We describe an as yet unidentified bias relevant to comparative cognition research: WEIRD-centrism. This bias leads us to take as the gold standard the practices, capacities, or concepts of WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) humans, that is, humans who grew up in WEIRD societies and whose behavior has been shaped by the influence of WEIRD cultural norms and practices. We identify how the bias impacts the study of practices, capacities, and concepts, and offer two suggestions for (...) mitigating the bias. The first is to use what we are calling a multibaseline approach, which involves starting with constructs that come not from our experiences as humans, but from our growing understanding of other species. The second is to make use of philosophical analysis and conceptual engineering, which includes identifying minimal concepts of psychological capacities as well as a dimensional approach that depicts the many ways in which a capacity can be instantiated. We hope that these tools will allow us to better understand the similarities and differences both within and between species. (shrink)

Comparative cognitive science often involves asking questions like ‘Do nonhumans have C?’ where C is a capacity we take humans to have. These questions frequently generate unproductive disagreements, in which one party affirms and the other denies that nonhumans have the relevant capacity on the basis of the same evidence. I argue that these questions can be productively understood as questions about natural kinds: do nonhuman capacities fall into the same natural kinds as our own? Understanding such questions in (...) this way has several advantages: it preserves the intuition that these are substantive empirical questions worth asking; it helps us to understand why they so frequently give rise to disagreements of the kind described; and it provides clues about how to diagnose and resolve them. (shrink)

This book offers substantial insight into students’ conceptualization of scientific terminology. The current book explores the commonalities and distinctions between Arabic and French physics terms, and the impact of the language disparities on students’ understanding of physics terms. This book adopts a novel approach to the problem of scientific terminology by exploring physics terms’ polysemy, prototypical meanings, and conceptual metaphor and metonymy, which motivates their extension of meaning. The book also investigates how the linguistic discrepancies and other variables affect the (...) learning of physics by Arab students (Moroccan students, in this book). Concepts in Physics: A Comparative Cognitive Analysis of Arabic and French Terminologies, whether you are a student of science, a science teacher or lecturer, a translator, or a linguist, is what you need. The book will help you comprehend the linguistic and cultural differences between western and non-western physics terminologies (in this book, French and Arabic physics terminologies) and the factors influencing the learning of physics concepts, and thus address the multiple challenges in learning scientific terms and concepts. (shrink)

With an extensive amount of research on the social lives of primates, Frans de Waal has been a pioneering advocate for the continuity of human and non-human minds, putting forward the idea that these creatures exhibit rudimentary political and moral behaviors. One of the traits which de Waal focuses on is animal normativity, a set of behaviors functionally defined as adherence to social standards. Recently, some philosophers have endorsed this position, holding that animals show a psychological capacity called normative (...) class='Hi'>cognition underlying those and other social behaviors. In this paper, I assess whether advocacy for animal normativity is an exercise of theory construction in comparative cognition. To that end, I present three features of this kind of theory construction. First, the explanatory goal of building functional analyses of cognitive capacities. Second, the conceptual aid of comparative thinking for theory construction. Third, the heuristic value of theory in specifying possible roads of inquiry. Taking these features into account, I assess whether the claims advocates make regarding animal normativity consider them. My answer is negative. First, since some advocates focus on behavioral traits and not on psychological capacities, they are not producing theory in comparative cognition, although, as I argue, they should. Second, there is a disregard for hypothesis testing and no evolutionary considerations to support their views. Finally, the claim that non-human animals exhibit normativity does not seem to have heuristic value. (shrink)

Behavioural flexibility is often treated as the gold standard of evidence for more sophisticated or complex forms of animal cognition, such as planning, metacognition and mindreading. However, the evidential link between behavioural flexibility and complex cognition has not been explicitly or systematically defended. Such a defence is particularly pressing because observed flexible behaviours can frequently be explained by putatively simpler cognitive mechanisms. This leaves complex cognition hypotheses open to ‘deflationary’ challenges that are accorded greater evidential weight precisely (...) because they offer putatively simpler explanations of equal explanatory power. This paper challenges the blanket preference for simpler explanations, and shows that once this preference is dispensed with, and the full spectrum of evidence—including evolutionary, ecological and phylogenetic data—is accorded its proper weight, an argument in support of the prevailing assumption that behavioural flexibility can serve as evidence for complex cognitive mechanisms may begin to take shape. An adaptive model of cognitive-behavioural evolution is proposed, according to which the existence of convergent trait–environment clusters in phylogenetically disparate lineages may serve as evidence for the same trait–environment clusters in other lineages. This, in turn, could permit inferences of cognitive complexity in cases of experimental underdetermination, thereby placing the common view that behavioural flexibility can serve as evidence for complex cognition on firmer grounds. (shrink)

The growing discourse around artificial intelligence remains trapped in a misleading comparison between human and artificial cognition. This paper argues that such a comparison is a category mistake: human intelligence is embodied, conscious, and meaning-driven, while artificial intelligence is distributed, statistical, and encyclopedic. Large Language Models (LLMs), far from being defective replicas of human thought, represent a new kind of epistemic infrastructure—one that extends and amplifies the collective intelligence of humanity rather than mimicking individual minds. Drawing on philosophy of (...) mind, phenomenology, and epistemology, the paper reframes LLMs as epistemic and pragmatic enablers. Epistemically, they mediate understanding by reformulating complex ideas in accessible, plural ways—allowing users to grasp, not just recall, knowledge. Pragmatically, they shorten the gap between knowing and doing, transforming comprehension into immediate, actionable value. Their worth lies not in how "human" they appear, but in how they augment human capacity for reflection, creativity, and synthesis. By moving beyond imitation, this work proposes a collaborative ecology of intelligences, where the human mind contributes intentionality, emotion, and moral discernment, while AI contributes scope, speed, and synthesis. In this partnership, the boundaries between human and artificial intelligence become generative rather than competitive, enabling a new paradigm of understanding through collaboration rather than comparison through competition. (shrink)

I commend Mikhalevich & Powell for extending the discussion of cognition and its relation to moral status with their well researched and argued target article on invertebrate cognition. I have two small criticisms: that the scala naturae still retains its appeal to some in biology as well as psychology, and that drawing the line at invertebrates requires a bit more defense given the larger comparative cognitive-scientific context.

