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91621.131165
The puzzle of aphantasia concerns how individuals reporting no visual imagery perform more-or-less normally on tasks presumed to depend on it [1]. In his splendid recent review in TiCS, Zeman [2] canvasses four ‘cognitive explanations’: (i) differences in description; (ii) ‘faulty introspection’; (iii) “unconscious or ‘sub-personal’ imagery”; and (iv) total lack of imagery. Difficulties beset all four. To make progress, we must recognize that imagery is a complex and multidimensional capacity and that aphantasia commonly reflects partial imagery loss with selective sparing. Specifically, I propose that aphantasia often involves a lack of visual-object imagery (explaining subjective reports and objective correlates) but selectively spared spatial imagery (explaining Some researchers have suggested that aphantasics may have failed to follow instructions or engage imagery [7]. This is unconvincing. In studies of galvanic skin responses, trials were excluded in which subjects failed to demonstrate ‘proper reading and comprehension’ of the frightening stories. Thus, it remains a mystery why spontaneous imagery did not emerge [6]. Similarly, in studies of pupillary light responses, aphantasics showed a characteristic in-task correlation between pupil and stimulus set size, indicating that they were not “‘refusing’ to actively participate…due to…a belief that they are unable to imagine” [5]. Aphantasics also do voluntarily form images in other tasks despite a lack of incentives [8].
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201906.131221
Key elements of the recent dialectic surrounding the hole argument in the philosophy of general relativity are clarified by close attendance to the nature of scientific representation. I argue that a structuralist account of representation renders the purported haecceitistic differences between target systems irrelevant to the representational role of models of general relativity. Framing the hole argument in this way helps resolve the impasse in the literature between Weatherall and Pooley and Read.
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542972.131232
I have long believed in what philosophers call “libertarian free will.” This isn’t about political philosophy, but philosophy of mind. Holding all physical conditions constant, determinism holds that there is exactly one thing that I can do. …
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575108.13124
Even with everything happening in the Middle East right now, even with (relatedly) everything happening in my own family (my wife and son sheltering in Tel Aviv as Iranian missiles rained down), even with all the rather ill-timed travel I’ve found myself doing as these events unfolded (Ecuador and the Galapagos and now STOC’2025 in Prague) … there’s been another thing, a huge one, weighing on my soul. …
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1202213.131247
There is large consensus across clinical research that feelings of worthlessness (FOW) are one of the highest risk factors for a patient’s depression becoming suicidal. In this paper, I attempt to make sense of this empirical relationship from a phenomenological perspective. I propose that there are purely reactive and pervasive forms of FOW. Subsequently, I present a phenomenological demonstration for how and why it is pervasive FOW that pose a direct suicidal threat. I then outline criteria, contingent upon empirical verification, by which clinicians can more confidently identify when a patient’s FOW place them at high risk of suicide.
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1317569.131254
Hyperscanning has been increasingly used to quantify the quality of social relationships by tracking the neural correlates of interpersonal interactions. This paper critically examines the use of hyperscanning to track the neural correlates of psychotherapeutic change, e.g., the patient-therapist relationship. First, we motivate our project by diagnosing a lack of complex models in this domain and, looking for the causes of this issue, we highlight the epistemic blindspots of current methodologies that prioritize neural synchrony as a marker of therapeutic success. Drawing on empirical studies and theoretical frameworks, we identify an asymmetry between the neural and behavioral conceptual toolkits, with the latter remaining underdeveloped. We argue that this imbalance stems from two key issues: the underdetermined qualitative interpretation of brain data and the neglect of strong reciprocity in neuroscientific second-person paradigms. In light of our critical analysis, we suggest that further research should address the complexity of reciprocal, dynamic interactions in therapeutic contexts. Specifically, drawing on enactivism, we highlight that the autonomy of interactions is one of the factors that undermines the synchrony paradigm. This approach emphasizes the co-construction of meaning and shared experiences through embodied, reciprocal interactions, offering a more integrative understanding of therapeutic change that accounts for neural correlates of the emergent and dynamic nature of social cognition.
