JNφphi Editorial :: Consciousness at the Crossroads: Neurophilosophy, Identity, and the Future of Mind in an Era of Technological Transformation
The fifth volume (2026:1) of the Journal of NeuroPhilosophy emerges during a period of extraordinary intellectual convergence. Questions once considered primarily philosophical—What is consciousness? What constitutes personal identity? Is free will real? Can machines ever become conscious?—are now increasingly shaped by developments in neuroscience, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, quantum theory, psychiatry, and computational modeling. As empirical sciences advance deeper into the mechanisms of cognition and subjective experience, philosophy is no longer merely interpreting scientific discoveries after the fact; rather, it has become an active partner in framing, criticizing, and extending the conceptual boundaries of those discoveries.
This issue reflects precisely that interdisciplinary transformation. Across review articles, theoretical investigations, opinion papers, empirical analyses, and philosophical hypotheses, the contributions collected here collectively demonstrate that consciousness studies can no longer proceed within isolated disciplinary silos. Instead, the field increasingly requires integrative frameworks capable of addressing not only neural mechanisms, but also phenomenology, embodiment, narrative identity, ethics, technological mediation, and the metaphysical implications of mind itself.
One of the central themes running throughout this volume is the growing influence of predictive and inferential models of cognition. In their extensive review, Predictive Processing and Active Inference: A Comprehensive Review of Theoretical Foundations, Neural Mechanisms, and Clinical Implications in Cognitive Science, Taruna Ikrar, Wachyudi Muchsin, and Alfi Sophian examine how predictive processing has evolved from a computational hypothesis into a potentially unifying paradigm for understanding perception, action, emotion, and psychopathology. Their work highlights an increasingly influential idea within cognitive science: the brain may not passively receive reality, but actively construct it through probabilistic modeling and continuous prediction-error minimization. Such perspectives profoundly reshape classical assumptions about perception, agency, and conscious awareness itself.
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