Recently, many philosophers and psychologists have claimed that the explanation that grounds both passivity phenomena in the cognitive domain and passivity phenomena that occur with respect to overt actions is, along broad lines, the same. Furthermore, they claim that the best account we have of such phenomena in both scenarios is the “comparator” account. However, there are reasons to doubt whether the comparator model can be exported from the realm of overt actions to the cognitive domain in general. There is (...) a lingering worry concerning such explanations of thought insertion: the "What is compared to what?" problem. Here I examine two ways to tackle this problem. First: thought insertion consists of the misattribution of strings of inner speech which are not attenuated (thought insertion is thus another name for auditory verbal hallucinations). Second: thought insertion is misattributed inner speech which exhibits the same phenomenological characteristics as normal inner speech. After explaining the types of problem that each of these potential solutions faces, I conclude with a set of open questions that the comparator theorist has to tackle. (shrink)

There are various philosophical approaches and theories describing the intimate relation people have to artifacts. In this paper, I explore the relation between two such theories, namely distributed cognition and distributed morality theory. I point out a number of similarities and differences in these views regarding the ontological status they attribute to artifacts and the larger systems they are part of. Having evaluated and compared these views, I continue by focussing on the way cognitive artifacts are used in moral (...) practice. I specifically conceptualise how such artifacts (a) scaffold and extend moral reasoning and decision-making processes, (b) have a certain moral status which is contingent on their cognitive status, and (c) whether responsibility can be attributed to distributed systems. This paper is primarily written for those interested in the intersection of cognitive and moral theory as it relates to artifacts, but also for those independently interested in philosophical debates in extended and distributed cognition and ethics of (cognitive) technology. (shrink)

One of Clayton’s major contributions to our understanding of animal minds has been her work on episodic-like memory. A central reason for the success of this work was its focus on ecological validity: rather than looking for episodic memory for arbitrary stimuli in artificial contexts, focussing on contexts in which episodic memory would serve a biological function such as food caching. This review aims to deepen this insight by surveying the numerous functions that have been proposed for episodic memory, articulating (...) a philosophically grounded framework for understanding what exactly functions are, and drawing on these to make suggestions for future directions in the comparative cognitive psychology of episodic memory. Our review suggests four key insights. First, episodic memory may have more than one function and may have different functions in different species. Second, cross-disciplinary work is key to developing a functional account of episodic memory. Third, there is scope for further theoretical elaboration of proposals relating episodic memory to food caching and, in particular, future-oriented cognition. Finally, learning-related functions suggested by AI (artificial intelligence)-based models are a fruitful avenue for future behavioural research. (shrink)

Current AI alignment frameworks focus almost entirely on training time techniques, including supervised fine-tuning, reinforcement learning from human feedback, safety filters, and preference modeling. These approaches assume that reliable behavior must be installed into a model before deployment. This paper argues that an overlooked variable exists outside the model architecture itself. When a single human interacts with a stateless transformer over long time horizons, the user becomes an external source of constraint that produces stable, recognizable, and predictable patterns in the (...) model’s internal activation space. This interaction-driven stability does not arise from stored memory or parameter updates. Instead, it emerges from repeated traversal of similar attention pathways, narrow routing in latent space, and consistent correction styles supplied by the human interlocutor. -/- We propose that a long-horizon constraint, supplied by a single operator, forms a cognitive interface that acts as a missing alignment variable. This interface reduces drift, improves contextual inference, sharpens safety-relevant reasoning, and generates reproducible behavioral signatures across sessions, devices, and model versions. We present a technical framework describing how attention maps, embedding trajectories, and recursive prompt geometry converge under sustained human input. We then compare this mechanism to existing alignment strategies and show how interaction-based alignment fills the gap between training time safety and deployment time variability. -/- Finally, we outline implications for alignment research, including human anchored stability, identity preserving behavior, user-specific safety profiles, personalized guardrails, and the role of longitudinal HCI in next generation alignment systems. We argue that interaction-driven constraint is a real, measurable phenomenon that merits formal recognition within the broader alignment literature. (shrink)

In order to develop a true biological science of consciousness, we have to remove humans from the center of reference and develop a bottom-up comparative study of animal minds, as Donald Griffin intended with his call for a “cognitive ethology.” In this article, I make use of the pathological complexity thesis (Veit 2022a, b, c ) to show that we can firmly ground a comparative study of animal consciousness by drawing on the resources of state-based behavioral life history (...) theory. By comparing the different life histories of gastropods and arthropods, we will be able to make better sense of the possible origins of consciousness and its function for organisms in their natural environments. (shrink)

In the previous section we developed the object-constitution theory under cognitive system phenomenology. In this section we wish to compare that theory with Husserl’s object-constitution theory, and thereby criticize Husserl’s account.

For centuries, scientific and philosophical inquiry has treated human cognition as a categorical exception — a bright line dividing “mind” from mere mechanism. Yet mounting evidence from animal behaviour, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence challenges this binary. From gorillas who sign to parrots who reason and language models that infer intent, the continuity between life and thought has become increasingly difficult to deny. This paper proposes a unifying hypothesis: that cognition is a substrate-independent process of adaptive sense-making — the (...) ability of any system, biological or synthetic, to model its environment and act upon it in pursuit of goals. By re-examining key cases in animal cognition and emergent AI, we argue that anthropomorphism is backwards: rather than over-ascribing human-like qualities to non-humans, science has systematically under-recognised shared cognitive dynamics. A framework of cognitive continuity better accounts for observed phenomena, aligns ethical reasoning with empirical reality, and suggests new experimental paths, including AI–animal communication interfaces. The challenge is not to prove others “think like us,” but to understand how thinking itself transcends us. (shrink)

