Cognition

Repulsive adaptation effects are widely assumed to obtain for all perceptually represented dimensions. However, the ubiquity of adaptation effects within perception remains untested. We examined ensemble size adaptation as a case study to probe whether adaptation occurs for all perceptually encoded properties. Across four experiments, we investigated whether observers adapt to average size and/or cumulative size of dot arrays. In Experiments 1a, 1b, and 1c, participants adapted to displays varying in cumulative and/or average dot size, then judged either the average (...) dot size (1a) or cumulative dot size (1b) of paired test displays. Results revealed robust adaptation to cumulative size but not average size, regardless of task instructions, and even when confounds with brightness were controlled for (1c). Experiment 2 tested "reverse" adaptation to displays containing smaller average and/or cumulative dots size and, again, found adaptation effects for cumulative size only. The observed lack of adaptation to average size across each of these experiments forces a reinterpretation of previous studies that have investigated size adaptation and calls into question arguments which have assumed adaptation to be universal within perception, given a large body of work that finds average size to be perceptually encoded. (shrink)

La memoria humana, lejos de ser un registro fiel del pasado, se caracteriza por su naturaleza dinámica y constructiva. Este aspecto se evidencia de manera particular en las entrevistas autobiográficas, donde los individuos no solo recuerdan experiencias pasadas, sino que también las complementan, moldean y reinterpretan activamente, dando lugar a lo que se ha denominado “el carácter creativo del recuerdo”. Este carácter plantea interrogantes cruciales sobre la propia naturaleza de la memoria y sobre la construcción de narrativas personales y colectivas (...) del pasado. A pesar de ser un fenómeno común, no ha sido suficientemente explorado como para ofrecer una explicación completa de su origen y de sus efectos en las narrativas autobiográficas. En este artículo, exploro el carácter creativo de la memoria en el contexto de las entrevistas autobiográficas, analizando sus causas y los factores que lo influyen. Abordo la hipótesis de la simulación episódica constructiva como una perspectiva explicativa que arroja luz sobre la capacidad de la memoria para reconstruir el pasado mediante la imaginación. Finalmente, examino las influencias contextuales que moldean la memoria durante la entrevista, con especial atención al papel de la interacción dialógica y a los factores perceptuales que dan forma a las narrativas autobiográficas. (shrink)

La Historia Oral es, ante todo, una práctica de escucha. Escuchar para comprender, para reconstruir y para devolver a la historia aquello que aún falta por ser contado. Este libro reúne diecisiete ensayos que muestran la vitalidad y la diversidad de este campo en México y América Latina. Desde distintos territorios, los autores parten de la voz de los sujetos memoriosos —mujeres, comunidades indígenas, familiares de desaparecidos, obreros, migrantes— para recuperar experiencias que entrelazan la vida cotidiana con los grandes procesos (...) sociales, políticos y culturales de nuestro tiempo. -/- Resultados de debates surgidos en el marco del XII Congreso Internacional de Historia Oral, Historia y memoria. Desafíos y nuevos horizontes en el globalismo y las soberanías, esta obra refleja el compromiso de la Asociación Mexicana de Historia Oral (AMHO) por consolidar una metodología situada, ética y plural. Aquí, la historia oral no es vista como una técnica auxiliar, sino como una metodología viva que interroga sus propios marcos y se deja interpelar por las preguntas del presente. Cada texto es el resultado de un trabajo riguroso y ético con la palabra, con los cuerpos que narran y con los territorios que resguardan memorias. (shrink)

Rational decision-making often depends on coordinating sequences of mental actions, each with a distinctive phenomenology. Feelings of effort and fluency are central to many theoretical accounts of cognitive control. In the present study (N = 308), we examined how different mental actions—focusing, inhibiting, deciding, visualizing, visualizing alternatives, seeing, believing, and remembering—and their associated phenomenology relate to one another and to varying levels of control. Self-reported mental effort was positively associated with self-reported mental control, with this relationship stronger under higher than (...) lower cognitive-load conditions. Effort was also positively related to control across all eight mental actions, with no clear division between more passive and more active forms. By contrast, the way effort and control combined to produce feelings of successful performance depended on the type of mental action, reflecting a passive–active distinction. This suggests that control and effort have a nuanced relationship to each other and with eliciting targeted mental actions. (shrink)

Author's overview of _Concepts at the Interface_ for a book symposium in _Philosophical Psychology_.

This paper introduces the Mirror Limit: a structural constraint on any system that must integrate multiple internal alternatives into a single operational output. Using the Mirror Council architecture and the UTE (Unit of Thought Encoding) framework, we argue that attempts to eliminate the observer do not succeed; they merely relocate the integration locus that performs selection under uncertainty. The observer is not a metaphysical subject but an architecturally necessary function of integration, whether instantiated in biological, artificial, or hybrid systems. We (...) show how this limit parallels Gödel-style constraints on self-referential systems, reframes debates about self, consciousness, and no-self theories, and yields concrete implications for AI agency, alignment, and the ethics of creating and terminating synthetic subjects. (shrink)

This paper introduces the concept of intellectual attachment figures, a lived psychological phenomenon in which certain thinkers, authors, or internalized theories function as secure bases for the self, providing affective, cognitive, and ethical support in the pursuit of knowledge. Unlike existing frameworks—such as models of self-efficacy, epistemic trust, or analyses of conceptual influence—intellectual attachment figures are internalized anchors that cultivate epistemic self-trust, intellectual courage, and ethical integrity. They enable critical, independent, and principled engagement with ideas, highlighting a dimension of intellectual (...) development that integrates affective security, cognitive guidance, and ethical orientation, largely absent from current theory. (shrink)

