Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
August 23, 2026
Benjamin Pham
preprint
This paper examines dimethyltryptamine (DMT) as one of the most unusual and scientifically provocative psychoactive substances ever studied. It traces DMT’s history from Indigenous Amazonian ayahuasca traditions and Richard Spruce’s nineteenth-century observations to twentieth-century psychedelic science, countercultural fascination, prohibition, and the modern revival of clinical research. The...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
August 22, 2026
Jace (Jeong Hyeon) Kim
preprint
Abstract The rapid development of artificial intelligence has intensified a familiar question: can machines think, understand, or possess consciousness? These questions, however, often assume that the meaning of terms such as understanding, representation, and meaning is sufficiently stable across biological and artificial systems. This paper argues that such an assumption may be premature....
Religions
August 22, 2026
Stine Madsen Kvaløy, O. Synnes, Anne Austad
Psychotropic medication is widely used in the treatment of severe mental illness, yet its impact on spirituality—understood as relating to the transcendent—remains underexplored. This qualitative study examines how individuals who have reduced or discontinued medication experience and navigate spirituality. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven former inpatients, and...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
August 22, 2026
Arlindo L. Oliveira
preprint
The nature of subjective experience remains one of the deepest unsolved problems in science. Phenomena such as sentience, self-awareness, phenomenal consciousness, and the sensation of free will have occupied philosophers and scientists for centuries, yet they remain unexplained despite substantial progress in neuroscience, biology, and computer science. The central challenge of explaining how...
August 22, 2026
Esteban Llano-Piedrahíta
Amid climate disruption and biodiversity loss, interest has grown in entheogens – visionary substances rooted in Indigenous cosmologies – as catalysts of ecological consciousness and healing. This phenomenological study pursues three aims: clarify how ceremonies shape ecological awareness, describe unity experiences linked to ethical change, and assess life transformations after ritual...
Figshare
August 22, 2026
Irvin Vasquez
preprint
This work examines the three most developed contemporary answers to the hard problem of consciousness — functionalism, Integrated Information Theory, and panpsychism — and argues that each fails to close the explanatory gap in a structurally similar way: by relocating the gap rather than resolving it. Functionalism identifies consciousness with function at the cost of the absent qualia...
Mindfulness
August 21, 2026
Qing Fan, Wei Zhang, Yilin Liu et al.
Abstract: Objectives: Diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) is a common chronic complication of diabetes, with neuropathic pain and sensory abnormalities severely affecting patients’ quality of life. Current pharmacological treatments have limitations including insufficient efficacy and adverse reactions. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) show potential in chronic pain management, yet their...
iScience
August 21, 2026
Antje Peters, Merit Ohlsen, Jens Bölte et al.
Interacting with artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly prominent in everyday life. Modern AI can produce intelligent, witty, and even sarcastic responses, leading people to assume AI is conscious. This raises the question whether AI is perceived as conscious, and how people respond to such machines behaviorally and neurally. This preregistered electroencephalogram (EEG) study...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
August 21, 2026
David (daoud) Matta
preprint
Why philosophize? This paper argues that philosophizing is a distinctive exercise of the human capacity for reflective thought. Thought can take not only external objects but also perception, affect, action, memory, judgement, and thought itself as objects of inquiry. Its distinctive power lies therefore not in infallibility but in its unusual reflective reach and its capacity for...
August 21, 2026
Devin Sanchez Curry, Louise Daoust
Javier Gomez-Lavin suggests that the history of the philosophy of mind is well understood as a history of attempts to provide recipes for building minds. But Gomez-Lavin worries that almost all of these recipes share a common flaw: they focus too much on the individual mind, and neglect the ways in which other people (and group dynamics) shape how minds work. In their response, Tim Elmo Feiten...