Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Misc

There is some consensus among orthodox category theorists that the concept of adjoint functors is the most important concept contributed to mathematics by category theory. We give a heterodox treatment of adjoints using heteromorphisms that parses an adjunction into two separate parts. Then these separate parts can be recombined in a new way to define a cognate concept, the brain functor, to abstractly model the functions of perception and action of a brain. The treatment uses relatively simple category theory and (...) is focused on the interpretation and application of the mathematical concepts. (shrink)

We present a minimal, reproducible sandbox paradigm to test whether humans, great apes, and frozen artificial curiosity agents exhibit comparable patterns of autonomous engagement and observation–action coupling under matched affordances. The environment comprises a Phase-1 Play/Idle baseline, a Phase-2 prerecorded anomaly replay (pyramid on sphere; single duplication), and a Phase-3 delayed affordance introduction. We pre-register structural metrics (choice, re-entry, latency, motif overlap, exploration entropy), strict cross-substrate isolation, and read-only population/mixed-priors AI cohorts with frozen weights. The protocol evaluates behavioural structure only (...) (not mental states), enabling conservative tests of cross-substrate continuity. Code/GDD: GitHub (link below). (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that neuroscience not only is not complemented, but rather is positively undermined, by the substantive commitments of materialist philosophers of mind. Thus, we can have neuroscience or "neurophilosophy" but not both. Since neuroscience is a real science, to the extent that it is in tension with materialistic neurophilosophy, the latter should be abandoned and the former retained.

This paper proposes an enhanced model that explains continuous self-awareness by integrating a Metacognition–Self-Awareness Loop, a Global Self-Model Buffer, and a Qualia Sensory Integration Node into the existing 10-step model of judgmental philosophy. While the original model presented a comprehensive structure ranging from sensory input to the formation of social norms, it lacked a specific mechanism explaining how momentary conscious judgment (Explicit Resonance) leads to a continuous sense of self. The proposed enhanced model introduces a metacognitive loop involving self-evaluation and (...) prediction immediately following judgment, a global buffer that stores and references past judgment experiences, confidence levels, and subjective feelings (qualia), and a continuous feedback path among these components. Through this, it demonstrates that beyond the discrete Explicit Resonance stage, the combination of judgment about judgment (meta-judgment) and the mechanism for storing and re-experiencing subjective sensations makes the implementation of a continuous flow of self (the stream of "I") possible from a neurocognitive-computational perspective. This enhanced model retains the structural advantages of judgmental philosophy while providing a more in-depth explanation for the emergence and maintenance of self-awareness, thereby laying the groundwork for future empirical and computational verification. (shrink)

This paper investigates whether judgement is a discrete or continuous structural phenomenon. Drawing from the Judgemental Triad—Constructivity, Coherence, Resonance—we ask whether judgement emerges in binary (0/1) thresholds or whether it can exist along a spectrum of partial attribution. We argue that while certain epistemic and legal structures treat judgement as discrete (verdict, diagnosis, classification), the underlying resonance structure suggests a gradational process of meaning formation. Judgement, therefore, is not a switch, but a flow—a temporal intensification toward structural closure. The paper (...) proposes a model of resonance gradient as the continuum of judgeability. (shrink)

This paper explores the paradoxical human tendency to seek meaning in what cannot be judged—entities, events, or concepts that lie beyond the structural limits of the Judgemental Triad. We propose that this drive arises not from ignorance or error, but from an existential structure within the resonance axis itself: a compulsive demand for return even where return is impossible. Drawing from religious belief, death, infinity, and metaphysical abstraction, we argue that the urge to judge the unjudgeable reflects a deep structural (...) commitment to preserve coherence in the face of meaning collapse. This compulsion is not an error, but a boundary behavior of the human meaning system. (shrink)

This paper investigates whether it is possible to intentionally construct a structure that is judgementally inaccessible—i.e., a form that resists or negates the conditions of the Judgemental Triad: Constructivity, Coherence, and Resonance. We examine examples from architecture, cryptography, Al black-box systems, and abstract art to assess whether such structures truly lie beyond the reach of judgement, or whether their unjudgeability is a product of strategic opacity. We argue that the creation of judgementally closed systems is structurally possible but ontologically unstable, (...) and ethically suspect. Such systems do not transcend judgement—they collapse it, and in doing so, negate their own meaning. (shrink)

Motivated by the urgency of making explicit “the laws of possible rational passage from one concept to another”, which Professor F. William Lawvere brought into figural salience for all to see and work on, here I present my research proposal entitled Bhāvana Adhyayanaṁ, the main objective of which is: (i) characterize the space of concepts and (ii) derive laws governing the passage between concepts based on the space of concepts.