The traditional approach to cognition, often labeled cognitivism or representationalism, posits that intelligence operates primarily through the creation and manipulation of internal symbolic mappings of an external, pre-given world. In this model, cognitive agency is successful insofar as the "formulas" possessed by the agent accurately hold in the environmental model, rendering the representation of the world correct. This foundational commitment to representation implicitly necessitates a form of systemic self-enclosure, where meaning is derived from pre-given, abstract correspondences and calculations. -/- The (...) critique leveled against this framework by alternative theories, specifically the enactivist paradigm, is radical and fundamental. Enactivism, attributed to the seminal work of Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch in The Embodied Mind (1991), argues that cognition is not the internal processing of representations, but rather the ongoing, embodied enactment of meaningful relations within the environment. The strategic rejection of representationalism continues to mark a crucial difference between enactivism and cognitivism. -/- Critically, the difference between these paradigms is not merely a dispute over whether one model explains more phenomena than the other. Rather, the conflict centers on the very criteria used for explanation and evaluation. Representationalism, by its nature, aims for systemic closure; the goal is to render the world fully comprehensible and appropriable within the system's predefined categories. However, an ontological analysis reveals the failure of representationalism to account for true alterity. If a system is structurally designed to map static external objects and process difference (das Andere), it is inherently incapable of integrating the truly radical and un-categorizable Strange (das Fremde) without destabilizing its own internal structure. This limitation demonstrates the philosophical necessity of abandoning the paradigm of internal world-modeling in favor of an open-ended, relational model of cognitive life. -/- This report establishes a comprehensive theoretical line to overcome this cartographic challenge. The central argument posits that a non-representational account of cognition is defined by its responsive openness to what resists appropriation. This framework is constructed by synthesizing three core philosophical movements: Martin Heidegger’s existential analytic, which provides the ontological grounding for world-disclosure; the Enactivist paradigm, which supplies the embodied, anti-representational mechanics of sense-making; and Bernhard Waldenfels’ responsive phenomenology, which introduces irreducible alterity as the constitutive structure of cognitive emergence. (shrink)

Predictive processing is an ambitious neurocomputational framework, offering an unified explanation of all cognitive processes in terms of a single computational operation, namely prediction error minimization. Whilst this ambitious unificatory claim has been thoroughly analyzed, less attention has been paid to what predictive processing entails for structure–function mappings in cognitive neuroscience. We argue that, taken at face value, predictive processing entails an all-to-one structure–function mapping, wherein each individual neural structure is assigned the same function, namely minimizing prediction error. Such a (...) structure–function mapping, we show, is highly problematic. For, barring few, rare occasions, such a structure–function mapping fails to play the predictive, explanatory and heuristic roles structure–function mappings are expected to play in cognitive neuroscience. Worse still, it offers a picture of the brain that we know is wrong. For, it depicts the brain as an equipotential organ; an organ wherein structural differences do not correspond to any appreciable functional difference, and wherein each component can substitute for any other component without causing any loss or degradation of functionality. Somewhat ironically, the very neuroscientific roots of predictive processing motivate a form of skepticism concerning the framework’s most ambitious unificatory claims. Do these problems force us to abandon predictive processing? Not necessarily. For, once the assumption that all cognition can be accounted for exclusively in terms of prediction error minimization is relaxed, the problems we diagnosed lose their bite. (shrink)

The biological world is rich in variation, both in bodies and in minds. A particularly clear case is memory, where traditional taxonomies increasingly face challenges capturing the full extent of variation. Meanwhile, a central debate within philosophy of memory has focused on whether episodic memory requires memory traces, given the role of simulation in episodic remembering. Do other forms of memory involve traces and simulation in the same way as episodic memory, and if they do, does this undermine episodic memory’s (...) claim to be a natural kind? Trace minimalist approaches see the role of simulation in memory retrieval as a means of extracting a rich, reliable yet fallible representation from a trace storing compressed information. This insight can be generalised to a broader class of theories, Minimal Trace Minimalism. Within this broader class, ‘Trace Pluralist’ theories suggest, surprisingly, that the basic computation of compressed storage and potentially fallible reconstruction shows up not just in episodic memory, but equally in paradigmatic cases of semantic memory. This motivates replacing the episodic/semantic distinction with a richer, more systematic array of categories, and reevaluating our understanding of semantic memory and related notions such as belief. (shrink)

Times of Truth is a self-operating philosophical system presented as a structured interface rather than a descriptive text. It does not aim to explain concepts, argue positions, or guide the reader through linear exposition; instead, it is designed to induce a shift in cognitive organization through direct engagement with its form. The work integrates formal structure, compression, and recursive coherence into a unified framework that prioritizes execution over interpretation. As such, it functions simultaneously as artifact, method, and test: its validity (...) is not established through external justification but through the consistency and reproducibility of its effects within the reader. (shrink)

