of a delusion I develop a phenomenology of how mood is basic to our articulation of the world. To develop this argument I draw on Heidegger's (1962) concept of attunement [befindlichkeit] and his contention that basic emotions open up aspects of the world for closer...
Philosophia
February 9, 2016
Konrad Werner
I argue that Ludwig Wittgenstein's idea of the metaphysical subject sheds new light on subjective qualities of experience. In this article I draw first of all on the interpretations provided by Michael Kremer and James Conant. Subsequently, I conclude that "what is it like" means primarily "what is it like to see myself as the metaphysical subject".
Philosophia
2016
Guy Bennett-Hunter
In the first two sections of this reply article, I provide a brief introduction to the topic of ineffability and a summary of Ineffability and Religious Experience. This is followed, in section 3, by some reflections in reply to the response articles by Professors Metz and Cooper. Section 4 presents some concluding remarks on the future of philosophy of religion in the light of the most recent...
Philosophia
March 14, 2011
David Woodruff Smith
6 citations
Pike’s phenomenology of mystical experiences articulates sharply where theological content may enter the structure of Christian mystics’ experiences (as characterized in their own words). Here we look to Buddhist (and other) accounts of “pure” or “nibbanic” consciousness attained in experiences of deep meditation. A contemporary “modal” model of inner awareness is considered whereby a form of...