arXiv Preprint Archive
February 2, 2023
Serge Kernbach, Olga Kernbach, Andreas Kernbach
Long-term focused attention with visualization and breathing exercises, central to some Eastern traditions, can produce persistent changes in body temperature. In experiments over five months involving 159 attempts and 2427 operator-sensor sessions, body temperature increased to 38.5 °C, and participants intentionally controlled core temperature trends up or down by 1.6 °C, with effects lasting over 60 minutes. External calorimetric sensors detected induced thermal fluctuations at the 0.001 °C level in 15 ml of water for 60–90 minutes. Repeatability exceeded 90%, and statistical tests rejected randomness. The findings confirm earlier reports of persistent thermal effects and suggest a biophysical dimension, possibly involving spin phenomena in biochemical systems, with implications for altered states of consciousness and neurohumoral regulation.
arXiv Preprint Archive
January 12, 2023
Charles Johnstone, Prashant S. Alegaonkar
Consciousness shapes how reality, including ourselves, is perceived and defines personal identity through experience. It is central to unresolved problems in physics, such as observation and the measurement problem, yet its nature, brain mechanisms, and universal location remain unknown, making it a key scientific challenge. This review examines physical processes linked to consciousness, including signal transmission in the brain, chains of events, quantum phenomena, and integrated information. It also discusses the roles of matter structure, fields, and universality. The authors propose further studies to improve understanding of consciousness.
arXiv Preprint Archive
December 8, 2022
Eduardo C. Garrido-Merchán, Javier Sánchez-Cañizares
Integrated information theory (IIT) proposes a quantitative measure, Φ, to estimate whether a physical system is conscious, its degree of consciousness, and the complexity of its experienced qualia. The theory models a physical system as a probabilistic causal graph of interconnected elements with input-output functions. This paper presents a random search algorithm that optimizes Φ to investigate how graph structure changes with increasing numbers of nodes to achieve higher Φ. The authors also discuss why more complex black-box search methods like Bayesian optimization or metaheuristics face difficulties for this problem and suggest future research directions to improve the search for maximal Φ.
arXiv Preprint Archive
October 26, 2022
Hana Hebishima, Mina Arakaki, Chikako Dozono et al.
A mathematical model of consciousness and will is proposed, starting with a neural-network simulation that confirms inverted qualia—subjective experiences that differ between individuals, making qualia unreliable as indicators of consciousness. To address this, a probability space and random variable are introduced over a set of qualia, defining a public language for events. Consciousness and will are modeled as future actions randomly selected from a comparison between external event recognition and past episodic memory, with actual action recognition constituting the occurrence of consciousness. A basic formula is derived, and the proposal is compared with prior philosophical discussions.
arXiv Preprint Archive
September 29, 2022
Xian Wang, Xiaoyu Mo, Mingming Fan et al.
A systematic review of 19 papers from IEEE and ACM databases examined how virtual reality technology is used in meditation research. The review found no existing guidelines or comprehensive reviews on conducting such studies. It analyzed meditation types, design considerations, and VR technologies employed in the eligible studies, and identified research opportunities and challenges for future work in this area.
arXiv Preprint Archive
September 26, 2022
Manvi Jain, C. M. Markan
Ten minutes of meditation improves executive control of attention in people who do not regularly meditate. Twenty-six novice participants completed a Stroop task, which measures cognitive control by introducing conflict, before and after a brief meditation intervention. Behavioral responses showed faster reaction times and greater accuracy after meditation. Neurophysiological recordings revealed more efficient allocation of attentional resources, with increases in positive ERP components (P200, P300) and a decrease in the inhibitory component (N200). The findings suggest that even short meditation sessions can positively impact attention in a non-meditating population.
arXiv Preprint Archive
September 16, 2022
Fay Dowker
The paper develops Rafael D. Sorkin's proposal that the birth of spacetime atoms in causal set quantum gravity, a partially ordered process, provides an objective physical correlate of the perception of time passing. It argues that a fully objective, external picture of this birth process is impossible because the order of birth is partial. The author proposes that live experience in causal set theory is an internal view of this objective process, where events that are neural correlates of consciousness occur. What animates a neural correlate of consciousness is the same process that animates the whole universe: the unceasing, partially ordered birth of spacetime atoms.
arXiv Preprint Archive
August 3, 2022
Eduardo C. Garrido Merchán, Sara Lumbreras
Phenomenal consciousness and computational intelligence are independent properties, so machines that solve problems like humans do are not necessarily conscious. The authors argue that problem-solving ability does not imply consciousness, and that machines may develop higher computational intelligence than humans without possessing phenomenal consciousness. They propose an objective measure of computational intelligence and examine its distribution across humans, animals, and machines, while treating phenomenal consciousness as a dichotomous variable. The independence of these traits has critical social implications, particularly regarding rights: if rights were granted based on problem-solving capacity, machines could be seen as having more rights than people with disabilities, which the authors reject.
arXiv Preprint Archive
July 28, 2022
Aline Viol, Gandhi M. Viswanathan, Oleksandra Soldatkina et al.