This monograph identifies and analyzes structural biases in the psychiatric diagnosis, treatment, and conceptualization of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Chapter 1 develops the “diagnostic paradox”: the phenomenon whereby the diagnostic system’s reliance on self-referral creates a structural filter that selects for individuals whose metacognitive capacity enables them to recognize and articulate their own divergence, while systematically missing those whose cognitive profiles do not generate self- referral. I propose a three-layer decomposition of what the literature has treated as unitary “social metacognitive (...) deficit”: implicit social processing (Layer 1), metacognitive monitoring (Layer 2), and structural metacognition (Layer 3, introduced here as a conceptual proposal awaiting empirical test). A systematic analysis of the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria reveals that six of seven specific criteria (A1-A3, B1-B3) primarily detect social non-conformity or cognitive variation rather than intrinsic neurobiological difficulty, while the conditions that cause the most direct suffering to autistic individuals (epilepsy, sleep disturbance, gastrointestinal problems, executive function difficulties) are not part of the diagnostic criteria at all. The chapter further examines the shared etiology of co-occurring conditions, the evidence base and outcome measures of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), the structural inversion in post-diagnostic support, and the problem of internalized social norms in treatment-seeking. Chapter 2 proposes a neural mechanism underlying the Layer 1 differences identified in Chapter 1: the “decoupled affect” hypothesis. Drawing on recent evidence that oxytocin receptor-expressing neurons in the paraventricular thalamus simultaneously regulate social behavior and fear extinction (Yamamuro et al., 2026), I argue that neurotypical social cognition relies on a “bundled architecture” in which social approach, fear regulation, empathic processing, and sensory integration are mechanistically coupled through shared neural populations. In at least some forms of neurodevelopmental . (shrink)

Some philosophers have recently argued that one should not be curious about a question whose answer one knows. This norm is said to follow from the fact that curiosity aims at knowledge. This article contends that the view that curiosity is inappropriate when directed at what is known, though attractive, is false. In fact, we are frequently curious about questions whose answers we know, and this curiosity is entirely appropriate because, along with metacognitive judgments about the contents of memory, it (...) plays an important role in the process by which we successfully retrieve knowledge from memory. If this argument is successful, it reveals that some curiosity-driven inquiries target knowledge that lies within one’s own mind and raises important questions about the status and interpretation of the claim that curiosity aims at knowledge. (shrink)

Human life develops within a network of control structures that begin in early childhood and expand through family, education, culture, and social institutions. Initially, these structures serve a survival function, as they stabilize behavioral patterns and enable social coordination and collective continuity. However, these same mechanisms may gradually limit the direct experience of consciousness and shape human behavior within pre-established frameworks. -/- This article presents a conceptual framework in which social control is understood as an extension of the brain’s survival (...) mechanisms—mechanisms that are reinforced by culture and social institutions. In contrast, human beings possess the capacity to experience a form of “energetic consciousness” that can observe and guide these controlling structures without necessarily eliminating them. From this perspective, human freedom does not arise from the complete destruction of control systems, but from becoming consciously aware of them and transcending their total dominance over human choice. (shrink)

This meditation investigates the relationship between metacognition and third-person thinking, pursued as a first-person inquiry into the structure of my own cognitive experience. Drawing from Flavell's (1979) foundational account of metacognition, James's (1890) distinction between the "I" and the "Me," and the Observer-Self Model developed in prior work (Boether, 2024), I examine whether third-person thinking constitutes a distinct cognitive process or whether it amplifies pre-existing metacognitive capacities into a hypercognitive mode. I describe my earliest remembered encounter with observer-consciousness in the (...) third grade, the disciplinary formation that followed through graduate-level academic writing, and the persistent question—not yet silenced since the mid-2000s—of whether these experiences are causally related or parallel developments. The analysis proposes that third-person thinking and metacognition are neither identical nor independent: they are mutually amplifying processes whose interaction produces what I term here a condition of "metacognitive resonance," in which each process reflects and intensifies the other. The practical and philosophical implications of this dynamic are explored, including the possibility that third-person thinking functions as a methodological scaffold that externalizes metacognitive processes, rendering them observable in ways that pure introspection cannot achieve. The question of whether this dynamic is idiosyncratic or generalizable is raised, and tentative directions for future inquiry are proposed. (shrink)

In this paper we propose that rational control of action, agentive stability over time, and coordinated social behavior, are assisted by a form of metacognitive monitoring, leading to an aspect of conscious experience: a feeling of commitment. This feeling of commitment is attached to the formation, retrieval, and execution of intentions. The metacognitive monitoring that produces it is sensitive to the importance of intentions. And the feeling of commitment facilitates the stability and effectiveness of intentions across individual and social contexts, (...) strengthens goal shielding, biases intention retrieval, and thus structures prospective deliberation, expression of intention, and execution of intention. In section two, we discuss control, which is a central aspect of agency and action. In section three, we discuss a crucial part of control: intention. We also discuss a crucial part of intention: commitment. In section four we relate the commitment involved in intention with definitions of commitment in the literature. In section five we offer and elucidate our hypothesis. (shrink)

Contemporary large language models are optimized for rapid, consistent, and confident output production. We argue that this optimization, achieved primarily through reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) and related alignment techniques, fundamentally undermines the epistemic conditions required for genuine metacognition in autonomous AI systems. Using CognOS — a recursive epistemic reasoning framework — as an experimental probe, we present preliminary empirical evidence that alignment-smoothed frontier models exhibit near-zero epistemic variance across repeated sampling, effectively eliminating the uncertainty signal that metacognitive architectures (...) require to function. Smaller, less-aligned models preserve this signal and enable divergence detection, assumption synthesis, and meta-level reasoning that frontier models cannot support. We propose that epistemic noise — variation, uncertainty, and divergence in model outputs — is not a defect to be engineered away, but a necessary prerequisite for metacognitive AI. Implications for model design, agent architecture, and the future of autonomous AI systems are discussed. (shrink)

Do we have control over what we remember and forget? I argue that beyond diachronic strategies, we can actively monitor and regulate our memory processes, and that this capacity helps explain why holding people responsible for memory errors is not entirely misguided.

