Contemporary Issues in Social Sciences and Management Practices
March 31, 2026
Muhammad Javid, Muhammad Jawwad
Consciousness remains a major puzzle for philosophy and cognitive science. While neuroscience and artificial intelligence successfully describe neural mechanisms and behavior, they struggle to explain the subjective, qualitative essence of conscious experience. Functionalist and physicalist approaches are flawed because they rely on third-person methods and neglect the first-person nature of consciousness. Phenomenological introspection reveals aspects like intentionality, temporality, self-consciousness, and the human search for meaning, which is a constitutive aspect of consciousness, not an accidental byproduct. The paper proposes Analytic Idealism, arguing consciousness is ontologically primary and the external world is an appearance of internal processes. Advancing consciousness studies requires combining empirical research with first-person introspective inquiry and a metaphysics positioning consciousness as fundamental.
Sententiae
March 31, 2026
Olena Kalantarova
Douglas Duckworth's book examines Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, focusing on the Nyingma and Dge-lugs-pa schools, particularly their views on the nature of mind and reality. The review highlights Duckworth's analysis of the distinction between conventional and ultimate truth, the role of emptiness, and the concept of buddha-nature. It emphasizes how Tibetan thinkers, especially from the Nyingma tradition, articulate a non-dualistic understanding of consciousness and its relationship to the external world, engaging with the hard problem of consciousness through a Buddhist lens. The work situates these philosophical debates within the broader context of Tibetan scholasticism and contemplative practice.
Journal for General Philosophy of Science
March 26, 2026
Chang Liu, Bin Ye
Constructionists argue that emotions arise from categorizing a basic phenomenal quality called core affect, shaped by prior experiences. Husserl's model of perception similarly describes perceptions emerging from apprehending phenomenal character, also shaped by prior experience. The two views are independent formulations of a single Construction Framework of the Mental (CFM), which treats most folk psychological categories as constructs built from more basic mental processes. Given the framework's consistency with recent neuroscience findings, competitive metaphysical positions, and its application in psychology and phenomenology, it should be considered a feasible research framework for understanding mental states.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
March 25, 2026
Shuochang Song
4 citations
The world is fundamentally a field of potentiality, and visual reality is actively constructed by consciousness rather than passively received. Using an invented 'electric dotspen,' images are broken into discrete, physically protruding color points called Luminous Quanta. Drawing on Enactivism and Adverbialist color ontology, the paper argues that this matrix engages viewers in active perceptual construction. Applying Quantum Bayesianism (QBism), the act of gazing is presented as structurally analogous to quantum measurement, collapsing potentiality into a coherent 'Perceptual Imago.' The observer thus legislates the phenomenal world, challenging representationalist paradigms in perception.
Frontiers in Psychology
March 25, 2026
Amira Arora
correction
Consciousness is not a byproduct of brain activity but is ontologically fundamental, with the brain acting as a filter or receiver for a more pervasive, nonlocal consciousness. This view, supported by transpersonal psychology, contemplative traditions, and empirical findings such as near-death experiences and psychedelic studies where reduced brain activity corresponds to heightened subjective richness, challenges materialist assumptions. The paper argues for integrating first-person methodologies and cross-cultural wisdom into scientific inquiry, proposing that consciousness is a participatory field central to reality, with implications for psychology, spirituality, and a more holistic science.
Principia an international journal of epistemology
March 25, 2026
Steven Gouveia, Ângela Leite
The paper examines four ways philosophy and neuroscience can relate when studying consciousness and the brain. The Isolationist Approach keeps them separate, like solo dancing. The Reductionist Approach reduces philosophy to neuroscience. The Neurophenomenological Approach rejects reduction but keeps them interacting, like a tango, emphasizing an embodied study of consciousness. The Non-Reductive Neurophilosophical Approach uses both disciplines for their epistemic value. Survey data from neurophilosophy experts show a preference for approaches that interconnect the two fields, though the exact type of interconnection varies.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
March 23, 2026
Evan Thompson
The author replies to commentaries on the book The Blind Spot, which argues that science must account for human experience rather than pretend to an objective view from nowhere. The response engages with points raised by Chirimuuta, Froese, Kyselo, and Vanney, defending the book's critique of reductionism and its call for a science that incorporates first-person experience and sense-making. The author maintains that ignoring the subjective, embodied dimension of knowing creates a blind spot that undermines scientific understanding.