The physical basis of consciousness remains an open question. Using complex network theory, the study compared resting-state functional brain networks of individuals before and after ingesting the psychedelic brew Ayahuasca. The researchers calculated pairwise information parity to quantify statistical symmetries between brain region connectivity across the entire network. They detected an increase in average information parity in brain networks under psychedelic influence. Notably, information parity between regions of the limbic system and frontal cortex was consistently higher for all individuals while under the influence.
arXiv Preprint Archive
July 11, 2022
Matthieu Gilson, Enzo Tagliazucchi, Rodrigo Cofre
Consciousness depends on complex, irreversible brain dynamics that produce entropy. By fitting a statistical model to fMRI data and calculating entropy production, researchers found a monotonic relationship: entropy production decreases as people move from wakefulness to deep sleep. This suggests that entropy production is a robust signature of consciousness, linking conscious states to the thermodynamic activity of the brain.
arXiv Preprint Archive
June 28, 2022
Anton Arkhipov
Consciousness in physical systems arises from non-separability of degrees of freedom, with the amount of consciousness determined by the extent of this non-separability and the number of degrees of freedom involved. Non-interacting and feedforward systems have zero consciousness, while most interacting particle systems have low non-separability and consciousness. Brain circuits, with high complexity and weak but tightly coordinated interactions, support high non-separability and thus high consciousness. The hypothesis applies to both classical and quantum cases, and the Wigner function formalism (which becomes the Liouville density function in the classical limit) offers a framework for characterizing non-separability. The hypothesis aligns with Integrated Information Theory and Orchestrated Objective Reduction Theory and may help reconcile them.
arXiv Preprint Archive
June 10, 2022
Vadim Weinstein, Basak Sakcak, Steven M. Lavalle
This work identifies five core principles of enactivist cognitive science from the literature and builds a mathematical framework for modeling cognitive systems—both artificial and natural—that adheres to those principles. The framework avoids attributing contentful symbolic representations to agents and treats brain, body, and environment as an inseparable whole. The central concept is a sensorimotor system, a type of transition system. The authors introduce the notion of sufficiency as a foundational concept, prove a uniqueness theorem about minimal sufficient refinements (which correspond to optimal attunement of an organism to its environment), and relate sufficiency to existing concepts like sufficient history information spaces. The work aims to make enactivist ideas accessible to computer scientists, AI researchers, and psychologists, while providing philosophers a mathematical tool.
arXiv Preprint Archive
April 11, 2022
Jacob Jolij
Panpsychism, the view that consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality rather than a product of brain activity, offers an elegant solution to the mind-body problem but is often dismissed as untestable. This paper presents a panpsychist model that treats consciousness as a higher physical dimension, a speculative idea that nonetheless yields empirically testable predictions. While the model is likely wrong, its main purpose is to demonstrate how metaphysical theories of consciousness can be specified to allow scientific testing, thereby bridging the gap between philosophy and empirical science.
arXiv Preprint Archive
March 20, 2022
Pedro Resende
A space of qualia is defined as a sober topological space whose points are qualia and whose open sets are pure concepts, carrying algebraic structure that models subjective time and logical abstraction. This structure parallels that of a space of physical measurements. The authors conjecture that qualia and measurements share the same nature, corresponding to fundamental processes that produce and store classical information, making the hard problem of consciousness and the measurement problem two facets of the same issue. The space of qualia does not depend on spacetime or a conscious agent but yields a derived geometric model of an observer. Intersubjectivity is established by relating observers in a way that yields a logical version of quantum superposition.
arXiv Preprint Archive
January 14, 2022
Birgitta Dresp-Langley
Consciousness, unlike physical fields, cannot be objectively measured or located in space, limiting the explanatory power of field theories and neural theories. The phenomenon has no spatial dimensionality and any operational definition is partial. Drawing on research on meditation, expanded consciousness, chronic pain, healthy aging, and well-being, consciousness is conceived as a source of potential energy without spatial dimensions that produces observable changes over time. It may have evolved to help humans cope with unprecedented adversity, potentially including conscious planning of extinction when survival is no longer acceptable.
arXiv Preprint Archive
December 28, 2021
John Realpe-Gómez
The action-perception loop of embodied cognition means humans participate in what they perceive, raising the question of how scientists can obtain an observer-independent description of the world. Drawing on the philosophy of mind and a reverse-engineering of science and quantum physics, the authors conjecture that traditional embodiment can manifest aspects of imaginary-time quantum dynamics. They further argue that obtaining real-time quantum dynamics requires additional constraints: an embodied scientist must be described from the perspective of another scientist—a factor ignored in traditional embodied cognition—and observers play complementary roles as both objects experienced by others and subjects that experience other objects.
arXiv Preprint Archive
December 6, 2021
Refath Bari
Integrated Information Theory (IIT) attempts to mathematically formalize conscious experience, but its treatment of neuronal noise contradicts experimental evidence. IIT predicts that noise reduces information integration, yet data show that decision-related noise is essential for learning, visual recognition, and categorical representation. The theory must be reformulated to account for both the beneficial and detrimental roles of noise observed in the brain.