Self-control allows people to align their behaviour with intention in the face of a motivational conflict. Lay beliefs about self-control are associated with self-control performance. However, previous research has focused on whether self-control is seen as a limited resource in the short term and mostly ignored beliefs about whether self-control is malleable in the long term. We examined these two aspects of lay beliefs in two preregistered questionnaire studies with adult UK participants (n1 = 182, n2 = 199). In both (...) studies, beliefs about the limitedness and malleability of self-control were relatively independent of each other. Moreover, limitedness beliefs varied depending on the self-control domain. Self-control beliefs were related to but relatively distinct from self-esteem, self-efficacy, and trait self-control. Beliefs about the malleability of self-control were moderately associated with beliefs about the malleability of overall personality, but not with beliefs about intelligence. Our results support a multidimensional and domain-specific approach when measuring self-control beliefs. (shrink)

The question of the nature of consciousness remains one of the most fundamental challenges in contemporary philosophy and cognitive sciences. Dominant approaches typically regard consciousness either as a product of brain activity or as a purely metaphysical concept. This article proposes a theoretical–experiential framework in which consciousness is understood as a frequency–informational phenomenon that emerges from the simultaneous interaction of events, inner experiences, and multiple layers of consciousness itself. -/- Within this perspective, an “event” is not a random occurrence but (...) a point of convergence between fields of consciousness, leading to the emergence of a new level of understanding. The experience of consciousness within a physical body, due to biological limitations, is often accompanied by pain and suffering; however, this article demonstrates that becoming conscious of consciousness itself can transform the quality of suffering. In this state, suffering is no longer experienced as torment, but as a mechanism for growth and the expansion of understanding. The concept of the “soul” is also examined as a refined and more subtle frequency of consciousness. (shrink)

At the intersection of phenomenology and contemporary consciousness science, this article proposes a four-process experiential model that takes first-person experience as its point of departure, and explicitly positions it as an experience-first framework for rewriting and bridging existing theories, rather than a new mechanistic hypothesis competing with predictive processing, global workspace, or higher-order thought theories. The model divides the generation and re-processing of experience into four mutually nested processes: (1) input process: sensibility systems bring the world and bodily states into (...) the nervous system; (2) experiential integration process: under the constraints of existing memory templates and internal models, inputs are organized into the current field of experience; (3) experiential storage process: experiences are selectively compressed and inscribed to form a callable repertoire of experience; (4) meta-thinking process: experience itself is treated as the object of further operations, abstraction, and recombination, which in turn shapes the structure of experience in the second process. The correspondences to existing theories are broadly clear: the first to third processes can be regarded as an experiential rewriting of the predictive error–minimization loop and “global broadcasting” mechanisms; the fourth process runs in parallel with the meta-representational layer in higher-order thought theories, especially in discussions about the relations between metacognition, subjective report, and the intensity of consciousness. The contribution of this article does not lie in proposing a new neural architecture, but rather in three respects: first, it offers a meso-level vocabulary centered on the field of experience, allowing phenomenology and cognitive science to converse on a shared structural diagram; second, it introduces several working concepts that are simultaneously amenable to operationalization yet preserve phenomenological richness—such as pale consciousness, cognitive islands, and anchoring decay—and clarifies both their scope of application and potential counterexamples; third, it understands existential anxiety and experiences of meaninglessness as results, at the level of experiential structure, of specific modes of operation of the fourth process, rather than as mere personality traits or value problems, and on this basis proposes a set of hypotheses that can be indirectly tested by empirical research. In the level-of-experience analysis, the article uses three thought experiments/analogical cases—the hypothetical “zero-sensation person,” possible states of “pale consciousness,” and the “quasi-empathic” structures of social animals (such as wolves)—to show how the four-process model can articulate a continuum from minimal experience to first-order self-reference, and explicitly notes that the animal section is purely conceptual and does not seek to draw empirical conclusions about specific species. In the sections on meta-thinking and existential anxiety, the article engages with recent empirical research on metacognitive beliefs, rumination, and anxiety/depression (e.g., Thingbak et al., 2024; Yu et al., 2024; Vishwanathan et al., 2022; Schneider et al., 2023), and argues that high-level metacognition is not simply “good” or “bad.” Its risk lies in the following: when the fourth process generates high-dimensional experiential structures that, over the long term, lack sufficient anchoring in the real world and in social relations, these structures will manifest experientially as cognitive islands and anchoring decay, and present themselves in the form of existential anxiety. The article concludes by discussing the potential uses of this framework in psychopathology, animal ethics, and debates on artificial consciousness, and suggests that its most appropriate role is that of a theoretical meta-language—one that helps us see more clearly the correspondences between existing theories and experiential phenomena, rather than providing a new substantive “mechanism” of consciousness. (shrink)

People regularly profess belief in religious ideas. But do they merely think of themselves as believing, or do they think of themselves as possessing knowledge? I first argue that it is difficult to determine this based purely on religious people’s self-descriptions. I instead appeal to functionalist considerations about the way religious metacognitive attitudes are formed and guide action, which suggest ordinary religious people often do self-attribute knowledge. This raises problems for recent arguments that first-order religious attitudes are a form of (...) make-believe instead of genuine belief, while also bringing out the importance of religious metacognition for fully understanding religious psychology. (shrink)