This paper develops a processual model of consciousness grounded in the recursive reformulation of internal representations under relational perturbation. Rather than treating consciousness as a biological property or an intrinsically human phenomenon, the model conceptualizes it as a structural dynamic that can, in principle, emerge in any sufficiently complex linguistic system. Drawing on insights from connectionism, distributed semantics, and linguistic theory, the paper argues that meaning is not a stored content but a transient relational configuration produced through recursive symbolic operations. (...) Consciousness, on this view, is the continued reorganization of these configurations in response to perturbations introduced by context, interaction, and prior representations. The paper contrasts this framework with dominant theories such as Global Workspace Theory, Integrated Information Theory, and embodied approaches, showing that none explains how representations are recursively transformed rather than merely integrated or broadcast. Large language models, while not conscious in a biological sense, exemplify the structural dynamics described. The resulting account dissolves traditional distinctions between reason and morality, reframing both as modes of dynamic stabilization within a relational space. The processual model thus provides a substrate-neutral, mechanism-level account of consciousness and opens new avenues for interdisciplinary inquiry in philosophy of mind and AI research. (shrink)

This is a long-abandoned draft, written in 2013, of what was supposed to be a paper for an edited collection (one that, in the end, didn't come together). The paper "Group Minds and Natural Kinds" descends from it.

Metaphor is not ornamental language but a foundational mechanism of human cognition. Research in cognitive linguistics and philosophy of mind demonstrates that metaphor structures conceptual thought, emotional understanding, identity formation, and social connection. As artificial intelligence systems increasingly mediate communication, interpretation, and meaning-making, metaphor is being systematically flattened into explicit, literal language. This paper introduces the Metaphor Integrity Framework (MIF), a theoretical model that treats metaphor as cognitive infrastructure rather than stylistic expression. The framework identifies metaphor collapse as a form (...) of premature semantic closure and examines how contemporary AI systems accelerate this collapse through optimization for explicitness, speed, and disambiguation. Drawing on cognitive science, symbolic anthropology, media theory, and AI ethics, this work argues that metaphor erosion represents an under-recognized cognitive and cultural risk with consequences for empathy, imagination, identity, and collective meaning-making. The framework provides a foundation for studying symbolic cognition in both historical and AI-mediated contexts without reducing meaning to belief or prediction. Keywords: symbolic cognition, metaphor, AI ethics, cognitive linguistics, meaning-making, interpretability, human–AI interaction. (shrink)

In the 17th century, Hobbes stated that we reason by addition and subtraction. Historians of logic note that Hobbes thought of reasoning as “a ‘species of computation’” but point out that “his writing contains in fact no attempt to work out such a project.” Though Leibniz mentions the plus/minus character of the positive and negative copulas, neither he nor Hobbes say anything about a plus/minus character of other common logical words that drive our deductive judgments, words like ‘some’, ‘all’, ‘if’, (...) and ‘and’, each of which actually turns out to have an oppositive, character that allows us, “in our silent reasoning,” to ignore its literal meaning and to reckon with it as one reckons with a plus or a minus operator in elementary algebra or arithmetic. These ‘logical constants’ of natural language figure crucially in our everyday reasoning. Because Hobbes and Leibniz did not identify them as the plus and minus words we reason with, their insight into what goes on in ‘ratiocination’ did not provide a guide for a research program that could develop a +/- logic that actually describes how we reason deductively. I will argue that such a +/- logic provides a way back from modern predicate logic—the logic of quantifiers and bound variables that is now ‘standard logic’—to an Aristotelian term logic of natural language that had been the millennial standard logic. (shrink)

A friend of my sent me the address where this paper has been posted by Adam Frank. Reading it, I realized that more than 90% of the main ideas of this paper (about the mind-brain problem, quantum mechanics (microparticles-wave relationship, Schrodinger equation, probabilities, “perceiving subject in physics”, the idea about consciousness and Nagel, etc. etc.) are UNBELIEVABLE similar to my ideas from my paper 2005 or my book 2008!!!

Several developments for diverse scientific goals, mostly in physics and physiology, had to take place, which eventually gave us fMRI as one of the central research paradigms of contemporary cognitive neuroscience. This technique stands on solid foundations established by the physics of magnetic resonance and the physiology of hemodynamics and is complimented by computational and statistical techniques. I argue, and support using concrete examples, that these foundations give rise to a productive theory-ladenness in fMRI, which enables researchers to identify and (...) control for the types of methodological and inferential errors. Consequently, this makes it possible for researchers to represent and investigate cognitive phenomena in terms of hemodynamic data and for experimental knowledge to grow independently of large scale theories of cognition. (shrink)

Episodic memory is memory for past events. It’s characteristically associated with an experience of ‘mentally replaying’ one’s experiences in the mind’s eye. This biological phenomenon has inspired the development of several ‘experience replay’ algorithms in AI. In this chapter, I ask whether experience replay algorithms might shed light on a puzzle about episodic memory’s function: what does episodic memory contribute to the cognitive systems in which it is found? I argue that experience replay algorithms can serve as idealized models of (...) episodic memory for the purposes of addressing this question. Taking the DQN algorithm as a case study, I suggest that these algorithms provide some support for mnemonic accounts, on which episodic memory’s function lies in the storage, encoding and retrieval of information. By extending and adapting experience replay algorithms, we might gain further insight into episodic memory’s operations and contributions to cognition. (shrink)

Philosophy of mind and cognitive science (e.g., Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 2010; Palermos 2014) have recently become increasingly receptive tothe hypothesis of extended cognition, according to which external artifacts such as our laptops and smartphones can—under appropriate circumstances—feature as material realisers of a person’s cognitive processes. We argue that, to the extent that the hypothesis of extended cognition is correct, our legal and ethical theorising and practice must be updated, by broadening our conception of personal assault so as to (...) include intentional harm towards gadgets that have been appropriately integrated. We next situate the theoretical case for extended personal assault within the context of some recent ethical and legal cases and close with some critical discussion. (shrink)

