The Synergistic Mind-Body Hypothesis: A Daoist Approach to Consciousness from the Perspective of Traditional Chinese Medicine
Canadian Undergraduate Journal of Cognitive Science November 21, 2025 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.21810/cujcs.v8i1.7230 via OpenAlex
Summary
The paper proposes an embodied account of consciousness that combines ancient Chinese philosophy and medicine with modern cognitive science theories. It introduces the synergistically affectively interoceptively synchronizing mind-body hypothesis (SAIS), suggesting that consciousness arises from the dynamic interplay between mind and body. The work highlights parallels between predictive processing in cognitive science and traditional concepts of Qi, indicating that understanding consciousness may require revisiting core cognitive processes like allostasis and homeostasis.
Study at a glance
| Key finding | Consciousness is proposed to be the result of a synergistic relationship between mind and body, as outlined in the SAIS hypothesis. |
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Abstract
This paper formulates a possible embodied account of consciousness by integrating the vantages of ancient Chinese philosophy and medicine and predictive processing theories in cognitive science. It draws on robust empirical evidence from across the cognitive sciences, including contemporaneous work in philosophy of mind, neuropsychiatry, clinical psychology, and cognitive neuroscience to build on an overarching proposal that consciousness is ultimately the product of a synergistic and exaptive relationship between mind and body. I call this formulation the synergistically affectively interoceptively synchronizing mind-body hypothesis (SAIS). This system is characterized by highly adaptive interoceptive active inference that is realized through the dynamic coordination of allostatic affective control and exteroception. Emerging research underscores parallels between the allostatic paradigm of predictive processing and the system of Qi in traditional Chinese medicine and Daoist conceptions of consciousness, supporting the notion that there lies much to be explored within the realm of the mind-body connection. Leveraging these insights, it is highly plausible that the key to understanding consciousness may lie in a revisit of the fundamental processes that govern cognition – allostasis, homeostasis, and autopoiesis.