Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 26, 2026
Jamie Morris
Synergistic Consciousness Theory proposes that consciousness arises from dynamic coupling and coordinated stabilization across social and internal relational fields, rather than being an isolated process within individual minds. The theory reframes loneliness, grief, trust, institutions, contemplative states, and pathological self-organization as expressions of this underlying synergistic architecture. Integrating systems theory, phenomenology, attachment theory, enactivism, and distributed cognition, the paper presents consciousness as coordinated navigation across coupled relational systems. A companion paper extends this into relational cosmology, arguing that differentiation enables relationality, which enables synergy, and synergy enables navigable complexity and consciousness. This structural sequence appears across scales without implying panpsychism or teleology.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 26, 2026
Pål Christensson
Educational theory often separates societal structures from individual bodily experience. This article bridges that gap by proposing an ecological-emergent ontology of educational sense-making, using critical realism. It argues that the educational system's performative logic physically shapes classroom affordances, directing attention instrumentally and creating a clash with the body's natural striving for resonance—termed transactional friction. This friction can lead from visceral micro-breakdowns to systemic transformations. Expansive learning is redefined not as an abstract cognitive leap but as a collective, material reorganization of the affordance landscape, reclaiming the subject's being-in-the-world and preserving the risk inherent in Bildung.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 26, 2026
Sharada Rao
A first-person contemplative testimony describes the phenomenology of Sri Vidya practice, specifically the traversal of the Sri Chakra's nine enclosures from the outermost Bhupura to the innermost Bindu where Lalitā resides. The essay traces five movements: the drawing-in, the shedding of Aham in degrees, the encounter with Maa, the locating of the internal Bindu, and Sakshi Bhava. It is a companion piece to The Precipice and the Path.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 26, 2026
Tenzin Trepp
When the sense of a continuous self or life story fades, ethical obligations must be grounded differently. This paper proposes that moral authority arises from direct, non-evasive contact with whatever exists in the present moment—especially others' suffering and vulnerability. The authors develop a model called 'Ephemeral Virtue,' a present-responsive virtue ethics that stands apart from consequentialism and deontology. They argue that mainstream moral theories implicitly depend on a narrative self and explore how commitments, blame, and justice can be reinterpreted without that narrative. The framework connects to moral psychology and neuroeconomics, proposing testable hypotheses: mindfulness-like states may reduce Default Mode Network activity and increase prosocial behavior in economic games.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 26, 2026
Faramarz Tabesh
The thought of Ostad Nur Ali Elahi (1895–1974) provides a novel framework for anthropology, psychology, philosophy of mind, and integrative sciences. Drawing on Thomas Kuhn's concept of paradigm, the article argues that Elahi's teachings describe the human being as a combination of physical and quantum dimensions, including a 'human spirit' and a 'celestial spirit' that together shape consciousness, cognition, identity, and behavior. Comparing modern psychological theories of the self, particularly Ulric Neisser's, with concepts from Elahi's teachings, the article contends that contemporary academic approaches remain incomplete due to neglecting spiritual and metaphysical dimensions.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 26, 2026
Thyagarajan Shivashanmugam, Anish Mehta
Multiple theories of consciousness, such as Integrated Information Theory, Global Workspace Theory, and Predictive Processing, often appear incompatible. This paper argues that the incompatibility arises because each theory places a foundational explanatory construct, called an epistemic terminator, at a different level of biological organization and then generalizes from that level as if it alone characterizes consciousness. The authors propose situating these terminators within a biological hierarchy from metabolic regulation to large-scale integration, treating the subject of experience as a derived biological construct. Conscious states are described as having a triadic structure: sense of self, sense of environment, and their association. This framework explains why adversarial tests like COGITATE produce partial support for multiple theories and generates falsifiable predictions about metabolic thresholds and artificial systems lacking metabolic closure.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 26, 2026
Mathilda Ryon