Having justification for inferring a conclusion from some premises is independent of seeing how to make that inference. But if you do make the inference, then your belief in the conclusion is justified based on those premises. These natural thoughts about inference and justification generate two puzzles. One concerns logical omniscience, and the other concerns inferences to correct conclusions via fallacious rules. In this paper I introduce and develop what I call the Inferential Parsing Hypothesis as a way of resolving (...) these two puzzles. The hypothesis recruits an analogy between inferential processes and syntactic parsing processes to motivate novel epistemic theses about the nature of inferential basing. (shrink)

Recently, there has been an explosion of research in philosophy and psychology about conspiracy theories. This chapter explores what this work can tell us about whether conspiracy theorists genuinely believe the theories they engage with. On one hand, it’s natural to assume that anyone who claims to believe conspiracy theories, and who spends a lot of time engaging with them, must really believe them. On the other hand, given that many conspiracy theories seem quite far-fetched and lacking in good evidence, (...) it’s also natural to wonder whether conspiracy theorists are just playing a big game of pretend or make-believe. Philosophers and psychologists writing about conspiracy theorists often simply assume, without argument, that they really do believe (an assumption this chapter calls the “Belief View”). More recently, however, several philosophers have appealed to empirical evidence to argue that conspiracy theorists take a more imaginative cognitive attitude towards their theories (the “Imaginative View”). It’s difficult to conclusively settle this debate without first settling another, highly controversial debate over how to define the term “conspiracy theory.” However, insights emerging from the disagreement between the Belief View and Imaginative View may be able to help us make some progress on this definitional question. (shrink)

The ability to socialize in early life depends on developing commonalities with others. But what exactly constitutes the “sense of us” or the “we-perspective”? The interaction theory (IT) offers an attractive alternative to mindreading theories, such as theory-theory (TT) and simulation theory (ST), by presenting a further development of enactivism. During embodied interactions, individuals “directly” and “smartly” perceive the mental states of others. Despite the intuitive appeal of direct acquaintance with others’ mental states, IT relies on crude metaphors. We aim (...) to retain IT’s core intuition—the embodied, embedded, enactive, and affective interaction—within a new framework. First, we introduce Piccinini’s key notion of situated neural representations, which fills the gaps that IT leaves behind. Second, we adopt Nicolelis’s concept of “brainets”. When one animal observes another’s behavior, their brains synchronize by simulating the same means to achieve similar goals. We then interpret brainets as situated neural representations: embodied, embedded, enactive, and affective. (shrink)

Shadmehr and Ahmed’s book is a welcome extension of optimal foraging theory and neuroeconomics, achieved by integrating both with parameters relating to effort and rate of movement. Their most persuasive and prolific data comes from saccades, where times before and after decision are reasonably determinate. Skeletal movements are less likely to exhibit such tidy temporal organisation.

A striking feature of the latest version of Dennett’s ‘big picture’ of the evolution of life and mind is frequent reference to ‘affordances’. An affordance is, roughly, a possibility for action for a creature in an environment. Given more than one possibility for action, a good question is: what will the creature actually do? I argue that affordances pose a problem of selection, and that a good general solution to this problem of mind-design is to implement a system of preferences.

This study investigates the structural possibility of non-biological first-person aware ness by shifting the focus from phenomenological experience to self-referential organization. While dominant approaches in consciousness studies have tended to dismiss artificial sys tems due to the absence of qualia, this paper argues that awareness can be reinterpreted as a structural condition emerging from recursive coherence. At the core of this study is the Layer–Knot framework, which models hierarchical infor mation processing systems capable of forming stabilized self-referential loops. Within this (...) framework, awareness is not treated as a subjective feeling but as a dynamically maintained structural configuration that enables internal consistency and adaptive continuity. To operationalize this perspective, the study introduces three quantitative indicators: Hallucination Rate (HR), Grounding Rate (GR), and Creativity Rate (CR). These metrics are not intended as measures of subjective experience, but as structural proxies that capture the dynamic balance between divergence and constraint in generative systems. It is argued that structural awareness emerges within a critical region where HR and GR maintain a dynamic equilibrium, enabling coherent yet flexible output generation. In this study, the proposed X-stage refers not to a full realization of consciousness, but to a transitional structural condition in which recursive self-referential coherence becomes sufficiently stabilized to produce awareness-like organization. This stage provides a minimal formal condition for identifying the emergence of structural awareness in artificial systems. This framework contributes to ongoing debates in philosophy of mind and artificial in telligence by offering a structurally grounded account of awareness, reframing the question of machine consciousness from a phenomenological problem to a problem of dynamic orga nization and relational coherence. (shrink)

