Culture Crossroads
August 19, 2026
Ugіs Kletnieks
Time is a fundamental dimension of experience, yet neuroscience suggests that the subjective flow of time is an active neural construction rather than a passive reflection of physical reality [Buonomano 2017]. Here, I propose the “Neural Grammars of Time” – a unifying framework explaining how distributed neural architectures transform physical signals into a structured temporal phenomenology. I...
bioRxiv
August 19, 2026
D. Momi, Yasmeen Nahas, D. Wyrick et al.
preprint
Psilocybin produces rapid and lasting therapeutic effects, yet how 5-HT2A receptor activation reshapes brain-wide circuit dynamics during acute drug administration remains poorly understood. Using simultaneous multi-region Neuropixels recordings of 46,360 single units from 35 mice, together with scalp electroencephalography (EEG), pupillometry, and locomotion monitoring, we provide a...
Proa Revista de Antropologia e Arte
August 19, 2026
Susan Elizabeth Rocha
This research addresses visionary practices in contemporary Ecuadorian art, focusing on their relationship with the ritual ingestion of San Pedro (Echinopsis pachanoi) and Ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi). From a perspective grounded in animist ontologies, which understand nature as a vast web of interconnected beings with interiority, the study analyzes how these master plants function as...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
August 18, 2026
Touraj Banirostam
preprint
This preprint constitutes Phase III of the Rethinking Mind research project, a historical and conceptual investigation of changing approaches to mind, cognition, and intelligence. The paper reconstructs the development of phenomenology from Edmund Husserl through Martin Heidegger to Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It argues that phenomenology expanded the appropriate unit of analysis for understanding...
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation)
August 18, 2026
Stefan Anderson
preprint
Holistic Emergence presents a structural dual‑aspect ontology in which biological organization actualizes the internal, proto‑phenomenal potential inherent in physical structure. The model rejects reductive physicalism, universal panpsychism, and functionalist accounts of mind. Instead, it proposes that phenomenality is neither ubiquitous nor reducible but emerges holistically when a physical...
bioRxiv
August 18, 2026
preprint
Brain dynamics exhibit scale-dependent reversibility during consciousness transitions
Minds and Machines
August 18, 2026
Uwe Peters
Abstract Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots (e.g., ChatGPT) can communicate in strikingly humanlike ways. This has prompted many chatbot users to attribute psychological properties, including consciousness, to these systems. However, there is little scientific evidence that current AI chatbots are conscious. How, then, should we understand people’s consciousness attributions to chatbots? Are...
ALIFE 2026: Proceedings of the 2026 Artificial Life Conference
August 17, 2026
Xining Li
We argue that diffusion-based action models provide the structural prerequisites for minimal self-awareness in humanoid robots in a way that standard reactive feedforward policies do not. Three major theories of self-awareness—Friston’s Free Energy Principle (Friston, 2010), Metzinger’s Phenomenal Self-Model Theory (Metzinger, 2003), and Damasio’s two-level self (Damasio,...
August 17, 2026
Syed Raheel Shahzad
THE LAST U-TURN is Book Five and the closing volume of The Architect's Protocol. It brings the series from truth, power, morality and metaphysical authorship to the human being in the machine age. Its central question is not whether artificial intelligence will become more capable. It is whether growing capability will be mistaken for consciousness, personhood, moral authority or a licence to...
Neuropsychiatrie
August 17, 2026
Frauke Schultze-Lutter, Christian Theisen, Tri Kurniati Ambarini et al.
Psychoses are among the most debilitating mental disorders, making early detection a major public health priority. In extension of the ultra-high-risk (UHR) approach, which was developed to identify an imminent risk of psychosis, the basic symptom (BS) approach aims for the earliest possible detection of the developing disorder; it is increasingly used worldwide. Basic symptoms are subtle,...