Peirce’s legacy for contemporary consciousness studies, the emergence of consciousness from qualia, and its evanescence in habits

The paper argues that contemporary consciousness studies can profit from Charles S. Peirce’s philosophy of consciousness. It confronts mainstream tendencies in contemporary consciousness studies, including those which consider consciousness as an unsolvable mystery, with Peirce’s phenomenological approach to consciousness. Peirce’s answers to the following contemporary issues are presented: phenomenological consciousness and the qualia, consciousness as self-controlled agency of humans, self-control and self-reflection, consciousness and language, self-consciousness and introspection, consciousness and the other, consciousness of nonhuman animals, and the question of a quasi-consciousness of the physical universe. A detailed account of Peirce’s three modes of consciousness is presented: (1) primisense, qualisense or feeling-consciousness, (2) altersense (consciousness of the other), and (3) medisense, the consciousness of cognition, thought, and reasoning. In contrast to consciousness studies that establish a rather sharp dividing line between conscious and unconscious states of mind, Peirce adopts the principle of synechism, the theory of continuity. For him, consciousness is a matter of degree. An important difference between Peirce’s concept of qualia and current theories of qualia in human consciousness is discussed. The paper shows how consciousness, according to Peirce, emerges from unconscious qualia and vanishes into equally unconscious habits. It concludes with a study of the roles of qualia, habit, and self-control in Peirce’s theory of signs, in particular in qualisigns and symbols, and the question of signs as quasi-conscious agents in semiosis.

Review of Understanding Consciousness by Max Velmans

Understanding Consciousness can almost be said to have a plot/narrative, or a dramatic structure similar to the ‘three-act structure’ model used by numerous screenwriters. In Part I—the Setup—Velmans surveys “mind-body theories and their problems”, in part II—the Confrontation—he reconstructs “a new analysis: how to marry science with experience”, and in part III—the Resolution—he shares with us “a new synthesis: reflexive monism” (v-vi). Velmans starts off in the first chapter with perhaps one of the most basic, nevertheless hard, questions in the field of consciousness studies: “what is consciousness?”

The search for the NCC: Progress and challenges

Twenty years ago, Thomas Metzinger published the book "The Neural Correlates of Consciousness" amassing the state of knowledge in the field of consciousness studies at the time from philosophical and empirical perspectives. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of this impactful publication, we review the progress the field has made since then and the important methodological challenges it faces. A tremendous number of empirical studies have been conducted, which has led to the identification of many candidate neural correlates of consciousness. Yet, this tremendous amount of work has not unraveled a consensual account of consciousness as of now. Many questions, some already raised twenty years ago, remain unanswered, and an enormous proliferation of theories sharply contrasts with the scarcity of compelling data and methodological challenges. The contrastive method, the foundational method used to study the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC), has also been called into question. And while awareness in the community of its shortcomings is widespread, few concrete attempts have been made to go beyond it and/or to revise existing theories. We propose several methodological shifts that we believe may help to advance the quest of the NCC program, while remaining uncommitted to any specific theory: (1) the currently prevalent “contrastive method” should lose its monopoly in favor of methods that attempt to explain the phenomenology of experience; (2) experimental data should be shared in centralized, multi-methods databases, transcending the limitations of individual experiments by granting granularity and power to generalize findings and “distill” the NCC proper; (3) the explanatory power of theories should be directly pitted against each other to overcome the non-productive fractioning of the field into insular camps seeking confirmatory evidence for their theories. We predict these innovations might enable the field to progress towards the goal of explaining consciousness.

Feeling of a presence and anomalous body perception

The feeling of a presence (FoP) is an illusory vivid feeling that there is another person nearby who is not seen, heard, or felt. In neuropsychiatry, FoP has traditionally been classified among disorders of the body schema but has also been reported from times immemorial by healthy individuals in various conditions. Here the chapter reviews key neurological and psychiatric data on FoP and the involved neural mechanisms. Particular relevance will be given to the distinction between body schema versus body image in the FoP. This is followed by a description of recent efforts in engineering and cognitive neuroscience to apply robotics technology to experimentally induce and study FoP and its phenomenology. The chapter concludes by describing an exciting new research field that integrates consciousness studies, cognitive neuroscience, and engineering—cognetics.

Legal Consciousness and Administrative Justice

This chapter draws attention to the ways in which the study of legal consciousness can provide added depth to studies of administrative justice. Perhaps surprisingly, given the prevalence of the former, it has yet to have much impact on the field of administrative justice. Drawing attention to the state of the art in legal consciousness studies, as well as those studies which do explore the interaction between legal consciousness and administrative justice, the chapter considers the possibilities raised and issues which have been addressed. The chapter develops its argument about the significance of the interaction by analysing the Ken Loach film I, Daniel Blake, arguing that cultural artefacts themselves can hold clues as to legal consciousness. Through that analysis, the chapter explores themes of systemic injustice, resistance and justice seeking in the interactions between the film’s protagonist and the administrative machinery of the welfare state.

Quantum-Holistic Framework of Transpersonal Psychosomatics: Complete Healing and Spiritual Integration

The subject of this paper is complete healing and spiritual integration within our extended quantum-holographic / quantum-gravitational (QHQG) framework of holistic psychosomatics (integrative medicine and transpersonal psychology). Such a framework could have significant implications for understanding the mechanisms of quantum-holographic control of the morphogenesis, including epigenetic bioresonance application of the healing boundary conditions within acupuncture-based and consciousness-based psychosomatics. In the context of transpersonal psychology, essentially all psychosomatic problems could have their initial roots in the energy-information attractor blockages at different levels of consciousness (caused by various trans-generational-predestined stressors), and complete healing and spiritual integration would involve their integration with healthy core of the personality, through unconditional spiritually-forgiving acceptance of oneself and one’s environment. All this is in line with the revived scientific interest in consciousness studies during past decades (anticipating the upcoming grand synthesis of two modes of knowledge, rational-scientific and creative-religious, in the framework of our extended QHQG paradigm) – with the essential role of each individual due to the influence and concern for unloading of the collective mental environment.