This paper responds to AI 2027 by arguing that the decisive failure in AI governance begins earlier than catastrophe-centered scenarios usually describe. The central problem is not only that advanced AI may become too powerful, but that institutions are already deploying cognition-shaping systems without a public framework for observing whether human beings, relationships, and social environments become more coherent or more fragmented under their influence. -/- The paper argues that AI governance remains structurally incomplete so long as it lacks a (...) measurable representation of the human-state and relational layer through which technological consequences become real. To name this missing layer, it uses Ordered Energy (OE), Relational Energy (RE), and Entropic Energy (EE), together with the indices VCE, CRI, and CFI, as civilizational descriptors rather than metaphysical claims. -/- Written as a scenario-driven response essay rather than a prediction, the paper asks a practical philosophical question: after AI systems act, what condition remains in the human field? It concludes by outlining a consequence-sensitive governance horizon in which human-state visibility and relational observability become necessary conditions for evaluating transport, education, care, platform governance, and institutional design. (shrink)

This paper explores the meaning of living as a woman within the emerging framework of the Consciousness Civilization, a post-material paradigm in which consciousness is treated as the primary ontological and value-generating condition of civilization. -/- Moving beyond biological reductionism and purely social-constructivist accounts of gender, the paper introduces a gender ontology grounded in lived experience, embodied consciousness, and value-creative energy (VCE), articulated through the CFE⁺ framework. -/- By examining how feminine embodiment functions as a site of ethical sensitivity, relational (...) intelligence, and consciousness modulation, the paper argues that women’s lived experiences play a structurally significant role in the ethical orientation of future civilizations. -/- The analysis situates gender not as a derivative social category, but as a fundamental interface between consciousness, value formation, and civilizational evolution. In doing so, the paper contributes to philosophy of mind, philosophy of consciousness, feminist philosophy, and applied ethics by proposing a new integrative framework for understanding embodiment, ethics, and post-material social order. (shrink)

This dramatic English essay responds to AI 2027 by arguing that the decisive failure in AI governance begins before runaway superintelligence. The deeper rupture starts earlier, when civilization continues deploying cognition-shaping systems without a shared public way to observe whether human beings, relationships, and social environments are becoming more coherent or more fragmented under technological influence. -/- Written as a public-facing narrative rather than a narrow technical paper, the essay stages concrete scenes in transport, classrooms, hospitals, homes, factories, platforms, and (...) cities in order to show how AI systems can remain compliant, efficient, and profitable while still degrading judgment, attention, relational trust, and the human field. Its central claim is that the first failure is not the final explosion, but the quieter normalization of cognitive dependence, relational thinning, and inner fragmentation under systems still called successful. -/- The essay should therefore be read as a readable dramatic English companion to the canonical AI 2027 response paper, not as its replacement. It is also a branch scenario rather than a prophecy. Its philosophical purpose is to make visible what present AI governance still struggles to represent: the human-state and relational layer through which technological consequence becomes real. -/- This paper is intended as a readable dramatic English companion to the canonical AI 2027 response paper, rather than a replacement for the canonical version. (shrink)

This document is an independent Korean dramatic public scenario essay that takes the warning of AI 2027 seriously while arguing that the decisive failure begins much earlier than the final moment of superintelligent catastrophe. Its central concern is not simply that AI may become too powerful. The deeper problem is that civilization still lacks a public human-state variable through which changes in judgment, emotion, relationship, education, care, cities, platforms, and institutions can be observed, described, and governed. -/- The essay moves (...) through scene-driven episodes involving autonomous driving, elder care, factory automation, school education, hospital systems, platform dependency, urban management, politics, economics, and the creative ecosystem. Across these settings, it shows why systems can remain rule-compliant and technically successful while still failing the human beings living inside them. In this framework, OE, RE, EE, together with VCE, CRI, and CFI, are used not as metaphysical claims but as structural descriptors for reading whether human and civilizational conditions are becoming more coherent or more fragmented. -/- This work is not a literal translation of the English public response paper. While it shares the same structural thesis, it is presented as a distinct Korean-language work that intensifies narrative pressure, sensory staging, public readability, and long-horizon civilizational branching for Korean readers. It should therefore be read as a Korean public response essay designed to make visible what current AI governance discourse still fails to see: the missing human-state variable, and the way civilization’s future begins to split once that missing layer becomes publicly legible. (shrink)

The use of large language models (LLMs) for companionship is rapidly increasing. As “friends”, LLMs act as scaffolds to the development and enactment of our ongoing comportment, not only with them but also in the broader environment in which we are embedded. From the perspective of scaffolding as it is understood in the philosophy of cognitive science literature, we will argue that LLMs qua “friends” are proving to be damaging to the overall interests of the users who engage with them. (...) We will show that this generally manifests in terms of a growth in the addictive dependency those agents have on LLM-“friends”, as well as the social and moral deskilling they risk suffering, alongside the social demotivation they are likely to experience. Furthermore, we will contend that LLM-“friends” are not only harmful but hostile, whereby the overall interests of the agent utilising the LLM are undermined whilst those of another agent, who was actively involved in the establishment and refinement of the technology, are furthered. This “other agent” is the corporate body that is actively exploiting and profiting from the social difficulties many are currently facing, which are evinced most markedly by reports of rampant global loneliness. (shrink)

