Journal of NeuroPhilosophy

Posthuman Ethics: Embodiment and Cultural Theory – A Comprehensive Critical Review. Patricia MacCormack (Author), Ashgate Publishing, 2012

Melinda S. Gordon — 2026-06-01

Patricia MacCormack's Posthuman Ethics: Embodiment and Cultural Theory is a fierce, poetic, and uncompromising intervention into contemporary posthumanist thought. Published in 2012 as part of Ashgate's growing catalog of critical and cultural theory, the book stands apart from more mainstream posthumanist works—such as those by Katherine Hayles, Cary Wolfe, or Donna Haraway—by grounding its ethics firmly in the Continental philosophical tradition of Spinoza, Deleuze and Guattari, Lyotard, Serres, Blanchot, and Irigaray, while largely sidelining the Anglo-American, liberal-humanist, and transhumanist strands of posthumanism. MacCormack, a professor at Anglia Ruskin University known for her work on queer theory, feminism, and horror, writes with an intensity that mirrors her subject matter: the ecstatic, the monstrous, and the inhuman. The book's central thesis is radical and deliberately provocative. MacCormack argues that ethics, properly understood, cannot be founded on recognition, representation, or the extension of rights. Instead, posthuman ethics must embrace withdrawal, grace, and the affirmation of the incommensurable other—an other that includes modified bodies, animals, monsters, works of art, and ultimately the non-human as such. She insists that the posthuman is not what comes after the human but what has always already been excluded from the category of the human: the queer, the disabled, the animal, the monstrous, the ecstatic, the dead. The book is structured as a series of meditations on specific figures of posthuman embodiment, each chapter exploring a different site of ethical encounter.

Evolution of Brains and Minds: A Comprehensive Critical Assessment. Gerhard Roth (Author). Springer · Dordrecht · 2013

Anita M. Rosenberg — 2026-06-01

Gerhard Roth's Evolution of Brains and Minds represents a rare and valuable achievement in the neurological and evolutionary literature. It is rare because its author brings an almost unprecedented combination of disciplinary training to bear on the central problem of the mind-brain relationship: Roth holds doctorates in both philosophy and biology (specifically behavioral physiology and neurobiology), and his career has bridged the humanities and natural sciences in ways that few contemporary researchers can claim. It is valuable because it offers a comprehensive, empirically grounded, and philosophically informed synthesis of what is currently known—and what remains unknown—about how nervous systems and cognitive capacities have evolved across the animal kingdom, culminating in the peculiar case of Homo sapiens. The book is an English translation and substantial revision of Roth's 2010 German work Wie einzigartig ist der Mensch? Die lange Evolution der Gehirne und des Geistes ("How Unique Is Humanity? The Long Evolution of Brains and Minds"). Rather than a mere translation, the author has taken the opportunity to incorporate new literature that appeared between the German and English editions, revise several chapters extensively, and refine his arguments in light of ongoing debates. The result is a work that stands as a landmark contribution to evolutionary neurobiology, comparative cognition, and the philosophy of mind—one that deserves careful reading by specialists and advanced students across multiple disciplines.

Biological and Neuroscientific Foundations of Philosophy: Towards a New Paradigm. A Comprehensive Critical Review. Franco Fabbro (Author). Routledge · 2023

John McCullan — 2026-06-01

Franco Fabbro, a distinguished neuroscientist with decades of experience in clinical psychology and neuropsychiatry, presents an ambitious and sweeping work in Biological and Neuroscientific Foundations of Philosophy. The book’s central thesis is a call for a paradigm shift: philosophy, which has for centuries been heavily (and often exclusively) grounded in the abstract, timeless, and deterministic frameworks of mathematics and physics, must reorient itself towards the more concrete, complex, and temporally-bound realities of biology and neuroscience. This is not a dismissal of the physical sciences but an argument for their proper place within a larger, more foundational biological context. The book is structured to systematically build this case. Following a critical examination of the "physico-mathematical paradigm"—from its Platonic and Galilean roots to its modern quandaries in quantum mechanics and relativity—Fabbro proposes an alternative grounded in the properties of living organisms. He masterfully synthesizes a vast range of scientific domains, traversing the origin of life and the evolution of the nervous system (Chapter 3), the paleoanthropological story of hominids and the emergence of Homo sapiens (Chapter 4), the profound socio-political transformations from hunter-gatherer bands to modern empires (Chapter 5), and the nature of information and communication (Chapter 6).

