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19 results for "Meta-analysis: what did research on philosophy of mind find in april 2026?"

The Phenomenology of Ma‘rifat al-Hallaj: Interpreting Anā al-Ḥaqq Amidst the Spiritual Crisis of the Contemporary Era

Tasfiyah Jurnal Pemikiran Islam April 30, 2026 Moh. Sholeh Baharis, Abdul Kadir Riyadi

Al-Hallaj's mystical knowledge (ma‘rifat) involves a transformation of consciousness through stages of purification, self-annihilation, subsistence, and divine manifestation, shifting awareness from the empirical ego toward the Divine. His phrase "Anā al-Ḥaqq" ("I am the Truth") is not a claim of ontological identity between humanity and God but a linguistic testimony of a consciousness that has transcended subject–object duality. The "Ana" refers not to al-Hallaj's biographical self but to a subject that has undergone ego dissolution and appears as a trace of al-Haqq. This Sufi paradigm offers relevance for addressing modern crises of meaning, religious formalization, and existential alienation.

Can Self-Disorders Be Self-Rated? Theoretical and Empirical Validity of the Inventory of Psychotic-Like Anomalous Self-Experiences.

Psychopathology April 27, 2026 Mads Gram Henriksen, Håvard Hovstad, Helena Cobanovic et al.

The Inventory of Psychotic-Like Anomalous Self-Experiences (IPASE), a self-report questionnaire, was compared with the semi-structured clinical interview Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience (EASE) in 41 participants (including patients with psychosis or schizotypal disorder, other mental disorders, and healthy controls). IPASE and EASE total scores were moderately correlated (Spearman's ρ = 0.54), sharing about 29% variance. Qualitative analysis revealed that IPASE item endorsements often reflected ordinary experiences, medication effects, or psychotic symptoms rather than the subtle self-disorders captured by the EASE. The results indicate that IPASE and EASE do not measure the same construct, raising serious doubts about IPASE's validity for assessing self-disorders and emphasizing the need for phenomenological interviewing.

A Systematic Review of Clinical Phenomenology, Differential Diagnosis and Prognostic Outcomes of Substance-Induced Psychotic Disorders.

The International journal of social psychiatry April 26, 2026 Valerio Ricci, Giovanni Martinotti, Giuseppe Maina

Distinguishing substance-induced psychotic disorders from primary psychotic disorders with substance use is diagnostically challenging. A systematic review of 36 studies covering over 80,000 individuals found that cannabis-induced psychosis typically involves prominent positive symptoms, preserved negative symptoms, and elevated affective and anxiety features, with 36% to 46% transitioning to schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Methamphetamine-induced psychosis ranges from simple persecutory delusions and tactile hallucinations in transient cases—with markedly elevated violence rates (75.6%)—to complex sensory disturbances in persistent cases. Despite substance-specific patterns, substantial overlap with primary disorders and poor diagnostic stability (25% to 39% of initial diagnoses converting to primary disorders) limit cross-sectional assessment. Superior antipsychotic response at lower doses may favor substance-induced etiology.

The Illusion of Presence: ontological limits of algorithmic mediation in contemporary subjectivity

PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) April 24, 2026 Matheus Vinicius Duarte de Souza

Algorithmic hyperconnectivity increases the quantity of contact between people but empties out the shared vulnerability that makes genuine human bonds possible. Drawing on phenomenology and enactivism, the essay argues that algorithmically mediated presence creates a structural illusion: subjects experience connection without genuine exposure, proximity without risk, and communication without true encounter. The implications of this illusion are discussed for clinical psychology, philosophy of mind, and understanding contemporary suffering.

Decoding the phenomenology of spontaneous thought using large language-model ratings on verbal retrospective free reports

bioRxiv Preprint Server April 22, 2026 Nicolás Bruno, Federico Cavanna, Federico Zamberlan et al. preprint

Spontaneous thoughts make up most of everyday inner experience, but studying them is difficult because traditional methods disrupt the natural flow of thinking or introduce motor artifacts. An alternative approach combined delayed verbal retrospective free reports with automated ratings from large language models. Twenty-two participants performed an eyes-closed free-thinking task, and their reports were evaluated on ten dimensions by four LLMs and human raters. Machine-learning models trained on EEG features achieved above-chance accuracy for predicting emotional valence. LLMs showed higher inter-rater agreement than humans, supporting their use for scalable annotation and suggesting that affective dimensions of spontaneous thoughts can be decoded from brain activity.