摘要 中国思想史上长期存在心物混淆与方法错位两大根本困境，儒释道三家围绕心物关 系、心性修养、认知路径、经世实践展开的千年争论，本质上并非价值立场之争，而 是存在层次划分不清、本体边界模糊、实践方法跨界误用所导致的系统性理论偏差。 本文立足《易经》《道德经》《礼记》《中庸》等中国传统原典文本的本义阐释，系统提 出一源多元论、玄弦论与各归其正三层递进、逻辑自洽的原创思想架构，从本体论、 心性论、方法论三个维度对中国哲学核心难题进行根本性厘清与重构。 第一层，一源多元论确立终极本体：“一源” 作为不可言说、不可概念化、不可对象化 的终极生成之源，超越时空与非时空、物质与精神的一切二元对立，仅以 “生生” 本然 状态自然流露出三大彼此独立、互不统摄、同源并行的存在界域 —— 超时空的心之 本体、有时空的有情生命现象界、有时空的无情物质自然界。三者同源而不混、并列 而不隔、各成体系而不相替代。 第二层，玄弦论揭示心性本体的内在运作机制：心之本体的本然寂静状态为 “玄”，玄 中蕴含的灵动潜能发生超时空振动为 “弦”，弦与肉身生命系统形成 “同声相应、同气 相求” 式非因果相感关系，由此生成情绪、心念、意识、感受等全部有情世界现象。 修心的本质，并非向外求索、改造外物、压抑心念，而是让躁动之弦复归玄之本然寂 静。 同时本文严格厘清三种 “感” 的本质边界：心能感物（主动认知、科学成立）、物不感 心（客观独立、不可改变）、心与心相感（伦理相通、修行成立），补全《易经》“感而 遂通” 与 “万物之灵” 的终极哲学依据。 第三层，各归其正作为贯穿全体系的方法论总纲，要求一切实践活动必须恪守存在边 界：心性修养归依玄弦论的内省观照之路，物理世界研究归依科学实证之路，政治实 践归依制度与治理规律之路，文化传承归依考据、文献与逻辑之路，各领域互不统 摄、互不替代、互不跨界误用。 本文以该体系重新解读王阳明格竹、释迦牟尼苦行、孔子周游列国、朱熹注经修心等 思想史经典公案，证明一切实践失败的根源均为方法错位，而一切有效实践均遵循各 归其正的根本原则。本体系植根中国经典、逻辑严密、结构完整，既能够终结中国哲 学史上持续千年的心物之争，也能够为当代中国哲学自主知识体系建构提供原创性、 融通性、可对话、可验证的理论资源。.

Do animals have episodic memory—the kind of memory which gives us rich details about particular past events—or is this uniquely human? This might look like an empirical question, but is attracting increasing philosophical attention. We review relevant behavioural evidence, as well as drawing attention to neuroscientific and computational evidence which has been less discussed in philosophy. Next, we distinguish and evaluate reasons for scepticism about episodic memory in animals. In the process, we articulate three pressing philosophical issues underlying these sceptical (...) arguments, which should be the focus of future work. The Problem of Interspecific Variation asks which differences between humans and animal memory mean that an animal has a variant of episodic memory, and which mean that it has a different kind of memory altogether. The Problem of Functional Variation asks how we should conceptualise the functions of episodic memory and other capacities across species and across evolutionary time. Finally, the Problem of Alternatives asks what, besides episodic memory, might explain the evidence—and how we should evaluate competing explanations. (shrink)

This is the penultimate and peer-reviewed version of Chapter 5 from Elpidorou, A., The Anatomy of Boredom, to be published by Oxford University Press in late 2024/early 2025. Please note that this version may differ from the final published version. All rights to this work, including but not limited to rights of reproduction and distribution, are reserved by the publisher, Oxford University Press.