Battlestar Galactica: Investigating Flesh, Spirit, and Steel. Roz Kaveney & Jennifer Stoy (Editors) | I.B. Tauris · 2010

John McCullan — 2026-06-01

This edited collection, part of I.B. Tauris's "Investigating Cult TV" series, offers a scholarly examination of Ronald D. Moore's reimagined Battlestar Galactica (2004–2009). The volume brings together contributions from ten academics and critics, along with an interview with writer-producer Jane Espenson, to explore the series' treatment of politics, gender, religion, militarism, sexuality, and the aesthetics of science fiction television. The book's title—Investigating Flesh, Spirit, and Steel—signals its central preoccupations: the embodied humanity (and Cylon-ity) of its characters, the theological and spiritual dimensions of the narrative, and the technological/military apparatus within which the drama unfolds.

From Wittgenstein’s Language Games to LLMs: Representation, Meaning, and the Future of Psychotherapy

Hasan Belli — 2026-05-18

AI and large language models (LLMs) are rapidly taking center stage in clinical psychology and psychotherapy, raising fundamental questions about how machines represent language, emotion, and lived experience. LLMs exhibit linguistic fluency and contextual adaptability, but these capabilities are based on statistical relationships rather than human cognition, presenting significant limitations in therapeutic contexts. Drawing on Wittgenstein's concepts of language games and forms of life, this article examines representation problems in AI-assisted therapeutic dialogue and argues that LLMs can imitate but not genuinely internalize the relational and experiential dimensions fundamental to psychotherapy. The analysis explores how emotional simulation varies across LLMs, why simulated empathy diverges from therapeutic empathy, and how clinical safety concerns arise from limitations in contextual reasoning and emotional attunement. Based on a focused narrative review of 36 studies from 2015–2025, findings indicate that LLMs offer potential for assessment, diagnostic support, training, and psychoeducation, but remain limited in representing affect, cultural nuances, and embodied co-regulation essential to therapeutic relationships. The authors propose alternative systems based on hybrid neuro-symbolic architectures, multimodal affect systems, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Quantum Approaches to Brain and Mind: A Comprehensive Review of Theories, Evidence, and Future Directions

Taruna Ikrar — 2026-05-12

The question of whether quantum mechanical phenomena play a functional role in brain activity and the emergence of consciousness remains one of the most controversial yet intellectually stimulating debates at the intersection of physics, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind. This review systematically examines the principal theoretical frameworks proposing quantum-level mechanisms in neural computation, including the Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR) hypothesis by Penrose and Hameroff, the quantum brain hypothesis of Stapp, quantum coherence models in microtubules, and quantum field theories of consciousness. We critically evaluate the current state of empirical evidence—including recent quantum biology findings, the challenge of decoherence in warm, biological systems, and experimental observations of quantum effects in biological systems—alongside computational models that bridge quantum formalism and neural network dynamics. Furthermore, we discuss the implications of quantum cognition models for understanding perception, decision-making, and memory. Despite significant scientific skepticism, emerging evidence from quantum biology and advanced neuroimaging technologies provides tentative support for quantum processes in neural substrates. We conclude by identifying critical gaps in current knowledge and outlining future research directions that may resolve the debate, including proposals for experimental paradigms using quantum sensing technologies applied to neural tissue. This review aims to serve as a foundational reference for researchers across disciplines approaching the quantum mind hypothesis with scientific rigor.

Brain and Symmetry – A Principle Theory of Brain Function

Juergen J. Stueber — 2026-05-15

The “Triggering Brain” hypothesis (Stueber, 2023) proposes brain function as a relational process based on biological equilibrium rather than absolute signal values. The present essay extends this model into a broader principle theory developed across physics, evolution, physiology, and the brain. In physics, symmetry, invariance, and relativity are examined as principles of stable order. In evolution, bilateral body plans and paired sensory systems are interpreted as selective pressures for relational neural processing. In physiology, homeostasis is reconsidered as a systemic principle in the sense of Bernard and Cannon rather than as a collection of local compensatory mechanisms. Within this framework, synchrony within the brain is proposed as the neurophysiological correlate of both biological equilibrium and invariance. “Triggering” is understood not as an occasional event, but as the fundamental mode of neural operation. The Kuramoto model provides a framework for interpreting EEG data in terms of phase coherence rather than signal amplitude. Several avenues for empirical falsification are proposed using EEG, MEG, and individualized anatomy-guided electrode placement (the “sulcal-fingerprint”). The hypothesis is presented as a principle theory in the sense of Albert Einstein and evaluated in light of Karl Popper’s criterion of falsifiability. Rather than competing with existing neuroscience, the hypothesis proposes synchrony as the biological state underlying stable neural function. Provided that this hypothesis is justified, identifying and measuring the biological “invariant” may significantly improve neurological diagnostics and therapeutic intervention.