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1638604.131261
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted. This is an open access publication, available online and distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), a copy of which is available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ . Subject to this licence, all rights are reserved.
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1721416.131269
Methodological anthropic reasoning (MAR), popularized by Bostrom ([2002]), aims to correct for observation selection bias by appealing to observer-relative information. I show that MAR's inferential structure is not uniquely tied to observers but applies to any set of entities subject to selection uncertainty. By miscasting a general epistemic problem as uniquely anthropic, MAR obscures its metaphysical assumptions and bypasses established probabilistic methods. Once stripped of its observer-centric framing and functionally reduced, anthropic reasoning collapses into ad hoc inference—forcing a choice: either acknowledge the metaphysical specialness of observers or concede there is no reason to privilege one physical pattern over another.
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1836861.131276
Trevor Griffith and Adrian Kind argue that we should reject a standard interpretation of pain asymbolia, according to which asymbolics experience pain even though their pain lacks the affective-motivational element that typical pains possess. We make the case that Griffith and Kind’s reasons for rejecting the standard interpretation are relatively weak. We end by arguing that debates between the standard interpretation and alternative interpretations cannot be resolved without addressing the issue of how we should taxonomize pain asymbolia as a neurological condition.
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1894548.131283
The origin of memories is thought to be found in sensory perception. This conception is central to how the memory sciences characterize encoding. This paper considers how novel memory traces can be formed independently of external sensory inputs. I present a case study in which memory traces are created without sensory perception using a technique I call optogenetic memory implantation. Comparing this artificial process with normal memory encoding, I consider its implications for rethinking the causal chain that leads to remembering.
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2068013.131298
This paper deals with the issue of the admissible content of perceptual experience at the centre of the debate that opposes Conservatives and Liberals —who advocate, respectively, a Sparse and a Rich Content-View— and aims, specifically, to consider how this debate interacts with the Externalism/Internalism debate in philosophy of perception. Indeed, apart from a few exceptions (Siegel, 2006, 2010, 2013; Bayne, 2009; Ashby, 2020a; Raleigh, 2022), this issue has not yet been sufficiently addressed, and the present paper, in the wake of the aforementioned works, aims to focus on this issue in order to assess whether it would be more congenial for a Liberal to adopt content internalism or rather content externalism. In my paper I argue that the best move the Liberal should make is to endorse externalism with regard to the content of perceptual experience and internalism with regard to its phenomenal character. But, as it will turn out, this combination can only be sustained consistently if the Liberal discards the standard interpretation of one of its central claims, the so-called (Ashby, 2020a, p. 689) “phenomenal reflection claim” (PRC) —the claim according to which perceptual properties are reflected in/reverberate in the phenomenology of the experience— and adopts a different interpretation of it. To indicate what alternative interpretation of PRC the liberal should provide is one of the main goals of the paper. KEYWORDS: Sparse vs Rich View of Perceptual Experience, Content Externalism, Phenomenal Internalism, Phenomenal Reflection Claim, Representationalism.
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2068079.131305
Accounts of scientific representation typically assume that there is a single sense of “represent”, and they attempt to develop a theory that can account for all its features. The aim of this article is to draw the consequences of a distinction between two senses of “represent” that has been proposed recently. Taking inspiration from the distinction between speaker-meaning and expression-meaning in philosophy of language, a first sense is analysed in terms of the mental states of the user of a vehicle in context, and a second sense in terms of communal norms constraining contextual uses. I argue that making this distinction, and thus understanding the representation relation as essentially indexical and normative, can help us move beyond the controversies between various accounts of scientific representation, notably what have been dubbed informational and functional accounts, as well as debates regarding the ontology of scientific models.
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2068099.131312
Phil Dowe’s Conserved Quantity Theory (CQT) is based on the following theses: (a) CQT is the result of an empirical analysis and not a conceptual one, (b) CQT is metaphysically contingent, and (c) CQT is refutable. I argue, on the one hand, that theses (a), (b), and (c) are not only problematic in themselves, but also they are incompatible with each other and, on the other, that the choice of these theses is explained by the particular position that the author embraces regarding the relationship between metaphysics and physics.