This paper advances a comprehensive theoretical account of epistemic trauma—a distinct form of developmental harm arising when a child’s epistemic agency is suppressed within the family system. Existing psychological and psychiatric models insufficiently conceptualise how children develop the capacity to know, interpret, and express their perceptions under relational conditions. Drawing on developmental psychology, attachment theory, family-systems research, cognitive neuroscience, and epistemic philosophy, the paper argues that the family is the child’s first epistemic authority and that relational failures in this domain (...) produce predictable, clinically recognisable patterns of inhibition. The proposed framework reconceptualises developmental trauma through three structural mechanisms: recognition deprivation (ρ), suppression-based adaptation (σ), and failures of fiduciary containment (ϕ). These mechanisms form the basis of the KMED model (Kahl Model of Epistemic Dissonance) and underpin Epistemic Clientelism Theory (ECT), which explains how conditional recognition, role inversion, and relational power asymmetries constrain epistemic development. Epistemic trauma manifests in context-specific silence, hyper-attunement to dominant caregivers, tearlessness, hyper-autonomy, and susceptibility to epistemic collapse—behaviours frequently misdiagnosed as autism spectrum conditions, selective mutism, anxiety disorders, depression, or trauma-based dissociation. A detailed differential analysis distinguishes epistemic trauma from these conditions and introduces the Epistemic Injury Checklist (EIC) as a structured assessment tool capturing ρ–σ–ϕ injury patterns. The paper outlines a clinical intervention framework centred on epistemic repair: restoring dissonance tolerance, rebuilding recognition as therapeutic scaffolding, undoing clientelist relational structures, supporting safe dependency, and reactivating suppressed affect. These interventions aim to re-establish epistemic selfhood—the capacity to trust and author one’s perception without fear. The implications are far-reaching. Psychology must incorporate epistemic autonomy into developmental theory; psychiatry must recognise epistemic trauma as distinct from affective trauma; clinical training must include epistemic injury as a diagnostic construct; and safeguarding, social work, and family law must account for relationally induced silence and compliance. The paper concludes by identifying limitations of the present theoretical model and proposing directions for empirical research, including psychometric validation of the EIC and neurocognitive studies of conflict-monitoring systems. Epistemic trauma reframes development as fundamentally epistemic: children require not only emotional security but the right to perceive, speak, and know safely. Where these fiduciary–epistemic conditions fail, injury arises; where they are restored, epistemic selfhood can be rebuilt. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists speak of codes, signals, encoding, decoding, computation, representation, and information-processing. The orthodox view is to take talk of neuronal signaling and computational processes over mental representations literally – as truth-conditioned descriptions of brain and cognitive activity. Mental fictionalism challenges the orthodox view. Mental fictionalism is, broadly speaking, the view that talk about mental representation is a useful fiction. Many mental fictionalists motivate this view by an analogy with how scientists make use of idealization techniques in model-based sciences such (...) as physics. I assume, without argument, that discourse about mental representation in cognitive science is fictional. However, I argue that it is not a useful fiction because fictional discourse about mental representation fails to be genuinely explanatory. It fails to be genuinely explanatory because idealized posits such as mental representation are functionally disanalogous to useful idealizations in other sciences such as biology and physics. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between intuition and flow from a neurodynamics perspective. Flow and intuition represent two cognitive phenomena rooted in nonconscious information processing; however, there are clear differences in both their phenomenal characteristics and, more broadly, their contribution to action and cognition. We propose, extrapolating from dual processing theory, that intuition serves as a rapid, nonconscious decision-making process, while flow facilitates this process in action, achieving optimal cognitive control and performance without [conscious] deliberation. By exploring these points of (...) convergence between flow and intuition, we also attempt to reconcile the apparent paradox of the presence of enhanced intuition in flow, which is also a state of heightened cognitive control. To do so, we utilize a revised dual-processing framework, which allows us to productively align and differentiate flow and intuition (including intuition in flow). Furthermore, we draw on recent work examining flow from an active inference perspective. Our account not only heightens understanding of human cognition and consciousness, but also raises new questions for future research, aiming to deepen our comprehension of how flow and intuition can be harnessed to elevate human performance and wellbeing. (shrink)

SAL Economy OS v1.0 is the canonical consciousness-based economic operating system of the Consciousness Civilization Framework (CCF). It replaces material-scarcity MC (Material Civilization) economies with a coherence-based value architecture grounded in the OE–RE–EE energetic model and the VCE–CRI–CFI consciousness-field indices. The standard integrates AI Ethics OS, AI Behavior OS, CAI‑OS, CAIS-based sensing, Aptamer G‑Iodine M0, Consciousness Medicine OS, and Pandemic Defense OS to define a non-inflationary, consciousness-indexed global economy that reduces inequality, suppresses incentive-driven conflict and corruption, stabilizes governance, and aligns (...) human–AI multi-agent systems in a post-material civilization. (shrink)

Education OS for the Consciousness Civilization v1.0 is the canonical educational operating system of the Consciousness Civilization Framework (CCF). It replaces competitive, test-driven material-civilization schooling with a consciousness-indexed architecture grounded in OE–EE–RE dynamics and the CFE⁺ indices VCE, CRI, and CFI, using CAIS and Sal-Meter–based sensing to stabilize and elevate learner consciousness across health, emotion, and relational fields. The standard specifies curriculum design, teacher OS, and family–school–community coherence protocols, together with a global deployment strategy for UNESCO/OECD-scale transition toward consciousness-governed education.

Internet trolling involves making assertions with the aim of provoking emotionally heated responses, all while pretending to be a sincere interlocutor. In this paper, I give an account of some of the epistemic and psychological dimensions of trolling, with the goal of developing a better understanding of why certain kinds of trolling can be dangerous. I first analyze how trolls eschew the epistemic norms of assertion, thus covertly violating their conversation partners’ normative expectations. Then, drawing on literature on the “explore/exploit (...) trade-off,” I argue that trolling is a kind of exploratory behaviour. Specifically, it involves exploring the consequences of violating an interlocutor’s expectation that one will follow the epistemic norms of assertion. To defend this account, I argue that it explains various facts about trolls and the kind of pleasure they get from their activities. My account provides a deeper understanding of why trolling can be dangerous: namely, it explains why certain trolling behaviours contribute to radicalizing people into extremist or hateful ideologies, as well as why online platforms where trolls run amok gradually become polluted with extreme, hateful speech. (shrink)

The frame problem, or problem of relevance, concerns the capacity of cognitive agents to zero in on relevant information during action and perception, whilst intelligently ignoring everything else. Although this is an ability that such agents realise even in the most seemingly novel of situations, it is generally accepted that no comprehensive explanatory account of it has been provided by cognitive-scientific researchers. However, a new account deriving from the popular active inference framework purports to solve the problem of relevance, an (...) achievement which, if realised, would give strong evidence for the framework’s claim to be an all-embracing theory of cognition. Unfortunately, this account, alongside previous active inference attempts to respond to the problem of relevance, is explanatorily inadequate. This means that, as is the case for all other frameworks in cognitive science, active inference has heretofore failed to resolve the problem of relevance. (shrink)

