Asian Journal of Philosophy
January 16, 2025
Kohei Yanagawa, Hiroshi Matsui
1 citation
Behaviorism in psychology is often criticized and rejected by those labeled as behaviorists, but recent re-evaluations suggest these criticisms are based on a caricatured view. This paper argues for a point of agreement between behaviorism and enactivism in their fundamental concepts of 'behavior' and 'action'. Modern behaviorism understands behavior as having interactive properties between an agent and the environment, not mere physical movements, and sees behavior as related to subsequent events and inseparable from mental phenomena. The paper demonstrates that distorted criticism arises from misunderstanding behavior, and that enactivist approaches to action align with these behaviorist concepts, suggesting a more productive relationship.
Asian Journal of Philosophy
January 1, 2022
Declan Smithies
1 citation
The author responds to criticisms raised during a scholarly symposium about their book, which argues that consciousness plays a fundamental role in knowledge and justification. The reply addresses specific objections from commentators, defending the central thesis that conscious mental states are necessary for epistemic access to reasons and evidence. The discussion engages with philosophical arguments about the relationship between consciousness, rationality, and the structure of epistemic justification.
Asian Journal of Philosophy
June 18, 2026
Chang Liu
This commentary argues that Chan and Chen's defense of compatibility between phenomenology and naturalism inadvertently shifts the meaning of experience, which can be interpreted as a phenomenalist version of the Argument from Sparse Bundles. Drawing on Husserl's work, the author contends that phenomenology does not entail phenomenalism because perceptual experience is directly directed toward objects, not toward sensory data. The commentary aims to strengthen the target article's central argument rather than challenge it.
Asian Journal of Philosophy
June 1, 2026
Haoying Liu
Russellian monism, a theory that tries to solve the mind-body problem by positing that physical entities have intrinsic natures (quiddities) that ground consciousness, faces a deep epistemological problem: its core elements are unknowable. This dual ignorance—of quiddity and the factors explaining macro-level consciousness—undermines the theory's explanatory power and cognitive fruitfulness. The paper compares this limitation to Thomistic hylomorphism, a metaphysical system that declined partly due to its own lack of cognitive fruitfulness. Unless Russellian monism overcomes its epistemic deficit, it risks remaining a speculative framework with little prospect for advancing understanding of consciousness or the natural world.
Asian Journal of Philosophy
January 15, 2026
I-Jan Wang
Memory, typically used to identify selfless conscious states (states without self-consciousness), faces three epistemic problems. The memory challenge involves avoiding false negatives—selfless states mistakenly classified as self-conscious. The newly introduced zero-inflation challenge concerns avoiding false positives—self-conscious states misclassified as selfless. The measurement challenge involves reliably capturing non-self-related aspects of experience within selfless states. These challenges question whether remembering can serve as a reliable tool for studying selfless consciousness.
Asian Journal of Philosophy
June 17, 2026
Kshitish Sharma, Gyan Prakash
A philosophical paper examines the metaphysics of consciousness through the Mādhva Gauḍīya Vedānta tradition of Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism. It finds that while this Hindu school shares cosmopsychism's view of universal consciousness, it maintains a dualist metaphysics. The tradition posits the jīvātmā as an eternal individual consciousness, dependent on yet ontologically distinct from the paramātmā. The interplay between these conscious principles and an inert material matrix (prakṛti) is proposed as a model for probing mind-matter relations. The conception of "dual consciousness" spanning unified and individuated domains offers insights into resolving the "Individuation Problem" within cosmopsychist frameworks.
Asian Journal of Philosophy
February 10, 2026
N. Osborn
A version of panpsychism emerges from a critical overview of the metaphysics of properties. The powerful qualities theory, which holds that all concrete properties are both powerful and qualitative, has a general advantage over other major property theories but faces the Collapse Argument: it struggles to define powerful qualities in a way that conceptually distinguishes them from pure powers. This issue is avoided by a variant making powerful qualities powerful qualia—essentially dispositional instances of phenomenal consciousness. Several attempts to sever the link between this powerful qualia theory and panpsychism are rejected. The endorsed result is a panpsychism of powerful qualia.