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2068265.131319
Investigation of Indigenous concepts and their meanings is highly inspirational for contemporary science because they represent adaptive solutions in various environmental and social milieus. Past research has shown that the conceptualisations of consciousness can vary widely between cultural groups from different geographical regions. The present study explores variability among a few of the thousands of Indigenous cultural understandings of consciousness. Indigenous concepts of consciousness are often relational and inseparable from environmental and religious concepts. Furthermore, this exploration of variability reveals the layers with which some Indigenous peoples understand the conscious experience of the world. Surprisingly, the Indigenous understandings of global consciousness was found not to stay in opposition to local consciousness. The final concluding section of this study discusses the usability of Indigenous concepts and meanings for recent scientific debates regarding the nature of consciousness. Issues such as material versus non-material sources of consciousness, the energy component of consciousness, or the interconnection of consciousness with the environment arose from the in-depth exploration of Indigenous concepts and their meanings.
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2169978.131329
Could you be a brain in a vat, with all your experiences of people, plants, pebbles, planets and more being generated solely by computer inputs? It might seem difficult to know that you aren’t, since everything in the world would still appear just as it is. In his 1981 book, Reason, Truth, and History, Hilary Putnam argues that if you were in such a predicament, your statement ‘I am a brain in a vat”, would be false since, as an envatted brain, your word ‘vat’ would refer to the vats you encounter in your experienced reality, and in your experienced reality, you are not in one of those but are instead a full-bodied human being with head, torso, arms, and legs living in the wide open world. The following extended thought experiment is intended to illustrate that, contrary to Putnam’s view, you, as an envatted brain, could truthfully believe that you are a brain in a vat.
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2182182.131338
Mind uploading promises us a digital afterlife. Critics believe that this promise is void, since we are not the type of thing that could be transmitted as data from one location to another. In this paper, I shall make the case that even if the critics are right and we cannot be uploaded, much of uploading’s appeal can be maintained. I will argue for Parfitian Transhumanism, a view that comprises two claims. First, it maintains that our minds can be uploaded, even if we cannot. Second, uploading our minds preserves what matters in survival.
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2241377.131349
The study of molecular structure has played a central role in the debate around chemistry’s reduction to quantum physics. So far, this case has been invoked to support the non-reducibility of chemistry. However, recent papers claim that there might not be any structure to be assigned to isolated molecules, thus prompting a deeper investigation of the nature of molecular structure. To this end, this paper explores two alternative accounts of structure: the relational and dispositional accounts. Each metaphysical account has interesting implications for the reduction debate and opens news ways of arguing for (but also against) the reducibility of chemistry. The aim is to show that the debate around chemistry’s reduction needs to be radically reframed so as to include a rigorous metaphysical analysis of the nature of molecular structure.
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2241398.131357
Two forms of chemical reaction statements are standardly found in the chemical corpus. First, individual reactions statements describe reactions that occur between specific chemical substances, leading to the production of specific substances. Secondly, general reactions statements describe chemical transformations between groups of substances. Both forms of statements track regularities in nature and are thus warranted to be viewed as representing causal relations. However, a convincing analysis in terms of causation also requires spelling out the metaphysical relation between individual and general reactions. This is because their relation prompts concerns regarding causal priority and causal overdetermination. I present these concerns and address them by arguing that we should view individual and general reactions in the context of the determinate/determinable distinction.
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2241419.131366
The two times problem, where time as experienced seems to have distinctive features different than those found in fundamental physics, appears to be more intractable than necessary, I argue, because the two times are marked out from the positions furthest apart: neuroscience and physics. I offer causation as exactly the kind of bridge between these two times that authors like Buonomano and Rovelli (forthcoming) are seeking. It is a historical contingency from philosophical discussions around phenomenology, and methodological artefact from neuroscience, that most studies of temporal features of experience require subjects to be sufficiently still that their engagement with affordances in the environment can be at best tested in artificial and highly constrained ways. Physics does not offer an account of causation, but accounts of causation are tied to or grounded in physics in ways that can be clearly delineated. Causation then serves as a bridge that coordinates time as experienced, via interaction with affordances in the environment, with time in physics as it constrains causal relationships. I conclude by showing how an information-theoretic account of causation fits neatly into and extends the information gathering and utilizing system (IGUS) of Gruber et al (2022).