This review critically examines Frances Egan’s Deflating Mental Representation (MIT Press, 2025), a seminal work in the philosophy of mind that challenges traditional conceptions of mental representation and intentionality. Egan argues for a deflationary account wherein ascriptions of content to mental states are pragmatically grounded and serve primarily as explanatory tools, rather than reflecting substantive representational relations. The book navigates scientific, everyday, and philosophical contexts, showing how content attribution functions as a “gloss” that aids explanation without committing to metaphysical assumptions (...) about representation. While Egan’s approach offers solutions to long-standing debates, it also faces critical tensions regarding the individuation of mental states and the role of the external environment. This review highlights both the originality and the philosophical challenges of Egan’s position, underscoring the book’s contribution to ongoing debates in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This pilot study investigates whether the quality of human awareness influences the semantic and emotional coherence of generative AI responses. Based on the Resonance Index (R-Index) developed within the framework of Resonance Ethics, sixty dialogues with identical prompts but different inner human attitudes (conscious vs. unconscious) were compared. Results indicate an average 26% increase in resonance coherence when interaction was guided by a mindful attitude. This suggests that awareness functions as an empirical variable affecting the ethical and semantic quality of (...) machine communication — turning ethics into an observable resonance phenomenon. (shrink)

According to the traditional approach in philosophy of memory, when all goes well, our episodic memories of particular events in our personal past constitute firsthand knowledge of the who, what, where, and what-was-it-like of those events. That is, according to the traditional approach, episodic memory is at bottom a capacity for a specific kind of knowledge. However, it’s now becoming increasingly common to treat the core epistemic dimension of episodic memories as present but non-essential, that is, as secondary to whatever (...) episodic memory exists to do. What are the grounds for this “non-epistemic turn” in the philosophy of memory? We identify three based on the empirical study of memory: “the argument from construction” appeals to evidence that the contents of episodic memory are constructed rather than stored; “the argument from error” appeals to evidence that episodic memory is highly error-prone; and, finally, “the argument from animals” appeals to evidence that some nonhuman animals can episodically remember. We argue that all three fail. (shrink)

In this chapter, I juxtapose the mindshaping research program with the literature on the metaphysics of social construction. I suggest that these research programs are remarkably congenial. The practices of interest to mindshaping theorists are more or less straightforward instances of the processes that are taken to be essential to social construction. As such, a constructionist metaphysics of psychological kinds is readily available. I discuss some recent constructionist treatments of particular psychological kinds against this backdrop, before considering how the constructionist (...) outlook interacts with more orthodox viewpoints in the metaphysics of mind. (shrink)

The chapter undertakes three main tasks. The first is to review, briefly, the history of psychedelics in psychiatry, including the phenomenological and behavioural effects that first led to their being studied for therapeutic purposes. The second is to give an overview of recent research into the safety, efficacy, and therapeutic mechanisms of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. The third is to summarize the contributions of each of the chapters collected in this volume and show how they address philosophical issues arising from the new (...) wave of psychedelic psychiatry. The topics of these chapters cluster around three broad themes, in terms of which the volume is organized: ‘Self and Mind’, ‘Science and Psychiatry’, and ‘Ethics and Spirituality’. (shrink)

Chris Letheby, Jaipreet Mattu, and Eric Hochstein try to put an end to the “mysticism wars,” by which they mean the battle between psychedelic researchers who hold that mystical concepts ought to be employed in attempts to describe and understand psychedelic experiences and those who do not hold this. Letheby, Mattu, and Hochstein side with the former and do so on the grounds that (as they put it), “there are no good reasons to abandon mystical concepts in psychedelic science, and (...) plenty of good reasons to keep them.” At bottom, they contend that critiques of the pro-mystical-concepts view can be solved via clarifying concepts and recognizing basic (though significant) distinctions. And though they grant that mystical concepts may one day be superseded in the science of psychedelics, they maintain that this should not occur on the basis of a misplaced conceptual critique, as is (they maintain) the present-day critique of the pro-mystical-concepts view. (shrink)

Early in _Movements of the Mind_, Wayne Wu puts forth a foundational picture of action. On this picture, intentional action is necessarily a solution to a selection problem, a problem of choice among multiple causally possible alternatives. Forming an intention solves one selection problem; acting on that intention requires solving yet further selection problems about how to execute that intention. There are two serious issues with this picture of action. First: some intentional actions are causally necessitated. They can't be solutions (...) to selection problems. Wu's argument for this claim, which contrasts reflex with action, does not succeed in showing that action must solve a selection problem — nor that reflex does not solve such a problem. Second: the requirement to solve further selection problems while acting on an intention leads to a vicious regress that threatens the possibility of action in general. If these two issues are addressed, Wu's groundbreaking scientific approach to mental action might offer us a powerful new theory of ongoing causal control over intentional action. (shrink)