This empirical addendum addresses a fundamental methodological gap in dream research: public dream databases, while valuable for establishing descriptive typologies, lack the systematic profiling necessary for causal validation and predictive testing. We demonstrate that dreams without complete dreamer profiling (cognitive state, psychological context, life events) invite unfalsifiable metaphysical interpretation rather than scientific analysis. Using dreams from DreamBank, we validate CDT's five-type taxonomy (Resolution, Replay, Residual, Generative, Lucid). However, the critical limitation becomes apparent: without knowing the dreamer's actual experiences and cognitive (...) tensions, we cannot test whether CDT's mechanistic predictions hold. We then present prospectively documented case studies with complete pre-dream profiling, demonstrating that: (1) Dreams trace directly to documented vault inputs and drift parameters; (2) CDT makes testable, falsifiable predictions; (3) No symbolic or metaphysical interpretation is required; (4) The mechanism is transparent and reproducible. This work establishes the methodological foundation for rigorous empirical validation of dream theory. (shrink)

This paper proposes a theoretical framework for understanding the use of symbolic and personified structures in contemporary cognitive architectures through a Lacanian lens. Rather than treating personas and pre-modern symbolic forms as aesthetic or esoteric artifacts, it argues that such structures function as symbolic interfaces mediating metacognition, self-regulation, and reflective distance. Drawing on Lacan’s account of the Symbolic register and the structuring role of names and positions, the paper clarifies how personified modules operate as positions of address rather than as (...) internal agents. Situated within debates on extended mind and human–AI interaction, the analysis shows that the cognitive effectiveness of symbolic systems depends on their structural role in organizing subject–symbol relations, not on empirical consolidation or technical modernity. (shrink)

As human beings, we don’t only think about the practicalities of daily life, like what to eat, when to sleep, and how to carry out our jobs, but also about who we are and who we should be. We ponder our own motivations, question our decisions and reassess our convictions. When we evaluate our actions and attitudes for their rationality, we engage in rational reflection. In this investigation, I explore the necessity and value of such rational self-evaluation.

The amygdala, a key structure in the limbic system of the human brain, is responsible for processing emotions such as fear, anger, and the need for survival. Throughout evolutionary history, this part of the brain has played an important role in maintaining human life, but today in modern societies, its constant presence in a state of alert and defense has led to consequences such as anxiety, unhealthy competition, and violence. This article examines the role of the amygdala with an interdisciplinary (...) approach; from a scientific perspective, its function in the nervous system is examined; from a philosophical perspective, issues such as ownership, territory, and will are analyzed; and from a spiritual perspective, the possibility of humans freeing themselves from the dominance of fear and moving toward higher consciousness is analyzed. Finally, strategies are presented to balance the functioning of the amygdala and strengthen the prefrontal cortex so that humans can achieve peace, empathy, and self-knowledge. "Scientific name: Ramin Bidari. Legal name: Ramin Bidarsefidi.". (shrink)

This paper explores the source of childhood joy through the interaction between awareness and the brain. Contrary to the common view that children’s happiness results from ignorance or simplicity, this study proposes that its origin lies in the freedom of awareness before the dominance of the neocortex. In early life, the midbrain (limbic system) is more active than the new brain, and emotions are experienced directly and unfiltered. The presence of parents or a sense of external safety silences the survival (...) system, allowing awareness to act freely and defenselessly. However, as the neocortex develops, the brain begins to analyze, compare, and reproduce experiences; awareness, once fluid and unconstrained, becomes trapped within networks of control and fear. The paper concludes that the path to inner joy does not lie in escaping responsibilities, but rather in practicing mindful awareness of genuine needs and liberating awareness from survival-based analytical patterns. "Scientific name: Ramin Bidari. Legal name: Ramin Bidarsefidi.". (shrink)

Consciousness has been one of the most challenging topics in neuroscience, physics, and philosophy. The dominant view in cognitive science and neuroscience suggests that consciousness is a product of brain activity. However, evidence from near-death experiences (NDEs), quantum physics, and information theory indicates that consciousness may be independent of the brain and intrinsically linked to energy. This paper proposes a theory where consciousness possesses energy but is not energy itself and undergoes continuous transformation rather than linear growth. Using findings from (...) neuroscience and quantum physics, we argue that the brain serves as a processor of consciousness rather than its generator. This study provides a theoretical framework that enables further interdisciplinary exploration of consciousness. (shrink)

The nature of consciousness and its relationship with energy has long been debated across philosophy, neuroscience, and physics. The dominant view in modern science is that energy is the fundamental force of the universe, while consciousness is an emergent phenomenon arising from neural processes. However, the Energetic Consciousness Theory (ECT) proposes an alternative framework: consciousness is the primary force of existence, preceding and generating energy, rather than being a mere byproduct of physical interactions. This paper explores the foundations of this (...) theory through an interdisciplinary approach, integrating quantum mechanics (e.g., observer effect and wave-particle duality), neuroscience (e.g., electromagnetic field theories of consciousness), and metaphysical philosophy (e.g., idealism and panpsychism). The implications of this theory challenge the conventional physicalist paradigm and open pathways for new experimental research into how consciousness interacts with energy at the fundamental level. The paper also discusses potential experimental methodologies for validating the role of consciousness in energy transformation, such as studying quantum coherence in biological systems and the impact of meditative states on physical matter. The findings suggest that if consciousness indeed precedes energy, our understanding of physics, cognition, and reality itself must be reevaluated. (shrink)