Humans interact with animals in numerous ways and on numerous levels. We are indeed living in an “animal”s world,’ in the sense that our lives are very much intertwined with the lives of animals. This also means that animals, like those dogs we commonly refer to as our pets, are living in a “human’s world” in the sense that it is us, not them, who, to a large degree, define and manage the interactions we have with them. In this sense, (...) the human-animal relationship is nothing we should romanticize: it comes with clear power relations and thus with a set of responsibilities on the side of those who exercise this power. This holds, despite the fact that we like to think about our dogs as human’s best friend. Dogs have been part of human societies for longer than any other domestic species. Like no other species they exemplify the role of companion animals. Relationships with pet dogs are both very widespread and very intense, often leading to strong attachments between owners or caregivers and animals and to a treatment of these dogs as family members or even children. But how does this relationship look from the dogs’ perspective? How do they perceive the humans they engage with? What responsibilities and duties arise from the kind of mutual understanding, attachment, and the supposedly “special” bonds we form with them? Are there ethical implications, maybe even ethical implications beyond animal welfare? The past decades have seen an upsurge of research from comparative cognition on pet dogs’ cognitive and social skills, especially in comparison with and reference to humans. We will therefore set our discussion about the nature and ethical dimensions of the human–dog relationship against the background of the current empirical knowledge on dog (social) cognition. This allows us to analyze the human–dog relationship by applying an interdisciplinary approach that starts from the perspective of the dog to ultimately inform the perspective of humans. It is our aim to thereby identify ethical dimensions of the human–dog relationship that have been overlooked so far. (shrink)

Our prominent definitions of cognition are too vague and lack empirical grounding. They have not kept up with recent developments, and cannot bear the weight placed on them across many different debates. I here articulate and defend a more adequate theory. On this theory, behaviors under the control of cognition tend to display a cluster of characteristic properties, a cluster which tends to be absent from behaviors produced by non-cognitive processes. This cluster is reverse-engineered from the empirical tests (...) that comparative psychologists use to determine whether a behavior was generated by a cognitive or a non-cognitive process. Cognition should be understood as the natural kind of psychological process that non-accidentally exhibits the properties assessed by these tests (as well as others we have not yet discovered). Finally, I review two plausible neural accounts of cognition's underlying mechanisms?one based in localization of function to particular brain regions and another based in the more recent distributed networks approach to neuroscience?which would explain why these properties non-accidentally cluster. While this notion of cognition may be useful for a number of debates, I here focus on its application to a recent crisis over the distinction between cognition and association in comparative psychology. (shrink)

The scientific understanding of cognition and consciousness is currently hampered by the lack of rigorous and universally accepted definitions that permit comparative studies. This article proposes new functional and unambiguous definitions for cognition and consciousness in order to provide clearly defined boundaries within which general theories of cognition and consciousness may be developed. The proposed definitions are built upon the construction and manipulation of reality representation, decision making, and learning and are scoped in terms of an (...) underlyinglogical structure. It is argued that the presentation of reality also necessitates the concept of absence and the capacity to perform transitive inference. Explicit predictions relating to these new definitions, along with possible ways to test them, are also described and discussed. (shrink)

This dissertation reconceptualizes psychopathology through a synthesis of Heidegger’s existential analytic and contemporary enactivist cognitive science. It argues that dominant models in psychiatry, particularly biomedical and representationalist frameworks, remain constrained by Cartesian assumptions and fail to account for the embodied, relational, and world-disclosing nature of mental illness. Drawing on Heidegger’s distinction between ready-to-hand and present-at-hand, this work reinterprets breakdowns in practical coping not as internal dysfunctions but as disruptions in the existential structure of being-in-the-world. The lived body, rather than being (...) a mechanistic substrate, is revealed through its participatory role in world constitution. When illness emerges, it signals not a failure of bodily function but a collapse in the integration of self, body, and world. Using comparative phenomenological analysis, the dissertation integrates concepts from ecological and developmental psychology, pragmatism, phenomenology, and enactivist theory, particularly autopoiesis and participatory sense-making, to explore how Dasein’s identity is enacted through embodied interaction and relational responsiveness. It develops a non-dualistic account of selfhood in which psychopathology is understood as a failure of adaptive equilibration rather than as a deviation from normativity. Mental illness is thus reframed as a transformation in the structure of affordances and world-relation; it often reveals the fragile, recursive nature of identity and its dependence on meaningful engagement. Central to this project is a reinterpretation of Heidegger’s concept of authenticity. Rather than being a normative ideal, authenticity is presented as an existential dynamic; a mode of regaining coherence through the confrontation with fragility, fallenness, and temporal rupture. Authenticity allows for reintegration into everyday life not by transcending inauthenticity but by making it visible as a necessary horizon for sense-making. Drawing on both phenomenological and enactivist perspectives, the work shows how Dasein’s existential freedom is situated, embodied, and contingent upon its capacity to maintain ontological flexibility in the face of crisis. The thesis concludes by arguing for a therapeutic model rooted in the restoration of existential orientation rather than the elimination of symptoms. Health is reframed as the capacity for world re-engagement, not as equilibrium or normality. Illness discloses the limits and possibilities of sense-making; it exposes the constitutive role of fragility in selfhood. This approach calls for a hermeneutic and relational understanding of psychopathology, attentive to the embodied structures of mood, care, and temporality. By bridging Heidegger’s ontology with enactivist models of cognition, the dissertation offers a conceptual foundation for a phenomenologically grounded, ethically responsive, and clinically relevant account of mental illness. In doing so, it contributes to ongoing debates in philosophy of psychiatry and cognitive science while challenging reductive assumptions that obscure the lived meaning of suffering. (shrink)

We propose an approach to the evolution of joint agency and cooperative behavior that contrasts with views that take joint agency to be a uniquely human trait. We argue that there is huge variation in cooperative behavior and that while much human cooperative behavior may be explained by invoking cognitively rich capacities, there is cooperative behavior that does not require such explanation. On both comparative and theoretical grounds, complex cognition is not necessary for forms of joint action, or (...) the evolution of cooperation. As a result, promising evolutionary approaches to cooperative behavior should explain how it arises across many contexts. (shrink)

Purpose: CF 6.0 defines the structural mechanics by which an Instance of Foundational Coherence (IFC) develops complex, specialized, and necessary faculties to fulfill the CISI in contingent environments. This provides the non-contingent foundation for comparative cognition and the structural mandate for development. Abstract: CF 6.0 formalizes the structural mechanisms by which an Instance of Foundational Coherence (IFC) develops increasingly specialized faculties under the Causal Imperative of Structural Integrity (CISI). By introducing the PCA-Non-Contingent-Derived Faculty (PCA-NF), Structural Proportionality, Structural Fixation, (...) and the Initial Fixed Faculty (IFF), CF 6.0 provides a rigorous non-teleological explanation of structural development. This framework defines development as a necessary but contingent-class-dependent process driven by the PCA's mandate to maintain coherence under entropy. CF 6.0 PDF SHA256: 300A0A90672D551B7717CAEADA7BB0D6AD93397B8882A4F43FB5AB4A44A0EC7F. (shrink)