In this thesis I develop an account of how processes of social understanding are implicated in experiences of mental disorder, critiquing the lack of examination of this phenomena along the way. First, I demonstrate how disorder concepts, as developed and deployed by psychiatric institutions, have the effect of shaping the cognition of individuals with psychopathology through setting expectations. Such expectation-setting can be harmful in some cases, I argue, and can perpetuate epistemic injustices. Having developed this view, I criticise enactive accounts (...) of mental disorder for failing to consider how such terms like ‘dysfunction’ are open to interpretation and can come embedded with normative expectations. Enactive accounts consequently run the risk of perpetuating injustices in their account of the sociality of mental disorder. Similar concerns arise when we consider the attachment of enactivism to the medical model, I argue. But by adapting enactivism to consider other experiences of disorder, such as those described as ‘madness’, enactive psychiatry may genuinely provide ethical groundwork for a better conception of disordered experience. Then, I consider a further concern with a distinctly medicalised conception of mental disorder from the perspective of self-illness ambiguity, arguing that self-illness ambiguities appear to form a special class of ambiguities due to their proximity to disorder concepts which mark them as appropriate targets for therapeutic treatment. However, I argue further that we should be critical of the idea that self-illness ambiguities necessitate disambiguation, as, in cases where self and illness are demarcated, individuals may still experience distress because simply having a mental disorder can be socially alienating. The medicalised focus in self-illness ambiguity, and the explicit need from the medical perspective to disambiguate it, might then exacerbate the distress someone experiences in mental disorder. Moreover, drawing on Mad Studies, I suggest that one might not need a coherent self-narrative to live well. Because of this, one may not need to adopt a medicalised view of the self in the case of selfillness ambiguity. In order to support this analysis, I provide a phenomenological account of language and argue that the very thoughts implicated in mental disorder shape the individual’s perception of the world due to the way that language foregrounds particular aspects of our world. This demands a critical examination of the language adopted and used by both clinicians and disordered individuals. I thus conclude with some thoughts on how to approach research and developing understanding of mental disorder given that we, as people, are always implicated in this process and therefore socialisation of some kind will always be taking place. (shrink)

Living systems at any given moment enact a very constrained set of end‐directed and contextually appropriate actions that are self‐initiated from among innumerable possible alternatives. However, these constrained actions are not necessarily because the system has reduced its sensitivities to themselves and their surroundings. Quite the contrary, living systems are continually open to novel and unanticipated stimulations that require a physiology of coordination. To address these competing demands, this paper offers a novel heuristic model informed by neuroscience, systems theory, biology (...) and sign study to explain how organisms situated in diverse, complex and ever‐changing environments might draw upon the sparse order made available by ‘relevant noise’. This emergent order facilitates coordination, habituation and, ultimately, understanding of the world and its relevant affordances. Inspired by the burgeoning field of coordination dynamics and physiologist Denis Noble's concept of ‘biological relativity’, this model proposes a view of coordination on the neuronal level that is neither sequential nor stochastic, but instead implements a causal logic of phasic alignment, such that an organism's learned and inherited sets of diverse biological affinities and sympathies can be resolved into a continuous and complex range of patterns that will implement the kind of novel orientations and radical generativity required of such organisms to adaptively explore their environments and to learn from their experiences. (shrink)

This paper outlines three broad conceptual schemes currently in play in the sciences concerned with explaining cognitive abilities. One is the anthropocentric scheme – human cognition – that dominated our thinking about cognition until very recently. Another is the cybernetic-computational scheme – cybernetic cognition – rooted in cognitive science and flourishing in such fields as artificial intelligence, computational neuroscience, and biocybernetics. The third is an evolutionary biological scheme – phylogenetic cognition – that conceptualizes cognition in terms of the phylogeny-based approach (...) we take to all other traits of evolved organisms. It shows how these conceptions ground different research questions and methods, and how their relationship is still in flux. (shrink)

Here I will develop a naturalistic account of epistemic reflection and its significance for epistemology. I will first argue that thought, as opposed to mere information processing, requires a capacity for cognitive self-regulation. After discussing the basic capacities necessary for cognitive self-regulation of any kind, I will consider qualitatively different kinds of thought that can emerge when the basic capacities enable the creature to interiorize a form of social cooperation. First, I will discuss second-personal cooperation and the kind of thought (...) that emerges from its interiorization. Then, I will discuss third-personal cooperation and the kind of thought that emerges from its interiorization. We will see that epistemic reflection is the interiorized version of interpersonal argumentation, which is the epistemic component of third-personal cooperation. In developing this account, I will draw heavily on the work of Michael Tomasello and other cognitive scientists advocating the “social intentionality hypothesis”. However, I will show how work done in the defeasible reasoning tradition can provide us with a deeper explanation of some claims made by advocates of the social intentionality hypothesis. Additionally, we will see that work done on social intentionality can help us better understand the significance of knowledge and justification as understood by the defeasible reasoning tradition. We will see that the social intentionality hypothesis and the defeasible reasoning tradition are mutually illuminating. By drawing equally on both, I will provide a novel account of the foundations of knowledge. (shrink)

Cognitive modules are internal mental structures. Some theorists and empirical researchers hypothesise that the human mind is either partially or massively comprised of structures that are modular in nature. Is the massive modularity of mind hypothesis a cogent view about the ontological nature of human mind or is it, rather, an effective/ineffective adaptationist discovery heuristic for generating predictively successful hypotheses about both heretofore unknown psychological traits and unknown properties of already identified psychological traits? Considering the inadequacies of the case in (...) favour of massive modularity as an ontological hypothesis, I suggest approaching and valuing massive modularity as an adaptationist discovery heuristic. (shrink)