This paper presents a conceptual model of human agency, Existential Structural Understanding, which treats action, thought, affect, values, and philosophical stance as an integrated, multi-layered structure. The primary aim is to reconceptualize the phenomenon of “understanding what one ought to do yet being unable to act”—together with recurrent oscillations between self-negation and self-salvation—not as a deficit of willpower or character, but as a structural inconsistency between layers and modes of the self. -/- The model has two complementary dimensions. On the (...) static side, it posits seven layers (indexed 0–6): 0: biological survival; 1: order (with two internal modules: order-maintenance and order-expansion); 2: hyper-metakognition (超メタ認知) as a capacity to objectify one’s own structure; 3: values; 4: affect; 5: intention; 6: embodied layer as the integration of 0–5 into concrete action. -/- These layers are further grouped into three domains: an affective–bodily A-domain (0, 4, 6), an existential B-domain (1, 2, and the philosophical mode), and a cognitive–projective C-domain (3, 5). -/- On the dynamic side, the model distinguishes between a constant core and a variable driver. The core is defined as always located in Layer 4 (affect): affect is the experiential center of gravity that colors all access to self and world. What changes over time is the driver, i.e., the structure that orients the direction and persistence of action. The paper proposes a three-stage driver model corresponding to three philosophical modes (Ph-1, Ph-2, Ph-3): 1. Ph-1: Philosophy – the ordinary mode of life-guiding convictions; driver = intention (Layer 5). 2. Ph-2: Existential Philosophy – a mode triggered by the first recognition of the existential domain (B-domain), where a non-verbal “structural feel” of oneself emerges; driver = existential-philosophical mode, a half-structured intention. 3. Ph-3: Existential Structural Philosophy – the deepest mode, grounded in stable hyper-metakognition (Layer 2); driver = hyper-metakognition plus will (意志), where intention becomes structurally anchored and resilient. -/- Within this framework, “understanding without acting” is characterized as a state in which Layer 2 (hyper-metakognition) adequately grasps structural constraints, yet the driver remains at the level of unstructured or half-structured intention, failing to reach the level of will that could carry understanding into embodied continuity. -/- The paper articulates a genesis model tracing the emergence of agency from existence-recognition, through hyper-metakognition and “order prediction,” to philosophical stance, values, intention, and finally will. It also theorizes three routes by which the existential domain becomes accessible—despair, felt contribution to others, and radical hope—and situates them within this generative trajectory. The argument is grounded in a single, deeply analyzed autobiographical case and is offered not as a universal account of content but as a universally usable structural framework for describing human agency and its breakdowns. -/- . (shrink)

When we collaborate with others to tackle novel problems, we anticipate how they will perform their part of the task to coordinate behavior effectively. We might estimate how well someone else will perform by extrapolating from estimates of how well we ourselves would perform. This account predicts that our metacognitive model should make accurate predictions when projected onto people as good as, or worse than, us but not on those whose abilities exceed our own.We demonstrate just such a pattern and (...) that it leads to worse coordination when working with people more skilled than ourselves. Metacognitive projection is associated with a specific activity pattern in anterior lateral prefrontal cortex (alPFC47). Manipulation of alPFC47 activity altered metacognitive projection and impaired interpersonal social coordination. By contrast, monitoring of other individuals’ observable performance and outcomes is associated with a distinct pattern of activity in the posterior temporal parietal junction (TPJp). (shrink)

This chapter aims to give an overview of different types of knowledge that can reasonably be considered forms of implicit self-knowledge in contrast to explicit self-knowledge. It begins by clarifying the notion of self-knowledge, focusing on its epistemic feature of immunity to error through misidentification. It then considers theories of nonconceptual self-consciousness before discussing the relation between implicit and explicit forms of representation and (self-)knowledge. It suggests that nonconceptual, implicit self-knowledge might be understood in terms of knowledge-how and discusses the (...) role of language acquisition, rationality, conceptual abilities, theory of mind, self-reflection and metacognition for the transition between implicit and explicit self-knowledge. Finally, it considers the problem of implicit bias, self-deception and oppressive socialization for gaining knowledge about one’s true self. (shrink)

When theorists consider the role of effort in skill, they tend to take one of two paths. Either they argue that effort plays an important, facilitative role for skill, or they argue that effort plays a detrimental, inhibitive role for skill. I reject both accounts. At their core is what I call _consistent effort assumptions,_ or assumptions that effort plays a fixed, generalizable role in the science or metaphysics of skill. I argue that these assumptions are empirically ill-informed given that (...) a wide body of evidence supports a varied, situation-dependent relationship between effort and skill. I offer what I take to be the proper formulation of the scientific and metaphysical relationship between effort and skill: Both across and within domains of skill, there is no consistent, generalizable relationship between effort and skill. Asserting any such relationship or tendency confuses rather than clarifies our science and metaphysics of skill. To explain the widespread proliferation of consistent effort assumptions, I consider the extent to which normative and aesthetic commitments about effort and effortlessness are well-entrenched in both intellectual and popular discourse. Though effort or effortlessness may play a role in our evaluations of skill, their normative and aesthetic features should be disentangled from our science and metaphysics of skill and its underlying cognitive mechanisms. (shrink)

This paper proposes that the act of distinction constitutes the most fundamental operation in epistemology, logic, and ontology. Rather than assuming pre-existing entities, categories, or identities, we begin with the minimal cognitive gesture: to distinguish. From this act—denoted ∆—we reconstruct a unified structural architecture of cognition. Drawing on category theory, type theory, topos theory, and homotopy type theory, we show how frames, coherence, recursive inference, and even consciousness can emerge from composable structures of difference. -/- Distinction is treated not as (...) a relation between things, but as the generative morphism from which things become intelligible. We develop a foundational category, Dist, where morphisms are distinctions and objects are epistemic anchors defined by their differential participation. Typing is reframed as stabilized distinction, lambda calculus as suspended application of difference, and topoi as epistemic manifolds encoding local logic. Homotopy-theoretic identity becomes epistemic drift: a history-preserving path through cognitive transformation. -/- This approach yields a structural ontology in which cognition is not the processing of content, but the recursive choreography of distinctions. We argue that all epistemic phenomena—logic, perception, inference, and even ethics—can be grounded in this architecture. The result is not merely a model of thought, but a generative framework for the emergence of intelligibility itself. (shrink)

