In a series of papers, Miri Albahari (2019; 2020; 2022; 2024) has articulated and defended perennial idealism (PI), a view she associates with Śakara’s Advaita Vedānta. She argues that PI offers a solution to the hard problem of consciousness (HPC). In this work, I distinguish the HPC, which occupies contemporary analytic philosophy of mind, from the hard problem of the self (HPS), which...
Meditation and psychedelics have separately been studied as powerful tools for probing consciousness through their capacity to deconstruct the sense of self. Yet, direct empirical comparisons remain scarce, particularly in expert meditators. Here, we report for the first time a case study in which an advanced meditator and Lama from the Mahāmudrā meditation tradition engaged in a traditional...
While voice-hearing in psychosis has received much attention, perceptual experiences in other sensory modalities and psychiatric conditions have remained relatively overlooked. The present review aimed to address this gap by providing an overview of voices/altered perceptual experiences (APE) across psychotic, mood and anxiety disorders in terms of phenomenological characteristics,...
Natural science is founded on materialism. We treat the independent relationship between inner experience and outer physical entities as an axiom. This cognitive paradigm has successfully explained many natural phenomena; however, certain phenomena, such as those in quantum mechanics and psychological experiments, challenge this view, suggesting the inseparability of the inner and outer. Yet,...
The text aims to formulate the position in the philosophy of consciousness known as physicalism in a way that does not repeat the shortcomings of existing formulations and yet retains the essential features of the physical as the basis of the mental. It explains why the word „materialism“ is outdated and should be replaced by „physicalism“ despite the existence of usages that treat them as...
September 21, 2025Camila Valenzuela-Moguillansky
preprint
This article proposes a contemplative research framework—the Multidimensional Approach to Presence (MAP)—for the scientific study of lived experience. Building on micro-phenomenological research, the proposal examines how cultivating presence –inhabiting one’s lived experience as it unfolds– can be integrated methodologically and epistemologically into experiential inquiry. Drawing on studies...
Abstract Lopes (2021) has argued against my use of neural networks and dynamical systems theory in neurophenomenology. Responding to his argument provides an opportunity to articulate a pluralist approach to neurophenomenology, according to which multiple theoretical frameworks—symbolic, dynamical systems, connectionist, etc.—can be used to study consciousness and its relationship to neural...
The resurgence of interest in psychedelic compounds as potential treatments for psychiatric disorders represents a paradigm shift in mental health care. Psychedelics exert their effects through serotonergic modulation, particularly via 5-HT2A receptor activation, inducing profound alterations in consciousness and catalyzing neuroplasticity. While their neurobiological effects are...
Scientific ReportsAugust 5, 2025S. Moser, Hans Knoblauch, B. Müller-Myhsok et al.
Survival mechanisms are evolutionary grown behaviors in life-threatening situations. They are thought to be determined by genetic patterns involved in stress systems, such as the control of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. FK506 binding protein 5 (FKBP5) is a co-chaperone that is involved in modulating glucocorticoid receptor (GR) sensitivity in response to stress. Dissociation is...
In Explanatory Optimism about the Hard Problem of Consciousness, Josh Weisberg attempts to debunk the hard problem of consciousness. The hard problem arises from the thought that consciousness has exceptional properties inexplicable by science. Defending what he calls the automated compression theory (ACT), Weisberg argues that we have an easy explanation of consciousness that does not require...