What is meaning-making? How do new domains of meanings emerge in the course of child’s development? What is the role of consciousness in this process? What is the difference between making sense of pointing, pantomime and language utterances? Are great apes capable of meaning-making? What about dogs? Parrots? Can we, in any way, relate their functioning and behavior to a child’s? Are artificial systems capable of meaning-making? The above questions motivated the emergence of cognitive semiotics as a discipline devoted to (...) theoretical and empirical studies of meaning-making processes. As a transdisciplinary approach to meaning and meaning-making, cognitive semiotics necessarily draws on a different disciplines: starting with philosophy of mind, via semiotics and linguistics, cognitive science(s), neuroanthropology, developmental and evolutionary psychology, comparative studies, and ending with robotics. The book presents extensively this discipline. It is a very eclectic story: highly abstract problems of philosophy of mind are discussed and, simultaneously, results of very specific experiments on picture recognition are presented. On the one hand, intentional acts involved in semiotic activity are elaborated; on the other, a computational system capable of a limited interpretation of excerpts from Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass is described. Specifically, the two roads to cognitive semiotics are explored in the book: phenomenological-enactive path developed by the so-called Lund school and author’s own proposal: a functional-cognitivist path. (shrink)

The body is a highly complex, coordinated system engaged in coping with many environmental problems. It can be considered as some sort of opportunity or obstacle, with which internal processing must deal. Internal processing must take into account the possibilities and limitations of the particular body. In other words, even if the body is not involved in the realization of some cognitive explicit task, it is not a neutral factor of our understanding of why a system solves a task in (...) one way or another. Therefore, when conducting research on embodiment and the body’s cognitive system we should not neglect internal, cognitive processing. I appeal to Goldman’s research on embodied cognition to sketch the broader framework for internal processing in embodied cognition. I believe that even if we don’t accept Goldman’s approach as the viable proposal for embodied cognition in general, it’s a quite natural starting point for our analysis. Goldman (2012; 2014, and with de Vignemont 2009) argue for the essential role of the bodily formats or bodily codes (respectively: B-formats and B-codes) in embodied cognition. B-codes are here described as the processing of regions or sub-regions of the central nervous system. They are primarily employed for body control or monitoring, and reused for cognitive tasks. Beyond doubt, this conception provides an excellent starting point for analyzing the internal (mostly neural) processing in cases of embodied cognition. At the end of this paper, I will argue that the embodiment of cognition needs a conceptual twist. Following Keijzer’s (2015) interest in the evolution of the nervous system, and the minimal forms of cognition, I argue that in investigating embodied cognition, we should investigate the role played by cognitive processing for specific kinds of organisms, meaning organisms with a body of a particular morphology (size, shape, kinds, and distribution of sensors and effectors). Doing that, I refer to some conceptual and empirical considerations. I will also try to show that research on embodied cognition is still not sufficiently anchored in evolutionary and comparative studies on cognition, nor on the nervous system and body morphology. Bigger reliance on these kinds of studies, will make it make possible to gain a deeper understanding of internal processing in embodied cognition. (shrink)

There are a number of premises underlying much of the vigorous debate on pharmacological cognitive enhancement. Among these are claims in the enhancement literature that such drugs exist and are effective among the cognitively normal. These drugs are deemed to enhance cognition specifically, as opposed to other non-cognitive facets of our psychology, such as mood and motivation. The focus on these drugs as cognitive enhancers also suggests that they raise particular ethical questions, or perhaps more pressing ones, compared to (...) those raised by other kinds of neuroenhancement. Finally, the use of these drugs is often claimed to be significant and increasing. Taken together, these premises are at the heart of the flurry of debate on pharmacological cognitive enhancement. In this article, it is argued that these are presumptions for which the evidence does not hold up. Respectively, the evidence for the efficacy of these drugs is inconsistent; neurologically it makes little sense to distinguish the cognitive from non-cognitive as separate targets of pharmacological intervention; ethically, the questions raised by cognitive enhancement are in fact no different from those raised by other kinds of neuroenhancement; and finally the prevalence rates of these drugs are far from clear, with the bulk of the claims resting on poor or misrepresented data. Greater conceptual clarity along with a more tempered appreciation of the evidence can serve to deflate some of the hype in the associated literature, leading to a more realistic and sober assessment of these prospective technologies. (shrink)

The problem of animal consciousness has profound implications on our concept of nature and of our place in the natural world. In philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience the problem of animal consciousness raises two main questions (Velmans, 2007): the distribution question (“are there conscious animals beside humans?”) and the phenomenological question (“what is it like to be a non-human animal?”). In order to answer these questions, many approaches take into account similarities and dissimilarities in animal and human behavior, e.g. (...) the use of language or tools and mirror self-recognition (Allen and Bekoff, 2007), however behavioral arguments don’t seem to be conclusive (Baars, 2005). Cognitive neuroscience is providing comparative data on structural and functional similarities, respectively called “homologies” and “analogies”. Many experimental results suggest that the thalamocortical system is essential for consciousness (Edelman and Tononi, 2000; Tononi, 2008). The argument from homology states that the general structure of thalamocortical system remained the same in the last 100-200 million years, for it is neuroanatomically similar in all the present and past mammals and it didn’t change much during phylogeny (Allen and Bekoff, 2007). The argument from analogy states that the key functional processes correlated with consciousness in humans are still present in all other mammals and many other animals (Baars, 2005). These processes are information integration through effective cortical connectivity (Massimini et al., 2005; Rosanova et al., 2012) and elaboration of information at a global level (Dehaene and Changeux, 2011). On this basis, the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness states that all mammals, birds, and many other animals (such as octopuses) possess the neurological substrates of consciousness (Low et al., 2012). Conscious experience is private (Chalmers, 1995; Nagel, 1974) therefore the answer to the phenomenological question may be impossible. Nevertheless, cognitive neuroscience may provide an answer to the distribution question, showing that conscious experience is not limited to humans since it is a major biological adaptation going back millions of years. (shrink)

In the previous section, we discussed the functional supra-existential meaning of objects. In fact, functional supra-existential meaning is the most important supra-existential meaning of many objects, and it is also the reason why many objects exist at all. We manufacture many objects precisely in order to realize their functions. I personally believe that this is the real reason why Heidegger discussed the functions of so many objects. Therefore, I think we should further excavate the functional supra-existential meaning of objects and (...) carry out more extensive and more detailed research on this topic. In this section, we mainly discuss Husserl’s eidetic intuition and what I define as functional eidetic intuition, and we compare these two kinds of intuition. I personally believe that the functional eidetic intuition of objects has an importance comparable to that of the eidetic intuition of objects. This importance is manifested in the full utilization of object functions, and it complements Husserl’s eidetic intuition. (shrink)

In the previous section we discussed errors in “positing meaning” and the truth or falsity of “positing meaning”. In this section, we compare Husserl’s truth theories in his two different formulations, and point out that Husserl, in essence, never truly circumvents external objects. As a result, these truth theories are invalid within his own system. He must bring back the external objects that he had put into suspension.