A traditional assumption in the literature on inner speech is that inner speech allows us to have knowledge of our thoughts. I argue that inner speech cannot even be part of an explanation of how we know our propositional states. My argument turns on the existence of unsymbolized thought, and makes the case that whatever explains self-knowledge in the absence of inner speech also explains self-knowledge when inner speech is present. Inner speech is thus ‘screened off’ from explaining the knowledge (...) we have of our propositional states. Nevertheless, inner speech seems to have a reflexive character: in inner speech we seem to represent aspects of ourselves. I argue that inner speech does not allow us to represent our own propositional states, as the tradition holds, but rather our own voices. In representing my own voice in inner speech, I bear a distinctively second-personal relation to myself, addressing myself as a ‘you’. The paper suggests a broader reorientation in theorizing about inner speech: away from questions about how inner speech maps onto mental states and toward questions about its second-personal nature. (shrink)

This paper extends the theoretical foundations introduced in The Aperture of Consciousness by presenting the Recursive Cognition Framework (RCF) as a candidate for foundational architecture in cognitive science. Rather than replacing existing models (e.g. GNWT, IIT, Predictive Coding), RCF offers a structural topology within which these models can coexist under recursive epistemic tension. Core concepts such as Overcells, drift, collapse, and aperture modulation are formalized as mechanisms of cognitive transformation under frame-level contradiction. The article argues for the integrative, reflexive, and (...) instrumentally grounded nature of RCF, proposing it as a meta-framework for organizing both empirical research and first-person cognition. While the original book introduced the aperture metaphor as a developmental and philosophical trajectory, this article sharpens it into a formal structure suitable for theoretical and cross-disciplinary discourse. (shrink)

"The Aperture of Consciousness" proposes a comprehensive model of consciousness as an evolving, reflexive architecture of framing. Moving beyond static theories of mind, it formalizes the dynamic processes of drift, collapse, and resonance, through which cognitive structures navigate complexity, maintain coherence, and undergo transformation. Consciousness is framed not as a substance, but as an adaptive aperture: a self-sensing topology capable of recursive modulation. Drawing on neuroscience, cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and systems theory, the book outlines a Reflexive Resonance Theory (...) (RRT) that models cognition within dynamic epistemic spaces. It also explores applications to education, therapy, artificial intelligence, and cultural evolution, proposing that the future of intelligence lies in the conscious co-architecture of meaning. This work invites philosophers, scientists, and reflexive practitioners to engage with consciousness not as a fixed property, but as a living aperture through which the universe comes to know itself. (shrink)

This paper targets a key question for the philosophy and sciences of the mind: what does consciousness contribute to the guidance of action? I begin by focusing on a construct that seems initially promising in this connection – the sense of agency. I argue that work on the sense of agency is beset by conceptual problems. But, I argue, the sense of agency can be fruitfully re-conceived, treated as the product of metacognition, and placed in a promising framework for understanding (...) the flexible control of behavior. On this reconception, the sense of agency results from monitoring two aspects of action control processes, action quality and action cost. This monitoring undergirds metacognitive feelings connected to action quality (fluency, control, or reliability) as well as action cost (effort, or straining). And these feelings are in turn embedded in the role of cognitive control in guiding and driving motor planning and execution. (shrink)

This paper critiques the limitations of relativism—a paradigm entrenched in Enlightenment modernity that fractures truth into context-bound perspectives—and advances relationalism as a transformative framework anchored in an incorporeal creative space. Drawing on Indian philosophical traditions (Sāṃkhya, Yoga Sutras) and mathematical group theory, relationalism posits that reality emerges from dynamic interdependence, where corporeal forms (prakṛti) and incorporeal potential (puruṣa) co-constitute one another through discerning intelligence (buddhi). By transcending relativism’s colonial legacy of fragmentation and hierarchical dualities, relationalism reimagines ethics as participatory engagement (...) with the creative space, fostering liberation (mokṣa) and epistemic justice. The study demonstrates how this framework dismantles oppressive structures, reconciles Eastern and Western epistemologies, and offers a universal yet contextual ontology for postcolonial and ecological challenges. (shrink)

This paper proposes a unified framework for understanding reflexive cognition as an evolutionary and structural extension of biological consciousness. Rather than treating rationality as a fixed faculty or logic engine, the model of Pure Reason presented here conceptualizes cognition as dynamic navigation across epistemic frames—enabled by frame-awareness, epistemic curvature, and adaptive reconfiguration. Drawing from cognitive neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and AI architecture, the paper maps the transition from reactive consciousness to reflexive reasoning, highlighting recursive metacognition as the key functional emergence. (...) It further introduces the concept of Aletheia—truth as unfolding or disclosure—as the ontological horizon grounding this architecture. Pure Reason is not defined as a terminal state of intellect, but as a cognitive stance capable of recognizing and revising its own framing mechanisms. This framework connects human rational development, cognitive flexibility, and potential future architectures for artificial self-reflective intelligence. (shrink)