Theory & Psychology
March 23, 2026
Henrique Mesquita Pompermaier, Carlos Eduardo Lopes
Radical behaviorism can address Merleau-Ponty's challenge to scientific psychology by treating behavior as a phenomenon in its own right, avoiding the dichotomous stalemate between mentalism and physiologism. The paper examines various understandings of behavior in B. F. Skinner's work and behavior-analytic literature, adopting Merleau-Ponty's view that ambiguity is a constitutive characteristic of behavioral phenomena. It presents an understanding of behavior based on a relational ontology that responds to Merleau-Ponty's challenges, updating radical behaviorism's philosophical potential for dialogue with traditions seeking to overcome mentalism and physiological reductionism.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
March 21, 2026
Tyrrell, John
A formal framework for consciousness is proposed that transcends biological chauvinism by synthesizing Integrated Information Theory, bioelectric morphogenesis, relational physics, and cross-cultural contemplative phenomenology from isolated populations. The concept of 'soul' is formalized as the Identity Persistence Index (IPI): a topological, self-referential, anti-entropic node characterized by metacognitive loop closure and Effective Valence. Statistical analysis of geographically and temporally isolated populations—including Aboriginal Australians, San/Khoisan peoples, Pre-Columbian Americas, Polynesian cultures, and Eurasian contemplative traditions—shows convergence on identical phenomenological structures, with a conservative...
Preprints.org
March 16, 2026
Gerd Leidig
preprint
Arthur Schopenhauer's metaphysics of the will, when stripped of its ontological commitments, offers rich descriptions of embodied agency and selfhood that align with contemporary cognitive science. This paper reconstructs Schopenhauer's ideas in four stages: interpreting his unity of body and will through the Free Energy Principle; situating his fragmented self within Gallagher's Pattern Theory of Self; framing his ethics of compassion as a precursor to a Pattern Theory of Compassion; and explaining his pessimism as predictive dysregulation. The approach uses cognitive models as a functional grammar for phenomenal experience without reducing its metaphysical depth.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
March 3, 2026
Mads J. Dengsø
Human temporality and temporal cognition have always been hybrid structures that combine biological and sociotechnological components. Contrary to common assumptions that modern sociotechnology causes temporal disruption through integration, disruptions actually result from the disintegration of these biological and sociotechnological components. Drawing on neuroanthropology and neuroscience of temporal cognition, the paper argues that human temporal capacities like memory and sense of time have always been partly sociotechnological. Reviewing sociological research on technology and time, recognizing this hybrid structure provides theoretical resources for identifying and addressing temporal disruption.
The lancet. Psychiatry
March 1, 2026
Jasper Feyaerts, Pavan S Brar, Louis Sass et al.
1 citation
Psychiatric research has long sought to identify and treat people in the early stages of psychosis, but progress has been limited. This paper argues that combining dynamical systems theory with the phenomenological self-disturbance model of schizophrenia can improve understanding and prediction of psychosis. The integration specifies causal processes involving altered self-awareness and reality-awareness, whose dynamics can be modeled to anticipate the onset and recurrence of psychotic episodes. This approach may enable earlier, personalized therapeutic interventions. Empirical testing of the model requires intensive longitudinal studies and phenomenological assessment methods. The authors also discuss theoretical and methodological challenges to implementing their proposal.
Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews
March 1, 2026
Hagar Tal, Malcolm Wright, Shawn Prest et al.
2 citations
Computational models of advanced meditation, particularly those using Active Inference, increasingly point to precision weighting—the confidence assigned to different model parameters—as a shared mechanism that shapes shifts in experience. Early models emphasize top-down attentional modulation toward interoception or specific objects, while later models focus on layer-specific precision re-weighting within the meditator's hierarchical generative model to target more specific phenomenology. Despite progress, minimal phenomenal experiences such as nonduality and cessations remain largely unaddressed. Few models account for increased cognitive flexibility or learning from meditation, and mechanisms behind informal practice, affective processes, and compassion traditions are underexplored.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
March 1, 2026
Francesca Righetti, Bastien Perroy
Temporal disorientation in episodic memory involves recalling events that are difficult to place in time. This paper argues for a constrained functional analogy between mental time travel and spatial navigation, characterizing temporal orientation as coordination between egocentric anchors and temporal structure (order, interval, and calendrical constraints). Temporal disorientation arises when this coordination breaks down. Drawing on constructive accounts of episodic memory, specifically the Scenario Construction Framework, the authors identify two distinct experiences: uncertainty whether an event occurred, and difficulty constructing the temporal sequence of remembered content. They propose that navigation in mental time and the feeling of temporal disorientation scaffold episodic construction, opening new paths for investigating mental navigation's role in memory.
Human Studies
March 1, 2026
Bence Peter Marosan
Affections and emotions are central and foundational for organizing conscious mental life; consciousness cannot be concrete without emotions. Drawing on Edmund Husserl's phenomenology and its followers, the article argues that the affective sphere serves as the organizing center of concrete life and consciousness. It then examines neurophysiological foundations, supporting subcortical theories of emotions and consciousness that extend the capacity for consciousness at least to all vertebrates.