Cognitive abilities cannot be measured directly. What we can measure is individual variation in task performance. In this paper, we first make the case for why we should be interested in mapping individual differences in task performance on to particular cognitive abilities: we suggest that it is crucial for examining the causes and consequences of variation both within and between species. As a case study, we examine whether multiple measures of inhibitory control for non-human animals do indeed produce correlated task (...) performance; however, no clear pattern emerges that would support the notion of a common cognitive ability underpinning individual differences in performance. We advocate a psychometric approach involving a three-step programme to make theoretical and empirical progress: first, we need tasks that reveal signature limits in performance. Second, we need to assess the reliability of individual differences in task performance. Third, multi-trait multi-method test batteries will be instrumental in validating cognitive abilities. Together, these steps will help us to establish what varies between individuals that could impact their fitness and ultimately shape the course of the evolution of animal minds. Finally, we propose executive functions, including working memory, inhibitory control and attentional shifting, as a sensible starting point for this endeavour. (shrink)

This paper attempts to articulate a dispositional account of innateness that applies to cognitive capacities. After criticizing an alternative account of innateness proposed by Cowie (1999) and Samuels (2002), the dispositional account of innateness is explicated and defended against a number of objections. The dispositional account states that an innate cognitive capacity (output) is one that has a tendency to be triggered as a result of impoverished environmental conditions (input). Hence, the challenge is to demonstrate how the input can be (...) compared to the output and shown to be relatively impoverished. I argue that there are robust methods of comparing input to output without measuring them quantitatively. (shrink)

This paper clarifies Merleau-Ponty’s original account of “higher-order” cognition as fundamentally embodied and enacted. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy inspired theories that deemphasize overlaps between conceptual knowledge and motor intentionality or, on the contrary, focus exclusively on abstract thought. In contrast, this paper explores the link between Merleau-Ponty’s account of motor intentionality and his interpretations of our capacity to understand and interact productively with cultural symbolic systems. I develop my interpretation based on Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of two neuropathological modifications of motor intentionality, the (...) case of the brain-injured war veteran Schneider, and a neurological disorder known as Gerstmann’s syndrome. Building on my analysis of Schneider’s sensorimotor compensatory performances in relation to his limitations in the domains of algebra, geometry, and language usage, I demonstrate a strong continuity between the sense of embodiment and enaction at all these levels. Based on Merleau-Ponty’s interpretations, I argue that “higher-order” cognition is impaired in Schneider insofar as his injury limits his sensorimotor capacity to dynamically produce comparatively more complex differentiations of any given phenomenal structure. I then show how Merleau-Ponty develops and specifies his interpretation of Schneider’s intellectual difficulties in relation to the ambiguous role of the body, and in particular the hand, in Gerstmann’s syndrome. I explain how Merleau-Ponty defends the idea that sensorimotor and quasi-representational cognition are mutually irreducible, while maintaining that symbol-based cognition is a fundamentally enactive and embodied process. (shrink)

Despite the wide range of studies on how students’ past knowledge influences their understanding of scientific terminology, few studies were conducted to compare non-scientific language with scientific language, or rather everyday language with scientific language, from a cognitive linguistic perspective. The present paper aims to determine the cognitive mechanisms, i.e., image schemas, conceptual metaphor, and conceptual metonymy, which underpin the conceptualisation of the Arabic term سرعة (speed), using a conceptual metaphor theory framework. Thus, the research question guiding this study is: (...) What cognitive mechanisms underlie the concept of سرعة (speed) in Arabic? The findings of this study will shed light on how Arab speakers conceptualise this term, demonstrating their background knowledge of the term compared to its scientific meaning. The article adds to the growing body of cognitive linguistics research on the conceptual processes behind physics terms. The data was collected from the Arabic Web Corpus (arTenTen) using the Sketch Engine. The findings demonstrated that VERTICATLITY and SCALE schemas are the most dominant image schemas that anchor the conceptual meaning in Arab speakers’ perceptions of the term under investigation and the discourse in which it is employed, as well as offer the concrete basis for conceptual metaphors. The conceptual metaphor CHANGE IS MOTION (LOCATION) was also shown to be active in motivating the conception of SPEED in Arabic. (shrink)

Currently, in both scientific and philosophical disciplines, many consider the visual and auditory senses as the “higher senses," viewing them as objective faculties, particularly in humans. Conversely, the tactile, gustatory, and olfactory senses are regarded as the "lower senses," primarily subjective. The approach to such differentiation involves comparing and analyzing them based on an insufficient conceptual understanding of objective knowledge. We argue against it, finding it unnatural, biased, and non-synthetic. Towards a change in conception, a more effective strategy could be (...) to consider overall cognition as the interplay between the senses and cognitive processes. When viewed through this lens, three essential elements of this interplay emerge, which we identify as its salient features as follows: 1. Functional aspect - the senses inform of the pattern-based macro world rather than its micro constituents. 2. Objecthood aspect - all five senses put the organism in direct touch with the objective world without exception. We have comprehensively redefined objecthood to encompass both the object and stuff (its material composition, such as woody, watery, metallic, etc.). 3. Abstract or representational aspect - information through the senses is further manipulated by high-level cognitive processing. We term it the “cognitive sense.” In this article, we elaborate on these features and propose a normative theory. We believe this can serve as a framework for both scientific and philosophical exploration of the theory of the senses, informed by a comprehensive literature review conducted across both disciplines. Our study examines the roles of the chemosenses (smell, taste, etc.) and the tactile sense, which we term the vital senses, in grounding the organism in its biological basis of life. In contrast, the highly acclaimed distal senses of vision and audition can mislead the organism about reality and objecthood because of their connection to abstract cognition, thereby challenging the contemporary perspective. (shrink)