Substratism: The Material Continuity of Being

Marques A. Reavis — 2026-06-03

Substratism is a neurophilosophical framework in personal identity and consciousness studies. It addresses a category error common to discussions of consciousness and death: the conflation of the cessation of conscious organization with the termination of material existence. The framework maintains three strictly distinct categories. Being is the historically continuous material substrate that participated in the consciousness-enabling biological organization of the person. Entity is the autopoietic living organism. Identity is the arousal-enabled conscious organization instantiated upon that substrate during life. Death dissolves Identity and typically Entity, but does not annihilate Being. In this framework, the phrase scientific afterlife refers only to the lawful postmortem persistence, dispersal, and possible biological re-entry of the historical material substrate that constituted a person. It does not refer to memory survival, soul survival, personality continuation, resurrection, reincarnation, religious afterlife, near-death experience, paranormal survival, or any uninterrupted subjective continuation of experience. The phrase is a bounded technical term, not a metaphysical or religious claim. Brainstem-thalamic arousal systems are treated as necessary enabling conditions for wakeful conscious presence, not as sufficient generators of full human identity. The locus coeruleus is a candidate low-turnover marker within a distributed ascending arousal system, not the seat of selfhood or consciousness. If a different consciousness-enabling tissue better satisfies the retention and functional criteria, the candidate substrate must be relocated and the locus-coeruleus-specific version of the hypothesis is treated as falsified. The article proposes a staged research program of experimental protocols, to be preregistered before any future data collection, designed to test atom retention in candidate macromolecules, arousal-system dependence in disorders of consciousness, and ecological re-entry of historical material substrate. No new data are reported. The contribution is to make material-token continuity philosophically explicit, distinguish it from psychological, narrative, organismal, and pattern-copy accounts of personal identity, and specify the empirical conditions under which substrate continuity within consciousness-enabling biology can be tested or constrained.

A Neurophilosophical Model of Personal and Meta-reflective Modes of Mind

Kyrylo Somkin — 2026-05-12

This paper proposes a neurophilosophical conceptual model of human consciousness structured as two functional brain states: the personal mode and the Meta-reflective mode. The personal mode is defined as a motivationally and socially embedded configuration of neural processes oriented toward adaptation, identity maintenance, and ego-relevant concerns. The Meta-reflective mode is characterized as a functional state in which cognition turns upon itself, enabling abstraction, self-objectification, and existential evaluation. The model does not posit a metaphysical dualism nor strictly separable neural systems. Rather, both modes may recruit overlapping brain regions, including prefrontal structures, while differing in dominant functional orientation and hierarchical organization. The distinction is therefore not anatomical but configurational. The current framework suggests that tensions between these modes may account for different categories of psychological crises: identity-based crises, which arise predominantly in the personal mode, and existential crises, which arise as a result of increased activation of the meta-reflexive mode. The framework further suggests that the development of civilization reflects the structural coexistence of adaptive engagement and reflective distancing. Although empirical validation is currently limited, this framework provides a robust integration of phenomenological ana=lysis and neurocognitive theory, offering a novel foundation for investigating the hierarchical organization of consciousness.

From Philosophy to Physics of the Mind: Teleological Transduction Theory

Stanislav Tregub — 2026-05-12

For millennia, the mind-body problem remained a philosophical issue without an empirical basis and practical implications. In recent decades, natural science has finally started to treat the mind as an object of research. The main approach was to study the ‘neural correlates of consciousness’. Since then, we have accumulated a vast amount of data on neural processes that appear to correlate with observed mental phenomena. However, the explanatory gap between mental and physical is not covered, as the main questions about the mind remain unanswered. What is the mind? What does it do? Why does it do it? How does it do it? The article reviews a theory that aims to answer these phenomenological, functional, teleological, and causal questions from a physical perspective. The theory elucidates physical processes and mechanisms that give rise to mental phenomena in the brain, thus enabling neuroscience to progress from correlational descriptions to an explanation of the physical causes of the mind and solve the mind-body problem.

New Perspectives on Human Consciousness as the Brain Activation State (BAS)

Cheng Gong — 2026-05-12

The exploration of the origin and essence of human consciousness has a long history, and although various disciplines—such as philosophy, medicine, sociology, biology, and psychology—have offered different explanations, none has gained widespread recognition to date. This lack of consensus stems primarily from the complexity of consciousness itself, combined with significant disciplinary differences in perspective, which together prevent researchers from fully, reasonably, and comprehensively grasping its essence. Consequently, consciousness remains an enduringly ambiguous subject, making deeper investigation necessary. Based on a systematic analysis, summarization, and synthesis of knowledge across multiple fields, this paper draws the following conclusions: the origin of consciousness lies in natural materials; its essence is material information; and it possesses the attributes of congenitality, materiality, complexity, systematicity, dynamics, differentiation, subjectivity, and selfhood.