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2241529.131374
Advances in animal sentience research, neural organoids, and artificial intelligence reinforce the relevance of justifying attributions of consciousness to non-standard systems. Clarifying the argumentative structure behind these attributions is important for evaluating their validity. This paper addresses this issue, concluding that analogical abduction – a form of reasoning combining analogical and abductive elements – is the strongest method for extrapolating consciousness from humans to non-standard systems. We argue that the argument from analogy and inference to the best explanation, individually taken, do not meet the criteria for successful extrapolations, while analogical abduction offers a promising approach despite limitations in current consciousness science.
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2356824.131383
Patterns and pattern ontologies are a powerful way for pragmatists to address metaphysical issues by rejecting a false dichotomy between pluralism and realism. However, there is a common misconception about patterns that I call the philosophically perverse patterns (PPP) problem. Here, critics of patterns invent perverse examples that meet the metaphysical criteria to count as patterns. I defuse this concern by showing how PPP misunderstands what the pragmatist metaphysics of patterns is supposed to accomplish: the bare definition should not rule out, or in, substantive examples of patterns that instead should involve methodological considerations. I use this response to the PPP problem to show how the metaphysical definition of 'pattern' allows the pragmatist to capture the rich intricacies of ontologies in the sciences and yields two illustrative norms by which methodology can be guided in developing or refining ontologies: cohesion and coherence.
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2356881.13139
Recent work in quantum gravity (QG) suggests that spacetime is not fundamental. Rather, spacetime emerges from an underlying non-spatiotemporal reality. Spacetime functionalism has been proposed as one way to make sense of the emergence of spacetime. However, spacetime functionalism faces a ‘collapse’ problem. The functionalist analysis seems to force spacetime into the (more) fundamental ontology of QG, thereby conflicting with—rather than elucidating—spacetime emergence. In this paper, I show how to resolve the collapse problem. The solution is to differentiate between physical and metaphysical notions of (relative) fundamentality. With this distinction in hand, we can see that spacetime functionalism does not after all force spacetime into the (more) fundamental ontology of QG in any troubling sense. A side benefit of the paper is that it provides a sharpened characterisation of various notions of (relative) fundamentality.
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2356925.131397
This paper proposes that relational ontology, which defines existence through relations, serves as a bridge between scientific realism and empiricism by offering a structural criterion for scientific explanation. Through case studies in quantum mechanics and thermodynamics, we illustrate how relationality grounds scientific theories in empirical interactions while supporting realist commitments to unobservable structures. Engaging with philosophy of science debates—realism, reductionism, and demarcation—and drawing on thinkers such as Lakatos, Kuhn, Cartwright, van Fraassen, and contemporary authors like Ladyman and Chakravartty, this work examines the explanatory limits of relational ontology in addressing consciousness and contrasts scientific explanations with non-scientific accounts. Its original contribution lies in demonstrating how relational ontology unifies these perspectives through a rigorous structural criterion, advancing our understanding of scientific explanation within the philosophy of science.
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2415057.13141
It has long been known that brain damage has negative effects on one’s mental states and alters (or even eliminates) one’s ability to have certain conscious experiences. Even centuries ago, a person would much prefer to suffer trauma to one’s leg, for example, than to one’s head. It thus stands to reason that when all of one’s brain activity ceases upon death, consciousness is no longer possible and so neither is an afterlife. It seems clear from all the empirical evidence that human consciousness is dependent upon the functioning of individual brains, which we might call the “dependence thesis.” Having a functioning brain is, at minimum, necessary for having conscious experience, and thus conscious experience must end when the brain ceases to function.