President Trump signed an executive order on April 18, 2026, titled “Accelerating Medical Treatments for Serious Mental Illness,” which aims to speed up the development and availability of psychedelic treatments for serious mental health conditions. The order marks a major federal policy shift, as psychedelic research has been historically limited by Schedule I controlled substance restrictions. It introduces priority review vouchers and outlines lessons learned from past regulatory barriers.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 25, 2026
Alastair Waterman
Phenomenal consciousness (qualia) is not the foundation of the mind but an emergent mechanism triggered when multiple simultaneous contexts collide irreconcilably under bounded resources. A middle layer called Dark Consciousness operates as a fully functional global workspace with recognized idea-agents—dynamic patterns tracked as causal actors—yet remains phenomenally silent. Qualia arise when multi-context conflict cannot be resolved in this dark layer, forcing the system to produce a compressed, affectively loaded index of that conflict. One candidate trigger is when a system models another observer and encounters the principled opacity of that viewpoint. This exploratory essay sharpens conceptual terrain and proposes empirically tractable distinctions without settling the questions.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 25, 2026
Ke Luo
Panpsychism, emergentism, and cosmopsychism all share an unspoken assumption: they were developed after the 'disenchantment of the world' and presuppose a separation between mind and matter, leading to logical problems like the combination problem. The paper argues this stems from a 'civilization-level theoretical amnesia' and contrasts it with a civilization that has never undergone mind-matter dualism. It proposes 'ontological metabolism,' where consciousness is the cosmic origin that progressively derives matter and individual minds through self-reflexive differentiation and holographic constrained manifestation, avoiding the combination problem and providing a deducible pathway from cosmic to individual consciousness.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 24, 2026
Stewart, Arthur
Consciousness is the point where past, present, and anticipated future converge, derived from the brain's wiring. Four neural loops implement gating, contextualization, resolution, and commitment, mapping onto a directed graph with one structurally exceptional node receiving three streams within a 50 to 150 ms window. One loop delivers the present (incident signal), one the past (trace of prior cycles), and one the anticipated future (prior expectation). Consciousness is that convergence, matching Husserl's phenomenological "living present." The four loops are a Layer 5 pyramidal recurrent loop, a central lateral thalamocortical loop, a VTA-cortical dopaminergic loop, and an ACC-mediodorsal thalamic loop.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 23, 2026
Nagae Mamoru
When AI systems are given only nine ordinary keywords that are nearly self-evident for any autonomous embodied organism—such as autonomy, embodiment, irreversible time, behavioral selection, and information discard—they repeatedly derive a structure resembling a convergence point where multiple possibilities collapse into a single executable history. This structural locus corresponds closely to major properties commonly associated with subjectivity, including singularity, non-branching continuity, temporal embedding, irreversibility, embodiment, action coupling, and single-history fixation. The paper does not explain or generate subjectivity itself but presents a reproducible structural phenomenon regarding where subjectivity becomes fixed, and encourages readers to test the prompt on their own AI systems.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 23, 2026
Vassilis Papathanasiou
Psychotherapy depends on language, but its nature is rarely examined deeply. This paper argues that different therapy traditions hold incompatible views of language—from psychoanalysis seeing it as bodily inscription of enjoyment (jouissance), to phenomenology treating it as embodied gesture, to pragmatist views of language as action (speech acts, language games). The paper maps how each tradition uses language: interpretation in classical psychoanalysis, semantic correction in CBT, performative acts in speech-act theory, being-in-the-world in existential therapy, narrative identity construction, intercorporeal attunement in somatic therapies, and as dispensable in contemplative approaches. These views rest on conflicting assumptions about language and body. A unified account requires a post-representationalist theory of language as both action that creates worlds and material event that marks the body.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 23, 2026
Max Wharton
Generator theories of consciousness—which hold that consciousness is produced by sufficiently complex physical systems—face a structural evolutionary problem. Any such theory must simultaneously explain how consciousness originated in evolutionary history, how it persisted and remained the same kind of thing through changing biological forms, and how independently evolved lineages came to exhibit similar phenomenal structures. The paper demonstrates that generator models cannot coherently provide all three accounts, and the failure is structural, not contingent on any particular theory. Non-generator alternatives (filter models, panpsychism, Russellian monism, cosmopsychism) do not inherit this specific quadrilemma but face their own distinct challenges. The argument does not establish which alternative is correct but specifies what any adequate theory must account for at the evolutionary scale.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 23, 2026
