Biofeedback and the Revoking of Qualia
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) January 1, 2026 Jon Frederick
Biofeedback is not merely a clinical treatment but a tool for investigating the boundary between conscious and unconscious brain processes. A decade of EEG state discrimination training reveals that the line between physical brain activity and subjective experience is dynamic, asymmetric, and modifiable through learning. Three studies show that people can learn to discriminate brain states, that control training and awareness training generalize differently, and that a phenomenon called behavioral inertia occurs. This evidence reframes psychopathology as maladaptive chunking of experience and biofeedback as its reversal via sensory substitution. The findings transform the hard problem of consciousness into a set of testable empirical questions about what regulates the physical-phenomenal boundary.