The mind-body problem---how conscious experience relates to the physical brain---remains philosophy's sharpest unsolved boundary question. This article presents a narrative review of the positions that define the debate: Descartes's substance dualism, Ryle's category-mistake critique, the mind-brain identity theory of Smart, Putnam's multiple realizability and functionalism, Davidson's...
This work introduces the Critical Reconstructability Corridor (CRC) hypothesis, a theoretical, computational, and empirically testable framework for investigating consciousness-relevant neural dynamics beyond the conventional notion of a single “edge of chaos.” The central proposal is that biological dynamics capable of supporting consciousness may occupy a bounded, multidimensional and...
This conceptual article examines a neglected asymmetry in the philosophical-zombie thought experiment. A Chalmersian zombie, being physically and functionally identical to a conscious person, can produce the same verbal questions, reports, and judgments about consciousness. The paper therefore distinguishes three senses of asking: the production of an interrogative token, functional inquiry,...
The neural correlates of consciousness have been characterized primarily through temporal EEG features, while the spatial dynamics of cortical activity across consciousness states remain poorly understood. Here, we analyze the spatial mode structure of the Robinson corticothalamic neural field model (CTM) across five consciousness states: healthy wakefulness, emergence from minimally conscious...
This conceptual article isolates an unresolved transition in the cognitive and philosophical study of mortality and afterlife belief. It distinguishes three propositions that are frequently conflated: the desire for more embodied life, the representation of the experiential subject as continuing after biological death, and the assignment of that continuation to a consciousness or agency of...
Purpose: This study explored how adults who participated in a Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) program experience self-compassion, and interpreted the meaning structure of that experience to reveal its underlying essence. Methods: Van Manen’s hermeneutic phenomenology was adopted. Data were collected from three adults who had completed a standard MSC program through individual written accounts and...
The article presents an expanded version of the topological theory of consciousness (TTC), which includes a generative level – recursive rules for generating discriminations. TTC asserts that consciousness emerges as a discrete phase transition (an ultrametric collapse) that is a projection of a higher-rank generative process. Unlike IIT, TTC explains not only the quantitative but also the...
The problem of consciousness occupies a singular position in contemporary philosophy: universally acknowledged as difficult, unresolved in its central question, and productive of a technical literature whose positions are now sharply defined. This review synthesizes the development of the mind-body problem from the mid-twentieth-century critiques of empiricism to the present landscape of...
This essay examines the proposition that life is the continuous transformation of cosmic, environmental, and individual energies into experience through awareness and action. Drawing from thermodynamics, phenomenology, Eastern philosophical traditions — particularly Vedic cosmology — and contemporary systems theory, the essay argues that this definition uniquely captures the triadic structure...
Abstract Traditionally, research on musical creativity and creativity in general has focused on assessing the products and mental processes of individuals. This chapter provides a novel perspective highlighting the experiential and interactive nature of musical creativity. Its approach is rooted in the 4E (embodied, extended, embedded, enacted) framework of cognition and integrates insights...