Journal of Consciousness Studies
February 1, 2025
V. O’Reilly-Shah
The state space theory of consciousness proposes that the cortex processes information by using recurrent neural network engines to embed sensory input into a state space, following Takens' theorem. Consciousness arises at the highest-order engines within a hierarchy of parallel pathways, making it a dynamic process rather than a static neuronal state. This reconciles dualist intuitions with a monist perspective. Each individual's neuronal representations develop uniquely due to history-dependent training, explaining the privacy of qualia, cortical plasticity, and heuristic processing. The theory's non-linear dynamics, sensitive to initial conditions, account for ambiguous figure interpretation and suggest a pathway to free will. It aligns with and expands upon higher-order theories, global workspace theories, and integrated information theory by providing a unifying computational mechanism.
Journal of Consciousness Studies
December 1, 2024
Francis Heylighen, Shima Beigi
Subjective experience functions as a mechanism guiding organisms toward beneficial outcomes. In simple animals, this guidance produces fitness-enhancing responses. Human consciousness offers a range of potential developments allowing free choice, modeled as a local prospect: a field of possibilities centered on the present situation and colored by valence. Building on neural models of global workspace and adaptive resonance, the theory suggests such a prospect could be implemented in the brain as a halo of activation diffusing from, and feeding back into, a core of circulating activation. Using qualia inversion, the theory argues it solves the 'hard problem of consciousness' and explains key characteristics like subjectivity, feeling, free will, agency, transience, continuity, integration, selectivity, intentionality, and 'what it is like'.
Journal of Consciousness Studies
August 1, 2024
Paul F. Cunningham
Philosophical debates about the 'hard problem' of consciousness—how physical matter gives rise to subjective experience—cannot be resolved by reasoning alone and must be grounded in empirical research on psychosomatic phenomena and exceptional human experiences. The article reviews alternative perspectives on the mind-matter relationship and explains why traditional formulations have been intractable. Evidence that the mind modulates bodily systems challenges the classical quantitative-qualitative distinction and the concept of causal closure. A novel theory combining bottom-up panpsychism and top-down non-theistic panenpsychism is proposed, offering practical implications for rethinking the mind-matter question.
Journal of Consciousness Studies
August 1, 2024
A. Hudetz
The debate over whether consciousness is unidimensional or consists of multiple fundamental dimensions is examined. Clinical assessment distinguishes awareness (content) from wakefulness (arousal), but this conflates first-person experience with third-person observation. The state of consciousness is better defined by subjective level and content, which are interdependent, with wakefulness as a predisposing factor. Unidimensional models fail to capture the variety of qualitatively different experiences in normal and altered states. Cognitive and abstract multidimensional models have been proposed but lack axiomatic support. A novel multidimensional characterization based on the brain's macroscale functional geometry offers an alternative, empirically grounded model whose dimensions are defined by neurofunctional attributes, representing the state of consciousness as a point in functional space.
Journal of Consciousness Studies
April 1, 2024
Richard H. Jones
Analytic philosophers have debated whether experiences of 'pure consciousness'—non-intentional, selfless states often associated with mystical experiences—are intelligible. This examination considers their critiques and arguments for and against the coherence of such experiences. It also asks whether neuroscience can determine if these experiences are possible, concluding that philosophical analysis remains central to understanding their nature and possibility.
Journal of Consciousness Studies
April 1, 2024
P. Goff
Panpsychism has recently regained attention as a theory of consciousness that might avoid the problems of physicalism and dualism. Panpsychism comes in two forms: strong emergentist and weak emergentist, each facing challenges similar to those of dualism or physicalism, respectively. This paper develops a new hybrid view where subjects of experience are strongly emergent but their phenomenal properties are weakly emergent. The author argues that this hybrid avoids the difficulties that plague both physicalism and dualism, as well as the analogous challenges undermining standard panpsychist views.
Journal of Consciousness Studies
September 30, 2023
Eric Schwitzgebel, Sophie R. Nelson
The article argues that some possible minds, like the 'ancillary mind' from Ann Leckie's science fiction novel Ancillary Justice, occupy a grey zone between a single mind and a communicating group, making them neither clearly one person nor many. This challenges standard conceptions of personal identity and subject individuation. The authors suggest that if such minds defy discrete countability, some actual minds on Earth might similarly blur the line between introspection and communication. They propose extending Kammerer and Frankish's research programme to study not only possible forms of introspection but also mental activity that lies intermediate between introspection and communication.