Towards a Unitary Case for Russellian Panpsychism

One of the most pressing challenges that occupy the Russellian panpsychist’s agenda is to come up with a way to reconcile the traditional argument from categorical properties (Seager Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13(10–11), 129–145, 2006; Alter & Nagasawa, 2015) with H. H. Mørch’s dispositionalism-friendly argument from the experience of causation (2014, Topoi, 39, 1073–1088, 2018, 2020) — on the way to a unitary, all-encompassing case for the view. In this regard, Mørch claims that, via the commitment to the Identity theory of properties, one can consistently hold both panpsychist arguments without contradiction (2020: 281) — I shall refer to such proposal as Reconciliation. In my paper, I shall argue that this is not the case. To this extent, I will first consider H. Taylor’s argument that the Identity theorists have the exact same resources as the dispositionalists (as, after careful enquiry, their views on the metaphysics of properties turn out to coincide (Philosophical Studies, 175, 1423–1440, 2018: 1438)), and thus contend that Reconciliation fails to obtain. Then, I will suggest that one can avoid the problem and reconcile the arguments by adopting a different version of the powerful qualities view, namely the Compound view — and thus advance a reformulated version of the claim, i.e. Reconciliation*. Finally, even though pursuing my proposed solution might expose Russellian panpsychism to the risk of epiphenomenalism, I shall conclude that such specific form of epiphenomenalism is a rather benign one, and thus that, via Reconciliation*, the constitution of a unitary case for panpsychism as a positive proposal (and not as a mere alternative to dualism and physicalism) can be achieved.

Are basic actors brainbound agents? Narrowing down solutions to the problem of probabilistic content for predictive perceivers

Clark (Journal of Consciousness Studies, 25(3–4), 71–87, 2018) worries that predictive processing (PP) accounts of perception introduce a puzzling disconnect between the content of personal-level perceptual states and their underlying subpersonal representations. According to PP, in perception, the brain encodes information about the environment in conditional probability density distributions over causes of sensory input. But it seems perceptual experience only presents us with one way the world is at a time. If perception is at bottom probabilistic, shouldn’t this aspect of subpersonally represented content show up in consciousness? To address this worry, Clark argues that representations underlying personal-level content are constrained by the need to provide a single action-guiding take on the environment. However, this proposal rests a conception of the nature of agency, famously articulated by Davidson (1980a, b), that is inconsistent with a view of the mind as embodied-extended. Since Clark and other enactivist PP theorists present the extended mind as an important consequence of the predictive framework, the proposal is in tension with his complete view. I claim that this inconsistency could be resolved either by retaining the Davidsonian view of action and abandoning the extended-embodied approach, or by adopting a more processual, world-involving account of agency and perceptual experience than Clark currently endorses. To solve the puzzle he raises, Clark must become a radical enactivist or a consistent internalist.

Contribution of Cases of Extraordinary Healings to Consciousness Studies

Faith healings, as reported in the faith traditions, take us into a different territory of consciousness. Placebo effects are thought to be a quantum reality and may be responsible for some of the anomalous healings. If spiritual dimensions are brought into the equation, some of the healing miracles may also have spiritual and spiritistic components. Advanced external spiritual agencies may be involved in true instances of faith healing. Such higher order healings offer indirect evidence for the existence of a higher consciousness grounding the quantum consciousness. NeuroQuantology is one of the meeting points of science and spirituality and it becomes a bridge between brain and higher consciousness; coordinating both together is a challenging task. True cases of faith healing prompt us to search for higher realities beyond the brain and quantum dimensions. Extrasomatic energy system implies the existence of extra-physiological immunity and balancing the two forms of immunity is vital for maintaining health. There are many gateways to consciousness studies; research into anomalous phenomenon is one among them. This paper is an evaluation of some of the reported cases of extraordinary healing and how they can influence the formulation of an expanded model of brain-mind-consciousness complex.

Back to Square One: from Embodied Experiences in Utero to Theories of Consciousness

This paper argues that consciousness science may be put on a fruitful track for its future evolution by endorsing a bottom-up developmental perspective. Specifically, we propose to go back to ‘square one’ and to examine the nature of subjective experiences as they emerge in early human life, in utero. We build upon the observation that current theories of consciousness tacitly endorse an adult-centric and vision-biased approach in tackling the problem of subjective experiences. Indeed, one basic yet overlooked aspect of current discussions on consciousness is that in humans, experiences and experiencing subjects first develop within another human body. Hence, this observation must be taken into account and incorporated by current theories of consciousness. We propose to zoom out from the classical conundrum of the relationship consciousness and its neural correlates. Rather we see consciousness necessarily related to experiences and from there to embodied experiencers. Given that experiencers are subjects actively engaging with an environment in order to maintain self-organisation and self-preservation, consciousness cannot be addressed in isolation from self-consciousness. We make use of the ‘iceberg’ metaphor to argue that in order to understand the nature of the visible ‘tip’ of our conscious experiences one needs to go back to its pre-reflective and bodily roots. This is because the basis of the ‘experiential iceberg’ is conceptually and ontologically prior to its ‘tip’. Examining the primitive and pre-reflective basis of the iceberg may teach us something essential not only about its visible accessible side (i.e. the contents of conscious experiences that we can explicitly attend to and report), but also about its entire structure as a whole. We conclude with some implications of our hypothesis for future research for consciousness studies.