arXiv Preprint Archive
October 16, 2021
Iegor Reznikoff
The space of visual consciousness—what people see—has geometric and topological properties that differ from physical space. Using logical, mathematical, and physical arguments, the authors demonstrate that these properties cannot be derived from or reduced to physical laws alone. Because a part of consciousness (visual space) is irreducible to physics, the same holds for consciousness as a whole. The paper provides a formal logical proof of this irreducibility without relying on philosophical definitions, focusing instead on observable properties of visual experience.
arXiv Preprint Archive
October 13, 2021
Badis Ydri
This essay develops a quantum-dualistic interpretation of quantum mechanics, termed the Nietzsche-Jung-Pauli interpretation, which reimagines the Wigner-von Neumann interpretation and aligns with some readings of Bohr's quantum philosophy. It proposes that quantum reality, or "unus mundus," is both a physical, non-perspectival causal realm where the quantum-to-classical transition occurs via decoherence, and a quantum superposition of all classical psycho-physical perspectival realities governed by synchronicity and causality, corresponding to classical first-person observers. The interpretation does not identify the classical world-from-decoherence perceived with the classical world-in-consciousness perceived via collapse.
arXiv Preprint Archive
July 19, 2021
Sobhendu Kumar Ghatak
Meditation (dhyana) practiced by disciples of the Ramakrishna Mission alters heart rate variability, indicating improved autonomic nervous system dynamics. Analysis of ECG recordings using lagged Poincaré plots, principal component analysis, and autocorrelation shows that meditation reduces heart rate, increases stroke volume, and changes Poincaré parameters (SD1, SD2, SD12) in a nonlinear way. The slope and curvature of SD12 increase after meditation, and principal components of pre- and post-meditation data separate clearly. Entropy of R-wave fluctuations decreases, and heart rate fluctuations become more correlated. These changes suggest meditation improves heart rate dynamics and mental calmness.
arXiv Preprint Archive
May 17, 2021
David R. Glowacki, Rhoslyn Roebuck Williams, Olivia M. Maynard et al.
Virtual reality can create profound experiences of connection and ego dissolution comparable to psychedelic drugs, but without substances. In groundbreaking human-computer interaction (cs.HC) research, participants experienced their bodies as luminous energy forms in shared virtual spaces, allowing them to merge and connect with others in unprecedented ways. Using four established measurement scales, these virtual experiences produced levels of self-transcendence and group bonding statistically similar to those reported in psychedelic studies.
arXiv Preprint Archive
May 17, 2021
David R. Glowacki, Rhoslyn Roebuck Williams, Olivia M. Maynard et al.
A distributed virtual reality framework called Isness-D, in which groups of people co-inhabit a shared space as luminous, diffuse bodies, can produce self-transcendent experiences statistically indistinguishable from those induced by psychedelic drugs. In a citizen-science experiment with 58 participants across an international network, scores on four standard scales—ego-dissolution, inclusion of community in self, communitas, and mystical experience—were comparable to published psychedelic studies. The findings demonstrate that distributed multi-person VR can reliably blur self-other boundaries and create intersubjective experiences of merging with others.
arXiv Preprint Archive
May 5, 2021
David J. Chalmers, Kelvin J. McQueen
The idea that consciousness causes the collapse of the quantum wave function, once taken seriously by physicists such as John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner but now widely dismissed, is revisited by combining integrated information theory—a mathematical theory of consciousness—with continuous spontaneous localization, an account of quantum collapse dynamics. Simple versions of this combined theory are falsified by the quantum Zeno effect, but more complex versions remain compatible with empirical evidence. Versions of the theory can in principle be tested by experiments with quantum computers. The conclusion is not that consciousness-collapse interpretations are clearly correct, but that there is a research program here worth exploring.
arXiv Preprint Archive
April 16, 2021
Kynan Eng
A mathematical framework is introduced for measuring how one system estimates the consciousness of another, with the estimate always relative to the observer. The formulation resolves several key problems in consciousness studies by providing a relative, observer-dependent measure rather than an absolute one. The approach offers a way to compare consciousness across different systems, potentially including biological and artificial ones, by grounding the estimate in the observer's own structure and capabilities.
arXiv Preprint Archive
March 28, 2021
Ben Goertzel
A multi-decade theoretical exploration of artificial and natural general intelligence is reviewed, covering patternist philosophy of mind, formal definitions of intelligence, and a proposed high-level architecture for AGI systems. The review details how cognitive processes like logical reasoning, program learning, clustering, and attention allocation can be implemented within this architecture, emphasizing a common knowledge representation (typed metagraph) to enable cognitive synergy between processes. Human-like cognitive architecture is presented as a manifestation of these general principles, with discussions of machine consciousness and machine ethics. Practical lessons for implementing advanced AGI in frameworks like OpenCog Hyperon are briefly considered.