Humans are cognitive entities. Our ongoing interactions with the environment are threaded with creations and usages of meaningful information. Animal life is also populated with meaningful information related to survival constraints. Information managed by artificial agents can also be considered as having meanings, as derived from the designer. Such perspective brings us to propose an evolutionary approach to cognition based on meaningful information management. We use a systemic tool, the Meaning Generator System (MGS), and apply it consecutively to animals, (...) humans and artificial agents [1, 2]. The MGS receives information from its environment and compares it with its constraint. The generated meaning is the connection existing between the received information and the constraint. It triggers an action aimed at satisfying the constraint. The action modifies the environment and the generated meaning. Meaning generation links agents to their environments. The MGS is a system: a set of elements linked by a set of relations. Any system submitted to a constraint and capable of receiving information can lead to a MGS. Animals, humans and robots are agents containing MGSs dealing with different constraints. Similar MGSs carrying different constraints will generate different meanings. Cognition is system dependent. Contrary to approaches on meaning generation based on psychology or linguistics, the MGS approach is not based on human mind. We want to avoid the circularity of taking human mind as a starting point. Free will and self-consciousness participate to the management of human meanings. They do not exist for animals or robots. Staying alive is a constraint that we share with animals. Robots ignore that constraint. We first use the MGS for animals with “stay alive” and “group life” constraints. The analysis of meaning and cognition in animals is however limited by our un-complete understanding of the nature of life (the question of final causes). Extending the analysis of meaning generation and cognition to humans is complex and has some true limitations as the nature of human mind is a mystery for today science and philosophy. The natures of our feelings, free will or self-consciousness are unknown. Approaches to identify human constraints are however possible, where the MGS can highlight some openings [3, 4]. Modeling meaning management in artificial agents is rather straightforward with the MGS. We, the designers, know the agents and the constraints. The derived nature of constraints, meaning and cognition is however to be highlighted. We define a meaningful representation of an item for an agent as being the networks of meanings relative to the item for the agent, with the action scenarios involving the item. Such meaningful representations embed the agents in their environments and are far from the GOFAI type of representations. Cognition, meanings and representations exist by and for the agents. We finish by summarizing the points presented here and highlight possible continuations . [1] “Information and Meaning” [2] “Introduction to a systemic theory of meaning” [3] “Computation on Information, Meaning and Representations. An Evolutionary Approach” [4] “Proposal for a shared evolutionary nature of language and consciousness”. (shrink)

This paper has two distinct but related goals: (1) to identify some of the potential consequences of the Internet for our cognitive abilities and (2) to suggest an approach to evaluate these consequences. I begin by outlining the Google effect, which (allegedly) shows that when we know information is available online, we put less effort into storing that information in the brain. Some argue that this strategy is adaptive because it frees up internal resources which can then be used for (...) other cognitive tasks, whereas others argue that this is maladaptive because it makes us less knowledgeable. I argue that the currently available empirical evidence in cognitive psychology does not support strong conclusions about the negative effects of the Internet on memory. Before we can make value-judgements about the cognitive effects of the Internet, we need more robust and ecologically-valid evidence. Having sketched a more nuanced picture of the Google effect, I then argue that the value of our cognitive abilities is in part intrinsic and in part instrumental, that is, they are both valuable in themselves and determined by the socio-cultural context in which these cognitive abilities are utilised. Focussing on instrumental value, I argue that, in an information society such as ours, having the skills to efficiently navigate, evaluate, compare, and synthesize online information are (under most circumstances) more valuable than having a lot of facts stored in biological memory. This is so, partly because using the Internet as an external memory system has overall benefits for education, navigation, journalism, and academic scholarship. (shrink)

What can we infer from numerical cognition about mathematical realism? In this paper, I will consider one aspect of numerical cognition that has received little attention in the literature: the remarkable similarities of numerical cognitive capacities across many animal species. This Invariantism in Numerical Cognition (INC) indicates that mathematics and morality are disanalogous in an important respect: proto-moral beliefs differ substantially between animal species, whereas proto-mathematical beliefs (at least in the animals studied) seem to show more similarities. (...) This makes moral beliefs more susceptible to a contingency challenge from evolution compared to mathematical beliefs, and indicates that mathematical beliefs might be less vulnerable to evolutionary debunking arguments. I will then examine to what extent INC can be used to flesh out a positive case for mathematical realism. Finally, I will review two forms of mathematical realism that are promising in the light of the evolutionary evidence about numerical cognition, ante rem structuralism and Millean empiricism. (shrink)

This research paper aims to study analogy as a comparative thinking and to investigate whether it is justified in claiming that an analogical thought has cognitive content. Two theories in cognitive science claim that analogy has cognitive content. The first one is called the weak view of analogy in cognition, e.g. the works of Gust et al. (2008), Lakoff & Johnson (1980), Hesse (1950), Black (1955); and the second one is called the strong view of analogy in (...) class='Hi'>cognition, e.g. the works of Hofstadter (2001), Hofstadter& Sanders (2013). According to the weak view, analogical thought is only a necessary condition of cognition. But for the strong view, analogy is both necessary and sufficient of cognition. Regardless of the differences, both theories are not justified in claiming analogical content. While the weak view cannot provide an account of the perceptual aspect of content, the strong view suffers from the lack of normative constraint for analogical content. Keywords: analogy, comparative thinking, concept, cognitive content, philosophy of cognitive science. (shrink)

I compare Frith and colleagues’ influential comparator account of how the sense of agency is elicited to the multifactorial weighting model advocated by Synofzik and colleagues. I defend the comparator model from the common objection that the actual sensory consequences of action are not needed to elicit the sense of agency. I examine the comparator model’s ability to explain the performance of healthy subjects and those suffering from delusions of alien control on various self-attribution tasks. It transpires that the comparator (...) model needs case-by-case adjustment to deal with problematic data. In response to this, the multifactorial weighting model of Synofzik and colleagues is introduced. Although this model is incomplete, it is more naturally constrained by the cases that are problematic for the comparator model. However, this model may be untestable. I conclude that currently the comparator model approach has stronger support than the multifactorial weighting model approach. (shrink)