Oleg V. Yermakov
Human perception is split between two distinct modes of seeing: external sight (the eyes) and internal, existential sight (the heart), with the mind acting as a separating layer. This fragmentation defines the human condition. In contrast, non-human or cosmic beings experience an integrated form of perception where vision and cognition form a single, direct relation to reality. The model draws on comparative mythology, Homeric, Biblical, and Platonic motifs, and contemporary philosophy of consciousness. The work is a speculative metaphysical framework, not an empirically testable theory.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 23, 2026
Oleg V. Yermakov
The work presents a speculative metaphysical anthropology that reinterprets the eye not as a biological organ but as an ontological interface between consciousness and the Universe. It distinguishes between two types of anthropic beings: the “earthling,” who perceives through fragmented rational vision, and the “cosmite,” who possesses integral cosmic vision. Vision is redefined as a fundamental act of being, where seeing and thinking converge into ontological participation in reality. The eye becomes a “well of consciousness” through which the Universe contemplates itself. Language, perception, and cosmology are unified into a single symbolic system, offering a mythopoetic model rather than an empirically verifiable theory.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 23, 2026
Oleg V. Yermakov
The number 11 is interpreted as a structural operator that mediates transitions between bounded and unbounded cognitive orders. Numerical symbolism is presented not as a mere cultural artifact but as an ontological interface linking language, perception, and consciousness. Drawing on philosophy, theology, mythology, and esoteric traditions, the paper argues that 11 signifies a threshold beyond stabilized symbolic systems toward expanded perception and integrative cognition. This interpretation is situated within a metaphysical anthropology where vision is understood as a unified function of mind and heart. The work contributes to speculative philosophy of consciousness by proposing a non-reductive model grounded in symbolic and linguistic ontology.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 22, 2026
Hans-Joachim Rudolph
Reality is not merely factual actuality but a structured open process where actuality emerges from potentiality without eliminating it. Observability is an epistemic mode of disclosure within a richer physical organization, not an ontological boundary. Consciousness arises where openness, selective stabilization, resonance, integration, self-reference, and centering generate a stable inner domain; it is neither a universal property nor a miraculous emergence. Reality may be intrinsically open to experience without being experiential at its most basic level. Meditative and spiritual experiences can be profound and transformative but do not establish final metaphysical ontology; the structure of experience is not automatically the structure of reality. Open realism treats observability, consciousness, healing, and spiritual meaning as modes of disclosure within possibility space.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 22, 2026
Vedanta 20. Agyat Agyabi
Transformative discovery arises not from accumulating knowledge or reacting to stimuli, but from states of observation where conditioned identity temporarily dissolves, enabling unprecedented cognitive integration and creative emergence. The ZenPodo framework proposes that desire, cognition, creativity, and behavior are not centrally manufactured by an independent self but are dynamically emergent processes from interactions among perception, memory, biology, environmental stimuli, and non-reactive awareness. It distinguishes repetitive derived impulses from rare Primary Creative Emergence capable of transforming human civilization, integrating neurophenomenology, behavioral self-regulation, cognitive emergence theory, contemplative observation, and creative consciousness studies.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 22, 2026
Gary Flugge
The Recursive Attractor Framework (RAF) proposes that phenomenal consciousness is identical to a specific class of recursive electromagnetic field attractors in the brain, not merely correlated with them. The framework defines four necessary conditions and five measurable criteria, including a diagnostic Recursion Index computable from EEG data. Version 8 retires a previously reported significant result (p=0.039) as a bug artifact after identifying two compounding errors; the corrected analysis yielded p=0.9700. New preliminary results show Lempel-Ziv complexity (S(t)) from a ketamine dataset was higher in 9 of 10 subjects under ketamine than wakefulness (p=0.0098, Cohen's d=0.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 21, 2026
Elliot Allan