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2629374.131428
Patrick Butlin, Robert Long, Eric Elmoznino, Yoshua Bengio, Jonathan Birch, Axel Constant, George Deane, Stephen M. Fleming, Chris Frith, Xu Ji, Ryota Kanai, Colin Klein, Grace Lindsay, Matthias Michel, Liad Mudrik, Megan A. K. Peters, Eric Schwitzgeb...
best-supported neuroscientific theories of consciousness. We survey several prominent scientific theories of consciousness, including recurrent processing theory, global workspace theory, higher-order theories, predictive processing, and attention schema theory. From these theories we derive ”indicator properties” of consciousness, elucidated in computational terms that allow us to assess AI systems for these properties. We use these indicator properties to assess several recent AI systems, and we discuss how future systems might implement them. Our analysis suggests that no current AI systems are conscious, but also suggests that there are no obvious technical barriers to building AI systems which satisfy these indicators.
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2761171.131441
This paper argues that functionalism, a dominant theory in philosophy of mind, fails to adequately explain the emergence of conscious experience within the Everettian (Many-Worlds) interpretation of quantum mechanics. While the universal wavefunction contains many possible ways of decomposition, functionalism cannot account for why consciousness appears only in decohered, classical-like branches and not in other parts of the wavefunction that are equally real. This limitation holds even if those other parts do not instantiate complex functional structure. We argue that consciousness, as it is observed in many worlds, defies the predictions and explanatory resources of functionalism. Therefore, functionalism must be supplemented or replaced in order to account for the observed phenomenology.
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2875995.131452
PEA Soup is pleased to introduce this month’s Ethics discussion, featuring David Sobel and Steven Wall’s paper ‘The Subjective/Objective Distinction in Well-Being‘ with a précis by Chris Heathwood. Précis and commentary on Sobel and Wall, “The Subjective/Objective Distinction in Well- Being” (Ethics, 2025) for PEA Soup ‘Ethics discussion’
Chris Heathwood May 26, 2025
Précis
Theories of well-being aim to identify those things that are basically or fundamentally good for subjects of well-being. …
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2934565.131466
In this critical response to John Doris's book "Character Trouble: Undisciplined Essays on Moral Agency and Personality," I analyze his updated take on character skepticism—the view that character traits have surprisingly limited influence on behavior across diverse situations—from a philosophy of science perspective. While I find his updated view compelling, I challenge his reliance on Cohen's conventional effect size benchmarks, arguing that qualitative labels for effect sizes obscure rather than clarify the practical significance of results. I propose that Doris's strongest argument lies in what I call the "disproportion thesis"—the view that personality variables exert less influence, and situational variables more influence, on behavior than our intuitive expectations would predict, creating a disconcerting gap. However, I argue that this thesis requires a more explicit quantification of those prior expectations. I conclude that character skepticism would benefit from formulations of its insights in a way that directly addresses character theorists' empirical commitments, avoiding vague benchmarks and contextualizing effects.
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2934887.131478
Does consciousness have non-instrumental aesthetic value? This paper answers this question affirmatively by arguing that consciousness is sublime. The argument consists of three premises. (1) An awe experience of an object provides prima facie justification to believe that the object is sublime. (2) I have an awe experience about consciousness through introspecting three features of consciousness, namely the mystery of consciousness, the connection between consciousness and well-being, and the phenomenological complexity of consciousness. (3) There is no good defeater of the justificatory force of my feeling of awe for the sublimity of consciousness. To defend the third premise, I argue against two potential defeaters: The first is that most people do not regard consciousness as sublime. The second is that there does not seem to be physical properties that can ground the sublimity of consciousness. I conclude by emphasizing an important ethical implication of the thesis that consciousness is sublime, namely that it explains why even conscious subjects who cannot have valenced experiences deserve moral consideration.
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2934930.131488
Mystical religious experiences typically purport to engage with the transcendent and often claim to involve encounters with spiritual entities or a detachment from the material world. Daoism diverges from this paradigm. This paper examines Daoist mystical experiences of bodily transformations and explores their epistemological implications. Specifically, we defend the justificatory power of Daoist somatic experiences against the disanalogy objection. The disanalogy objection posits that mystical experiences, in contrast to sense perceptions, are not socially verifiable and thereby lack prima facie epistemic value. We argue that some Daoist mystical bodily states, being essentially spatiotemporal, are exempt from this challenge. This leads to a broader understanding of mysticism and offers a partial resolution to the disanalogy objection.