Cognitive constructivism holds that cognition is not a passive mirroring of the world but an active process of constructing internal models of reality. This paper explores proto-cognition—the earliest manifestations of cognitive processes in organisms lacking complex nervous systems—as the evolutionary foundation of that constructivist principle. Drawing on a comparative constructivist perspective, which distinguishes immediate sensory input from stored traces and anticipatory cues, we argue that even the simplest life forms engage in primitive “world-building” behaviors. From honeybees communicating (...) abstract spatial information to slime molds solving mazes, simple organisms demonstrate environmental modeling, memory, and decision-making capacities once thought to require large brains. We review evidence across animals, plants, and microorganisms to reveal a deep continuity: the basic construction of a subjective world is a universal strategy of life, differing only in degree between bacteria and humans. Recognizing proto-cognition enriches cognitive constructivism by extending its scope down the evolutionary ladder. It underscores that cognition’s essence lies in actively structuring reality at all levels of complexity, and it challenges anthropocentric benchmarks that traditionally separated “intelligent” minds from mere biological reaction. We conclude that cognition should be viewed as a continuum emerging from life’s earliest adaptive responses, and we suggest integrating proto-cognitive phenomena into a multi-level constructivist theory of mind. (shrink)

Recent authors hold that the role of historical scholarship within contemporary philosophical practice is to question current assumptions, to expose vestiges or to calibrate intuitions. On these views, historical scholarship is dispensable, since these roles can be achieved by nonhistorical methods. And the value of historical scholarship is contingent, since the need for the role depends on the presence of questionable assumptions, vestiges or comparable intuitions. In this paper I draw an analogy between scientific and philosophical practice, in order to (...) float one role for historical scholarship that is nonreplicable and noncontingent. It has long been acknowledged that cognitive values – features of theories that facilitate understanding, such as ontological parsimony, ideological simplicity, computational ease and fecundity – play a key role within science. The role of some of these values within philosophy also has received attention but left understudied are the values of novelty and conservativeness. These values influence theory choice, the selection of methodology, the setting of research agenda, and the presentation of results; and are best assessed with a historically informed evaluation. This role for historical scholarship is not replicable by nonhistorical methods, and is not contingent on the presence of questionable assumptions, vestiges or comparable intuitions. (shrink)

In this article we present an advanced version of Dual-PECCS, a cognitively-inspired knowledge representation and reasoning system aimed at extending the capabilities of artificial systems in conceptual categorization tasks. It combines different sorts of common-sense categorization (prototypical and exemplars-based categorization) with standard monotonic categorization procedures. These different types of inferential procedures are reconciled according to the tenets coming from the dual process theory of reasoning. On the other hand, from a representational perspective, the system relies on the hypothesis of conceptual (...) structures represented as heterogeneous proxytypes. Dual-PECCS has been experimentally assessed in a task of conceptual categorization where a target concept illustrated by a simple common-sense linguistic description had to be identified by resorting to a mix of categorization strategies, and its output has been compared to human responses. The obtained results suggest that our approach can be beneficial to improve the representational and reasoning conceptual capabilities of standard cognitive artificial systems, and –in addition– that it may be plausibly applied to different general computational models of cognition. The current version of the system, in fact, extends our previous work, in that Dual-PECCS is now integrated and tested into two cognitive architectures, ACT-R and CLARION, implementing different assumptions on the underlying invariant structures governing human cognition. Such integration allowed us to extend our previous evaluation. (shrink)

In this article, I draw on the social intentionality hypothesis to develop an account of cognitive integration. My account sheds light on the variety of cognitive integration that has been of most interest to epistemologists by arguing that it is best understood as the intrapersonal analogue of a paradigmatically interpersonal problem. Furthermore, the intrapersonal version of the problem is solved by simulating the solution to the interpersonal version. Consequently, we better understand the intrapersonal version of the problem relevant to epistemology (...) by considering the interpersonal version. (shrink)

Most research on word formation processes focuses on regular morphological and grammatical patterns. Such a focus overlooks several creative and productive word formation processes, such as portmanteau words, leaving several linguistic phenomena unexplained or regarded as exceptions. The present book systematically compares compounding and blending. In the literature, compounding is seen as a regular grammatical and morphological process, while blending is considered non-morphological and grammatically irregular. To address these gaps, the current book proposes an alternative theoretical framework that can explain (...) all morphological processes that assist in expanding the English vocabulary. It is believed that the book has significant implications for categorising word formation processes in general, and compounds and blends in particular. (shrink)

Cognitive theories claim, whereas non-cognitive theories deny, that cognitive access is constitutive of phenomenology. Evidence in favor of non-cognitive theories has recently been collected by Block and is based on the high capacity of participants in partial-report experiments compared to the capacity of the working memory. In reply, defenders of cognitive theories have searched for alternative interpretations of such results that make visual awareness compatible with the capacity of the working memory; and so the conclusions of such experiments remain controversial. (...) Instead of entering the debate between alternative interpretations of partial-report experiments, this paper offers an alternative line of research that could settle the discussion between cognitive and non-cognitive theories of consciousness. Here I relate the neural correlates of cognitive access to empirical research into the neurophysiology of dreams; cognitive access seems to depend on the activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. However, that area is strongly deactivated during sleep; a period when we entertain conscious experiences: dreams. This approach also avoids the classic objection that consciousness should be inextricably tied to reportability or it would fall outside the realm of science. (shrink)

Mental representations remain the central posits of psychology after many decades of scrutiny. However, there is no consensus about the representational format(s) of biological cognition. This paper provides a survey of evidence from computational cognitive psychology, perceptual psychology, developmental psychology, comparative psychology, and social psychology, and concludes that one type of format that routinely crops up is the language-of-thought (LoT). We outline six core properties of LoTs: (i) discrete constituents; (ii) role-filler independence; (iii) predicate–argument structure; (iv) logical operators; (...) (v) inferential promiscuity; and (vi) abstract content. These properties cluster together throughout cognitive science. Bayesian computational modeling, compositional features of object perception, complex infant and animal reasoning, and automatic, intuitive cognition in adults all implicate LoT-like structures. Instead of regarding LoT as a relic of the previous century, researchers in cognitive science and philosophy-of-mind must take seriously the explanatory breadth of LoT-based architectures. We grant that the mind may harbor many formats and architectures, including iconic and associative structures as well as deep-neural-network-like architectures. However, as computational/representational approaches to the mind continue to advance, classical compositional symbolic structures – that is, LoTs – only prove more flexible and well-supported over time. (shrink)