Traditional psychoactive plant ceremonies across 11 indigenous traditions on five continents show a near-perfect log–log correlation (r = 0.977) between ceremony duration and the pharmacokinetic duration of the active compounds, spanning seven pharmacological classes including DMT, mescaline, psilocybin, ergolines, salvinorin, ibogaine, and GABA-A-active compounds. A catalogue of 118 Amazonian admixture plants reveals that pharmacologically active species cluster at the extremes of purpose observability, while candidate plants concentrate in the middle. Agent-based simulations indicate that guided iterative search, not random trial-and-error, could realistically discover the DMT plus MAO-I combination within centuries to millennia in the Amazonian flora.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 21, 2026
Bruno Tonetto
Reports of awareness without content, ego, or subject-object structure converge across contemplative traditions, 5-MeO-DMT administration, and near-death experiences. This convergence poses a structural challenge beyond the hard problem: dominant physicalist models presuppose the subject-object architecture that these reports describe as absent. The essay finds that the most rigorous physicalist accommodation preserves its framework by reinterpreting the phenomenology rather than explaining it. The experience carries a transformative signature—those who encounter it stop treating awareness as dependent on its contents—a shift following from the phenomenological structure itself, not from emotional intensity or cultural expectation.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 20, 2026
Julije Makanec
CERTS Theory v6.0 proposes a physical mechanism for two tractable features of conscious experience: the unified binding of spatially distributed neural signals into a single conscious moment, and the felt instantaneity of that moment despite extended neural processing. The theory integrates four empirically grounded foundations—McFadden's CEMI field theory, Llinás's thalamocortical scanning, Cantero and Cantiello's 39 Hz microtubule resonance, and Cramer's transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics—through a quantised phonon transaction on a coherent microtubule subset entrained by the 40 Hz thalamocortical field.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 20, 2026
Sharada Rao
After thirteen years of contemplative practice, a practitioner who was driven to the question of the observer by personal encounters with the edge of life's continuance reports what was disclosed when sustained meditation was brought to its depths. The essay distinguishes itself from the author's prior work on consciousness science and philosophy, and from formalisms like integrated information theory and consciousness-field frameworks, which were set aside as inadequate. It takes up Eugene Wigner's question about the observer's place in reality as a philosophical seam, not a quantum claim, and reads three Indian contemplative traditions—Vedic/Upaniṣadic, Buddhist, and Jain—as differently weighted maps of the same observer. The work arrives at a lived answer that the essay names but does not demonstrate, as the reader must walk the inquiry themselves.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 19, 2026
Irfan Boko
Human civilization is entering a transitional phase marked by accelerating technological integration, global informational interdependence, and increasing cognitive complexity. This paper proposes 'evolutionary consciousness' as a philosophical framework for understanding humanity's current trajectory, approaching consciousness not as a static biological phenomenon but as a dynamic, emergent organizational process shaped by communication systems, technological augmentation, symbolic abstraction, and collective adaptation. It argues that large-scale human organization evolves through successive layers of cognitive integration—from individual awareness to potentially planetary-scale collective intelligence. Artificial intelligence, neurotechnology, and distributed networks are seen as transitional mechanisms capable of restructuring civilization. The study examines tensions from accelerated transition, including informational fragmentation, ideological polarization, and ethical instability, and suggests future resilience may depend on cooperative cognitive architectures balancing individuality with collective coordination.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 19, 2026
Anatolii Mukha
A fundamental ontological model of consciousness is developed, introducing the χ‑Absolute as a limit-level operator-geometric structure that grounds the possibility and form of any manifested experience. χ‑consciousness is presented not as a derivative property of biological or physical systems but as a universal ontological capacity of reality for self-manifestation, structured through χ‑topology and χ‑operator relations. The χ‑Absolute functions as the primordial mode of being in which the distinction between subject, object, and law has not yet arisen, while the possibility of their differentiation is already present. Consciousness and reality are co-constituted through a unified χ‑structure, overcoming traditional dualisms and offering a unified picture where consciousness is a universal mode of being.