This article proposes visionary realism as a philosophical framework to underlabor for the development of a unified science of spiritual experience. By integrating elements of Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism, Ken Wilber’s integral theory, William James’s radical empiricism, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s participatory epistemology, and Rudolf Steiner’s subtle empiricism, visionary realism outlines...
Peak and mystical experiences can be seen as states of consciousness that exist on a spectrum of varying intensity and duration. They are often described as moments of profound joy, ecstasy, and awe that involve feelings of noetic quality, decreased self-salience, and heightened interconnectedness. The renewed interest in psychedelics as a potential tool for therapeutic intervention has been...
This paper introduces Reflective Empiricism, an extension of empirical science that incorporates subjective perception and consciousness processes as equally valid sources of knowledge. It views reality as an interplay of subjective experience and objective laws, comprehensible only through systematic introspection, bias reflection, and premise-based logical-explorative modeling. This approach...
Metacognitive awareness is the ability to reflect upon one's own thinking, experience, and environment. Self-awareness, or the ability to recognize oneself as an individuated self and introspect upon one's own feelings, ideas, and behavior, is a master dimension of consciousness. The argument in this research addresses theories of consciousness, brain origins, and the emergence of...
Understanding the neural processes underlying conscious perception remains a central goal in neuroscience. Visual illusions, whether static or dynamic, provide an effective ecological paradigm for studying conscious perception, as they induce subjective experiences from constant visual inputs. While previous neuroimaging studies have dissociated perceptual interpretation of visual motion from...
This study investigates the interaction of posthumanities and artificial intelligences, with a special focus on how AI developments are reshaping conservation, morals, and humans. As AI systems get more powerful over time, they bring together many assumptions about human uniqueness, cognitive abilities, and moral status. AI keeps opens ways for rethinking human capacity and identity, raising a...
Andrei Ionuț Mărășoiu analyzes Mircea Dumitru’s proposal regarding cognitive qualia, exploring the subjective experience of understanding abstract concepts like logic, geometry, and meaning. The text distinguishes these from sensory qualia, examining whether "feeling a proof" is a purely cognitive phenomenon or tied to sensory presentation. While supporting Dumitru’s taxonomy, Mărășoiu warns...
This study explores the hypothesis that consciousness may transcend carbon-based life through principles of quantum entanglement, the holographic principle, orchestrated objective reduction (Orch-OR), and the multiverse hypothesis. In this regard, the interconnections between these theories and their implications for understanding consciousness were investigated. A Bayesian statistical...
Complex bodily hallucinations are not rare in psychiatric, neurological and toxicological conditions and may also be reported even in the total absence of any medical condition. Despite this, they are usually not clinically assessed independently from (and in comparison to) hallucinations in other modalities. The objective of this study was to develop a short scale assessing complex bodily...
Disorder of consciousness (DoC) poses diagnostic challenges due to behavioral assessment limitations. This study evaluates the spectral exponent (SE)-a neurophysiological biomarker quantifying the decay slope of electroencephalography (EEG) aperiodic activity-as an objective tool for consciousness stratification and clinical behavior scores correlation. The study involved 15 DoC patients, nine...