Direct or indirect realism? Assessing conflicting folk conceptions of vision

Synthese April 21, 2026 Eugen Fischer, Keith Allen, Paul E. Engelhardt

Laypeople hold conflicting beliefs about vision, simultaneously endorsing both Direct Realist and Indirect Realist conceptions, according to three studies using the newly developed Direct/Indirect Realist Belief Inventory (DIRBI). These conflicting beliefs are not merely superficial agreement but reflect genuine beliefs anchored in implicit knowledge structures: experiential event knowledge about vision and an implicit model of endogenous attention. The findings challenge the common philosophical assumption that there is a single, coherent common-sense conception of vision that can serve as an epistemic default in debates about perception.

The Hard Problem of Intentionality for Radical Enactive Cognition

Synthese April 21, 2026 Adrian Wieczorek

Radical Enactive Cognition attempts to explain basic intentionality—called Ur-intentionality—without mental representations, using only teleofunctional resources like information-as-covariance and natural selection. This paper argues that this approach fails. It identifies two problems: the Determinacy Problem, concerning how information picks out specific objects, and the Distality Problem, concerning how it relates to distant causes. Teleofunctionalism also risks reducing Ur-intentionality to stimulus-response behaviorism, which Radical Enactivism itself rejects as non-cognitive. The paper develops an enactive stimulus-response account showing teleofunctional mechanisms can explain adaptive behavior without intentionality. These issues pose a serious, overlooked challenge to non-representational, selectionist theories of cognition—the Hard Problem of Intentionality.

Bare Awareness and Procedural Insight: A Naturalized Account of Minimal -Dual Experience

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) April 17, 2026 Tenzin Trepp

Experiences of 'pure' or non-dual awareness, often celebrated as glimpses of ultimate reality, are better understood as contingent phenomena shaped by trained skills and bodily-attentional dynamics rather than as ineffable metaphysical revelations. Drawing on epistemology, phenomenology, cognitive neuroscience, and contemplative studies, the paper argues these introspective insights constitute procedural knowledge—accessible only through practiced psychophysiological methods—not propositional truths. The authors replace absolutist terms like 'non-dual' with pragmatic labels such as Bare Existence and Bare Awareness, emphasizing grounded, naturalistic origins. They outline how such experiences emerge from specific attentional and bodily conditions, why they resist conventional explanation, and how first-person methods can integrate with third-person neuroscience. The framework demystifies profound contemplative states, making them legitimate for scientific and philosophical inquiry without invoking mysticism.

Brain Codex Editorial Catalogue 2025–2026

Open MIND April 17, 2026 Felipe Heemann

Brain Codex: Neurobioscience & Philosophy is an academic imprint that publishes at the intersection of evolutionary biology, neuroscience, psychedelics, molecular neurobiology, molecular neuropsychopharmacology, complexity sciences, complex adaptive systems, nonlinear dynamics systems, medical epistemology, paleoanthropology, philosophy of biology, philosophy of science, history of science, philosophy of language, phenomenology, and philosophy of consciousness. This catalogue documents the 2025–2026 program of eight titles in Portuguese and English. The imprint invites support via Catarse to help bring the project to life.

Awakening as Neurophenomenology: An Empirical Case Study Based on EEG

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) April 15, 2026 Can Chen

The awakening state, defined as a shift from Default Mode Network dominance to second-order observation, is characterized by specific neurophysiological patterns distinct from drug-induced sedation. Clinical EEG data from a single subject off anxiolytics for over six years showed increased background fast-wave activity (15-22 Hz) with low amplitude (5-15 μV) across all leads and immediate alpha rhythm suppression upon eye-opening. These findings indicate that awakening involves high alertness, low internal friction, and high acuity, providing physiological evidence that conscious awakening is a unique neurophysiological mode rather than sedation.

La conciencia no fluye: pulsa Sobre el mito de la continuidad

Revista Multidisciplinar Epistemología de las Ciencias April 14, 2026 Eduardo Piza

Consciousness is not a continuous flow but an intermittent phenomenon that emerges in pulses under specific neurobiological, narrative, and social conditions. Evidence from physics and mathematics questions the assumption of continuity, while neuroscience findings—including global broadcast models and the attentional blink—show conscious experience as a discontinuous composition rather than a homogeneous stream. Philosophical perspectives such as the multiple-drafts model and neurophenomenology recast the self not as a substance but as a functional model and narrative construction. Identity and freedom therefore cannot rely on a persistent soul but must be understood as practices of memory, deliberation, and care sustained by symbolic frameworks and institutions. This view replaces the metaphysical promise of permanence with a secular, finite ethics of intermittence.