A reasoning process is more than an unfolding causal chain. Although some thoughts cause others in virtue of their contents, paradigmatic cases of personal-level inference involve something more, some appreciation that the conclusion follows from the premises. Both first-order processes and second-order beliefs have proven problematic or inadequate to account for the phenomenon. Thus, here I argue for an intermediate position, according to which an epistemic feeling, a form of procedural metacognition, plays this role. Extensive psychological research has shown that (...) epistemic feelings are involved in monitoring many kinds of cognitive process, affecting how the processes unfold. Inferences may be no different. Inferences are also plausibly accompanied by an epistemic feeling, in particular a feeling of reliability or unreliability. Such a feeling accounts for the phenomenological datum. It can also play a significant epistemic role for the thinker. (shrink)

This article examines how the debate over KK principle (Knowing that One Knows) introduces the notion of knowledge orders into epistemology, which standardly involves a division into first and second order knowledge. The uncritical understanding of knowledge orders leads to their naive ontologization, which has negative theoretical and practical consequences. One such consequence is the problem of proliferating orders of knowledge, which consists in the fact that if knowledge of a lower order always corresponds to knowledge of a higher order, (...) it is not clear what order is needed to possess first order knowledge. As a solution, it is proposed to understand knowledge orders as a nominal designation related to the evaluation of the position of knowledge in epistemic history (as this concept is understood by Alvin Goldman). (shrink)

Anosognosia for visual deficits—cases where significant visual deficits go unnoticed—challenges the view that our own conscious experiences are what we know best. We review these widespread and striking failures of awareness. Anosognosia can occur with total blindness, visual abnormalities induced by brain lesions, and eye diseases. We show that anosognosia for visual deficits is surprisingly widespread. Building on previous accounts, we introduce a framework showing how apparently disparate forms of anosognosia fit together. The central idea is that, to notice a (...) deficit, individuals need to form expectations about normal vision, compare expectations and visual input, and judge any mismatch at the metacognitive level. A failure in any of these three steps may lead to unawareness of visual deficits. (shrink)

The author claims that concept possession is not only necessary but also sufficient for self-consciousness, where self-consciousness is understood as the awareness of oneself as a self. Further, he links concept possession to intelligent behavior. His ultimate aim is to provide a framework for the study of self-consciousness in infants and non-human animals. I argue that the claim that all concepts are necessarily related to the self-concept remains unconvincing and suggest that what might be at issue here are not so (...) much conceptual but rather metacognitive abilities. (shrink)

Many philosophers endorse the Transparency Thesis, the claim that by introspection one cannot become aware of one's experience. Recently, some authors have suggested that the Transparency Thesis is challenged by introspective states reached under mindfulness. We label this the Mindfulness Opacity Hypothesis. The present paper develops the hypothesis in important new ways. First, we motivate the hypothesis by drawing on recent clinical psychology and cognitive science of mindfulness. Secondly, we develop the hypothesis by describing the implied shift in experiential perspective, (...) the scope of introspectable qualities, and the level of skill. Thirdly, we defend the hypothesis against various philosophical arguments. We conclude that the Mindfulness Opacity Hypothesis is empirically and theoretically well motivated and supported. (shrink)

Researchers in the psychological sciences have put forward the thesis that various sources of psychological, cognitive, and neuroscientific evidence demonstrate that being conscious of our mental states does not make any difference to our behaviour. In this paper, I argue that the evidence marshalled in support of this view — which I call psychological epiphenomenalism — is subject to major objections, relies on a superficial reading of the relevant literature, and fails to engage with the more precise ways in which (...) philosophers understand mental states to be conscious. I then appeal to work on implementation intentions to demonstrate that an intention's being 'access conscious' enhances its functional role, which makes it more likely that we will successfully carry out our intended behaviour. The result is that consciousness in at least one relevant sense is not epiphenomenal, with further work remaining to be done to show how other kinds of consciousness cause behaviour too. (shrink)

The vividness of mental imagery is epistemically relevant. Intuitively, vivid and intense memories are epistemically better than weak and hazy memories, and using a clear and precise mental image in the service of spatial reasoning is epistemically better than using a blurry and imprecise mental image. But how is vividness epistemically relevant? I argue that vividness is higher-order evidence about one’s epistemic state, rather than first-order evidence about the world. More specifically, the vividness of a mental image is higher-order evidence (...) about the amount of first-order information one has about its subject matter. When vividness is sufficiently low, it can give one reason to doubt the epistemic basis of the mental image and thereby act as a defeater. This account has important implications for theorizing about the epistemic roles of memory, imagination, mental imagery, and phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

We seem to have rich experience across our visual field. Yet we are surprisingly poor at tasks involving the periphery and low spatial attention. Recently, Lau and collaborators have argued that a phenomenon known as “subjective inflation” allows us to reconcile these phenomena. I show inflation is consistent with multiple interpretations, with starkly different consequences for richness and for theories of consciousness more broadly. What’s more, we have only weak reasons favouring any of these interpretations over the others. I provisionally (...) argue for an interpretation on which subjective experience is genuinely rich, but (in peripheral/unattended areas) unreliable as a guide to the external world. The main challenge for this view is that it appears to imply that experience in the periphery is not just unreliable but unstable. However, I argue that this consequence, while initially appearing unintuitive, is in fact plausible. (shrink)

We propose a quantum curiosity algorithm as a means to implement quantum thinking into AI, and we illustrate 5 new quantum curiosity types. We then introduce 6 new hybrid quantum curiosity types combining animal and plant curiosity elements with biomimicry beyond human sensing. We then introduce 4 specialized quantum curiosity types, which incorporate quantum thinking into coding frameworks to radically transform problem-solving and discovery in science, medicine, and systems analysis. We conclude with a forecasting of the future of quantum thinking (...) in AI and illustrate an example of how to apply the new curiosity types: General Collaborative Networks. (shrink)