Journal of Consciousness Studies
August 1, 2023
T. Cochrane
The motivation-affect system controls a subtype of attention called 'alerting attention' to bring various goals and stimuli to consciousness, thereby prioritizing those contents for action. This view fleshes out the global workspace theory of consciousness and explains some phenomenal characteristics of conscious experience.
Journal of Consciousness Studies
June 1, 2023
C. Pérez, Giuseppina Marsico
Mapuche thinking (rakizuam) is a form of reflexivity that recognizes the interdependence of people with natural and spiritual entities, representing a relational ontology distinct from individualistic Western approaches. The mind-body distinction is not central in Mapuche culture, but these dimensions can be explored through life-cycle processes such as socialization, illness, and death. The paper draws on cultural psychology and Indigenous psychology to address the interplay between culture and the human psyche.
Journal of Consciousness Studies
June 1, 2023
Natasha Tassell-Matamua, Kiri MacDonald-Nepe Apatu, Te Rā Moriarty et al.
Māori knowledge systems contain understandings of consciousness, soul, and spirit, though no single Māori words directly translate these English concepts. Despite ongoing colonization, these knowledges persist as essential to Māori views of everyday life and reality. The article outlines Māori socio-historical context and cosmogony, then discusses popularized interpretations of consciousness, soul, and spirit from an Indigenous Māori perspective, emphasizing the complexity of translation. The authors present a brief overview rather than an exhaustive account.
Journal of Consciousness Studies
June 1, 2023
Nuria Ciofalo
Indigenous psychologies of the Nahua and Maya peoples of Mexico are grounded in their cosmogonies, philosophies, and spiritual traditions, offering distinct conceptions of consciousness, psyche, spirit, and health that encompass relations with all Earth beings, ancestors, and nature. Colonization imposed foreign cosmologies that threatened these systems, yet these communities continue to use plants, mushrooms, and animals to induce altered states of consciousness in sacred rituals and healing. The paper recommends learning from these knowledge and praxis systems to foster a decolonial psychology that may provide alternatives for addressing contemporary challenges.
Journal of Consciousness Studies
March 31, 2022
Jonathan C. P. Birch, D. Broom, Heather Browning et al.
A conscious being has a subjective point of view on the world and its own body, a concept easiest to grasp with vision, as Ernst Mach illustrated by drawing his own visual perspective. However, subjective experience encompasses far more than vision, including sounds, odors, tastes, and tactile sensations—a complete sensory world. The text argues that these sensory experiences constitute a full subjective point of view, extending beyond any single sense to shape a person's entire conscious experience of reality.
Journal of Consciousness Studies
March 31, 2022
A. Crump, Jonathan C. P. Birch
The relationship between neural and behavioral evidence for animal consciousness is examined by critically reviewing two recent studies. One study on crows found different neural activity depending on whether a stimulus was reported as seen or unseen, but this implicates neural activity in consciousness only if a specific conditioned behavior is assumed to be a report of conscious experience. Another study on macaques recorded behaviors strikingly similar to patterns of conscious and unconscious perception in humans, yet confounds were only ruled out in human subjects, presupposing substantial neural similarity between humans and macaques.
Journal of Consciousness Studies
November 20, 2021
Lionel Naccache
The author agrees with Solms that consciousness is rooted in the brainstem's affective systems, but diverges from Solms' view that the cortex is merely a cognitive elaboration of these affects. The author proposes integrating Solms' key concepts—such as the role of the brainstem's ascending reticular activating system and the distinction between affective and cognitive consciousness—into the global neuronal workspace theory (GNWT). This integration would allow GNWT to account for both the felt, affective dimension of consciousness and the informational, cognitive processes that GNWT traditionally emphasizes.
Journal of Consciousness Studies
November 20, 2021
Michael Barkasi
Many scientists and philosophers assume that what we perceive is identical to what our brain's neural activity represents. This paper challenges that assumption by examining type-2 blindsight, a condition where people can respond to visual stimuli without consciously seeing them. The author argues that in such cases, the person's experience does not have the same content as the neural correlates—the brain represents the stimulus properties, but the person does not experience them. This suggests that the relationship between experience and neural content is more complex than simple identity, even if a deep connection exists.