Living the Five Domains: Phenomenal Co-Presence, Cognitive Embeddedness, and the Limits of Description

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) April 13, 2026 David (daoud) Matta

A philosophical inquiry into five domains of how being and the world are disclosed—persons, things and artifacts, nature, the self, and the encompassing whole—argues that these domains are typically co-present and mutually conditioning in lived experience. The argument draws on enactivism, embodied cognition, predictive processing, and social neuroscience to show that the five domains correspond to real cognitive structures. Pushing phenomenological and cognitive description to their limits, it uses Varela's neurophenomenology and Bitbol's philosophy of quantum mechanics to argue that perspectival situatedness remains ineliminable even in fundamental physics. The five-domain framework is presented as a living map of experience that becomes most useful where it exceeds itself.

Calculation and Collapse: How Parametric Introspection Enables Minimal-Dual Breakthrough

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) April 11, 2026 Tenzin Trepp

A state of consciousness beyond the ordinary subject–object framework can be understood as a self-organizing cognitive event driven by specific introspective parameters, not as an ontological revelation. The authors propose a model (I × F × D ≥ T) where Intensity of attentional engagement, Cycle Frequency of introspective process, and total Duration of practice must reach a threshold for stable reduction of the subject–object structure (groundless awareness) to become likely. Drawing on phenomenology, analytic philosophy, contemplative science, and cognitive neuroscience, the paper reviews empirical meditation research on default-mode network suppression and EEG complexity. It contrasts this process-based, functional approach with traditional mystical metaphysics and explores implications for theories of selfhood and meditation pedagogy.

A 20-Year Descriptive Phenomenological Study of Depersonalization and Derealization as an Alteration in Sense of Self and Lifeworld.

Schizophrenia bulletin April 10, 2026 Cherise Rosen, Liping Tong, Julia G Lebovitz et al.

Depersonalization (DP) and derealization (DR) are alterations in sense of self and lifeworld that often co-occur in psychosis. Over 20 years, the Chicago Longitudinal Study examined these phenomena across psychiatric categories. DP was broadly distributed across diagnoses, while DR showed greater specificity to schizophrenia. Network analyses revealed three foundational constructs in schizophrenia: alteration in sense of self/lifeworld, multisensory experiences, and bodily experiences; bodily and multisensory alterations were foundational in affective-psychosis. Self-disturbance emerged as foundational only in schizophrenia. The findings support reframing DP and DR as points on a continuum of attenuated alterations in sense of self and lifeworld, representing a fundamental self-disturbance in existential feeling.

The feeling of being alive: phenomenology and biology

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences April 6, 2026 Thomas Fuchs 1 citation

The feeling of being alive reveals a deep link between biological life and subjective experience. Self-awareness is not a mental model produced in the brain but a manifestation of the whole organism's life. The feeling of life has two components: vitality (basic vital feelings) and conation (drive, urge, desire), both grounded in self-regulating processes that maintain the organism's homeostasis. The sufficient basis of self-awareness lies in the organism's self-organization and relationship to its environment, not in neural correlates of consciousness. The paper also examines how depression and Cotard syndrome disrupt the feeling of being alive.

Art and linguistic bodies: a transformative view

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences April 1, 2026 Ståle Finke, Thomas Netland, Mattias Solli 2 citations

This article argues that art transforms everyday experience through symbolic communication, rejecting both the idea that art is entirely separate from daily life and the notion that it is directly continuous with it. Drawing on the enactive concept of humans as linguistic bodies and the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, the authors propose that art is a linguistic phenomenon enabling original situations of communication. They discuss and critique enactivist perspectives from Shaun Gallagher and Alva Noë, then develop a pluralistic view of art media and a conception of art and art experience as modes of ideational, embodied thought.

Poor insight and self-disorders in schizophrenia: an empirical study.

European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience April 1, 2026 Lars Siersbæk Nilsson, Julie Nordgaard, Mads Gram Henriksen et al. 5 citations

Poor insight in schizophrenia is linked to fundamental alterations in the structure of subjective experience, known as self-disorders, rather than to other symptoms or general intelligence. In a study of 67 patients with schizophrenia or non-affective psychosis in a non-acute phase, those with impaired insight had significantly higher levels of self-disorders than those with good insight, while positive, negative, and depressive symptoms did not differ between groups. Regression analyses showed that only self-disorders were significantly associated with impaired insight. These findings support the idea that self-disorders contribute to poor insight, which may inform early intervention and treatment.

Giving thickness to the minimal self: coenesthetic depth and the materiality of consciousness

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences April 1, 2026 István Fazakas, Mathilde Bois, Tudi Gozé 7 citations

Selfhood, even at its most basic level, has a bodily thickness that can be altered in schizophrenia. Drawing on Sartre's concept of coenesthesia—the translucent material of consciousness—and historical research, the authors argue that the minimal self is not a bare point but an embodied, elemental feeling. This phenomenological materiality, or bodily element of ipseity, helps explain anomalies of self-experience in schizophrenia spectrum disorders without reducing selfhood so drastically that it cannot account for experiential changes.