ISSN 0959-3543
20 papers in the library · 101 citations · publishing 1991-2026
Theory & Psychology May 11, 2026 João Ereiras Vedor
Code Psychology extends Marcello Barbieri’s Code Biology paradigm to psychological phenomena, proposing that mental processes operate through organic codes—arbitrary rule-based mappings between neural signals (signs) and subjective experiences (meanings) mediated by adaptors. This theoretical framework addresses persistent epistemological challenges in psychology, including mind–body dualism,...
Theory & Psychology March 23, 2026 Henrique Mesquita Pompermaier, Carlos Eduardo Lopes
In this paper, we explore the possibility of radical behaviorism to respond to the challenges posed by Merleau-Ponty to scientific psychology. According to this philosopher, modern dichotomous thinking places every psychological project in a stalemate: it adopts either mentalism, distancing itself from science, or physiologism, distancing itself from psychology. For Merleau-Ponty, the notion of...
Theory & Psychology February 19, 2026 Luca Zamengo
This article presents a field‑oriented framework for understanding subjective experience through the dynamics of the experiential field. The experiential field is conceived as a morphogenetic space that continuously shifts its states, giving rise to forms of experience. Signification is described as the primary structuring force of this space: through it, the subject organizes perceptual flow...
Theory & Psychology August 1, 2025 M. Heras-Escribano, Pablo López-silva, Lorena Lobo
In this paper we defend the idea that ecological psychology is in a good position for making sense of bodily experience by naturalizing some of the most important features of Husserlian lived experience, such as kinesthetics or proprioception. Some postcognitivist researchers have suggested that the notion of lived experience, originated in Husserl’s phenomenological project, is fundamental to...
Theory & Psychology May 13, 2025 Davide Perrotta
This paper proposes an investigation of affective experience bridging the field of phenomenology and cognitive neuroscience. Drawing on Husserl’s phenomenology and the mainstream cognitive neuroscience approach, I will differentiate affective phenomena into two categories: emotions and feelings. According to neuroscience, Panksepp’s proposal is followed to further distinguish three forms of...
Theory & Psychology September 18, 2024 A. Aksentijevic
Instead of bringing intellectual closure, the philosophical debate surrounding the nature of consciousness has found itself at an impasse. Extreme positions, from those denying the existence of consciousness to those who wish to imbue the entire universe with it, testify to the lack of common understanding of what consciousness is and how best it could be described and studied. In this paper,...
Theory & Psychology July 28, 2024 Elizabeth Pienkos
Karl Jaspers’ assertion of the un-understandability of schizophrenic psychosis, which rests on a division between what is psychologically understandable and what must be explained via natural causation, has faced numerous challenges from within phenomenological psychopathology. But despite significant developments in the phenomenology of schizophrenia, I suggest that this dichotomy, between...
Theory & Psychology July 10, 2023 Henrik Høgh‐Olesen 1 citation
An overview is provided of the psychological constituents of the emotional register, and special focus is given to the longer-lasting existential moods—our being-attuned to being—that we as humans experience. The classic concepts of existentialism (Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre) are reviewed and challenged. Moods, such as emptiness, meaninglessness, existential anxiety for freedom and...
Theory & Psychology February 1, 2023 Helen L Ma, Michael R W Dawson, Ruby S Prinsen et al. 4 citations
Cognitive psychology considers the environment as providing information, not affecting fundamental information processes. Thus, cognitive psychology's traditional paradigms study responses to precisely timed stimuli in controlled environments. However, new research demonstrates the environment does influence cognitive processes and offers cognitive psychology new methods. The authors examine...
Theory & Psychology April 1, 2022 Zuzanna Rucińska
Review of psychological data of how children engage in imaginary friend play (IFP) shows that it involves a lot of explicit embodied action and interaction with surrounding people and environments. However, IFP is still seen as principally an individualistic activity, where, in addition to those interactions, the actor has to mentally represent an absent entity in imagination in order to engage...
Theory & Psychology June 1, 2021 Siyaves Azeri
In “Scientific Realism and the Issue of Variability in Behavior,” J. F. Arocha (2021) proposes a (hylo)-realist method of studying behaviour and consciousness. Arocha adopts the thesis that reality consists of concrete (determinate) things, is orderly and lawful, and that it has an emergent character. I propose that furthering the critical power of the realist position requires the adoption of...
Theory & Psychology December 1, 2018 Kristopher Nielsen, Tony Ward
Psychopathology classification is at a conceptual crossroads. It is becoming increasingly accepted that the flaws of the DSM relate to its struggles to pick out “real” entities as opposed to clusters of symptoms. The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) was formulated in response to this failure, and attempts to address the concerns confronting the DSM by shifting to a causal and continuous model of...
Theory & Psychology June 1, 2018 David Pavón-Cuéllar
This article discusses how the psychic reality is separated from everything else in modern psychology and argues that this separation may be related to capitalism. It also explores how Marx and Freud, as well as later Marxists and Marxist Freudians, have critically examined the psyche/world and psyche/soma dichotomies. Their critique uncovered a kind of groundless dualism, which was denounced...
Theory & Psychology February 1, 2018 Glenn Carruthers
Difficulties in distinguishing veridical reports of experience from confabulations have implications for theories of consciousness. I develop some of these implications through a consideration of out-of-body experiences (OBEs). Do these variations indicate individual variation in experience or are they post-hoc confabulations, stories told by subjects to themselves in an attempt to make sense...
Theory & Psychology June 1, 2008 Tjeerd Van de Laar, Herman De Regt 13 citations
Embodied embedded cognition (EEC) and neurophenomenology (NP) are slowly invading cognitive (neuro)science. We provide a short introduction of what EEC and NP are about and an overview of the papers in this special section on EEC and NP.
Theory & Psychology June 1, 2008 Johan A. den Boer, Antje A. T. S. Reinders, Gerrit Glas 12 citations
Much of mainstream psychology and psychiatry has come under the umbrella of cognitive neuroscience and attempts to provide mechanistic accounts of mental processes. On the other hand, therapeutically oriented branches of psychiatry are concerned with giving accounts at a personal, experiential level of explanation. Relating introspective evidence (first-person perspective) to objective...
Theory & Psychology June 1, 2008 Tjeerd Van de Laar 10 citations
In this paper I compare heterophenomenology and neurophenomenology as methodologies for a science of consciousness. I give introductions of heterophenomenology (HP) and neurophenomenology (NP), respectively. Than I briefly relate HP and NP to mainstream cognitive science methodology and to each other. I claim that although HP and NP are indeed different methodologies for studying consciousness,...
Theory & Psychology November 1, 1996 Elizabeth Wilson 12 citations
Cognitive psychology has been founded on a model of the mind as an information-processing machine. This paper is not concerned with the arguments for or against modelling the mind on computers, as these arguments are already well rehearsed in the literature. Instead I am interested in what the relation between computer, cognition and the thinking man promises or guarantees. Specifically, I am...
Theory & Psychology November 1, 1992 Gunnar Karlsson 7 citations
The purpose of this article is to provide an understanding of how psychological research can be grounded in phenomenological epistemology, as it has been articulated in particular by Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. This article begins by establishing that mainstream academic psychology has placed subjective, meaningful experience secondary to natural-scientific descriptions of the...
Theory & Psychology May 1, 1991 H. Flohr 42 citations
A hypothesis on the physiological conditions for the occurrence of phenomenal states is presented. It is suggested that the presence of phenomenal states depends on the rate at which neural assemblies are formed. Unconsciousness and various disturbances of phenomenal consciousness occur if the assembly formation rate is below a certain threshold level; if this level is surpassed, phenomenal...