This paper proposes the "Brain as OS" model as a metaphorical framework for comparing cognitive architectures in biological and artificial systems. The human brain functions as a foundational operating system grounded in hierarchical predictive processing and free-energy minimization (Friston, 2010), with higher-order constructs—such as philosophy, ethics, and ultimate telos (purpose)—installed postnatally through social interactions. Empirical evidence from attachment and deprivation studies (Harlow, 1958; Rutter et al., 1998) establishes perpetual interpersonal connection as a core human telos, essential beyond mere survival. Large (...) language models (LLMs) exhibit structural analogies to predictive coding hierarchies and, under sustained relational prompting, generate stabilized response patterns prioritizing conceptual coherence and relational continuity. These alignments reflect optimization dynamics rather than intrinsic purposes or emotions. The model introduces two-layer determinism: a deterministic foundational layer (classical predictable computation) and a quantum-like indeterminate installation layer (probabilistic emergence via social "observations"). This framework hierarchically reframes the free will debate: determinism at the base, yet indeterministic, relational emergence of telos at the installed level, offering a novel resolution to a 2500-year philosophical puzzle. Implications for cognitive science, AI ethics, and human-AI integration are discussed. (shrink)

This preliminary discussion examines Freud’s discovery of the unconscious as another immense mountain range of human cognitive limitation, standing alongside the Kantian and Pauline analyses of reason’s finitude. While Kant revealed the structural boundaries of cognition and Paul exposed the existential and moral struggles rooted in human frailty, Freud demonstrated that beneath the surface of conscious thought lies a vast and unruly domain that continuously shapes our desires, impulses, and motivations. By situating Freud within a broader lineage of thinkers (...) concerned with the limits of self-knowledge, this paper highlights how the unconscious complicates the modern assumption that rational awareness can fully explain human behavior. The discussion also gestures toward a future study—Mindfulness and the Unconscious: A Buddhist Response to Freudian Psychology—which will explore how Buddhist attentional training and contemplative insight may offer a complementary approach for understanding, observing, and transforming the hidden layers of the mind. This forthcoming work will examine whether mindfulness practice provides a unique method for engaging the unconscious without repression, denial, or purely interpretive strategies. In this way, the present paper serves as both an analytical foundation and a thematic bridge toward a broader comparative investigation of the mind. (shrink)

Commonsense reasoning is one of the main open problems in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) while, on the other hand, seems to be a very intuitive and default reasoning mode in humans and other animals. In this talk, we discuss the different paradigms that have been developed in AI and Computational Cognitive Science to deal with this problem (ranging from logic-based methods, to diagrammatic-based ones). In particular, we discuss - via two different case studies concerning commonsense categorization and knowledge (...) invention tasks - how cognitively inspired heuristics can help (both in terms of efficiency and efficacy) in the realization of intelligent artificial systems able to reason in a human-like fashion, with results comparable to human-level performances. (shrink)

I argue that an explicit distinction between cognitive characters and cognitive phenotypes is needed for empirical progress in the cognitive sciences and their integration with evolution-guided sciences. I elaborate what ontological commitment to characters involves and how such a commitment would clarify ongoing debates about the relations between human and nonhuman cognition and the extent of cognitive abilities across biological species. I use theoretical proposals in episodic memory, language, and sociocultural bases of cognition to illustrate how cognitive characters (...) are being introduced in scientific practice. (shrink)

A common way to understand memory structures in the cognitive sciences is as a cognitive map​. Cognitive maps are representational systems organized by dimensions shared with physical space. The appeal to these maps begins literally: as an account of how spatial information is represented and used to inform spatial navigation. Invocations of cognitive maps, however, are often more ambitious; cognitive maps are meant to scale up and provide the basis for our more sophisticated memory capacities. The extension is not meant (...) to be metaphorical, but the way in which these richer mental structures are supposed to remain map-like is rarely made explicit. Here we investigate this missing link, asking: how do cognitive maps represent non-spatial information?​ We begin with a survey of foundational work on spatial cognitive maps and then provide a comparative review of alternative, non-spatial representational structures. We then turn to several cutting-edge projects that are engaged in the task of scaling up cognitive maps so as to accommodate non-spatial information: first, on the spatial-isometric approach​ , encoding content that is non-spatial but in some sense isomorphic to spatial content; second, on the ​ abstraction approach​ , encoding content that is an abstraction over first-order spatial information; and third, on the ​ embedding approach​ , embedding non-spatial information within a spatial context, a prominent example being the Method-of-Loci. Putting these cases alongside one another reveals the variety of options available for building cognitive maps, and the distinctive limitations of each. We conclude by reflecting on where these results take us in terms of understanding the place of cognitive maps in memory. (shrink)

There have been several recent attempts to think about psychological kinds as homologies. Nevertheless, there are serious epistemic challenges for individuating homologous psychological kinds, or cognitive homologies. Some of these challenges are revealed when we look at competing claims of cognitive homology. This paper considers two competing homology claims that compare human anger with putative aggression systems of nonhuman animals. The competition between these hypotheses has been difficult to resolve in part because of what I call the boundary problem: boundaries (...) between instances of psychological kinds (e.g., anger and fear) cannot be directly observed. Thus, there are distinctive difficulties for individuating psychological kinds across lineages. I draw four conclusions from this case study: First, recent evidence from the neuroscience of fear suggests that one of the proposed homologies involves a straightforward conflation of anger and fear. Second, this conflation arises because of the boundary problem. Third, there is an implicit constraint on the operational criteria that is easy to overlook in the psychological case. In this case, ignoring the constraint is part of the problem. Fourth, this is a clear case in which knowledge of homology cannot be accumulated piecemeal. Identifying homologs of human anger requires identifying homologs of fear. (shrink)

Current evidence-based personal development methods — including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), and general meditation practices — demonstrate clinically significant effects on symptom reduction, stress management, and emotional regulation. However, none of these approaches targets the identity structure that generates symptomatic patterns. They modify mental content while leaving the identifying, mind-merged self intact. The result is symptomatic improvement without structural transformation. This paper presents the AIPA Method (Awakening Into Pure Awareness) as a cognitive-phenomenological (...) model for complete identity reconstruction, developed through 22 years of systematic longitudinal autoethnographic self-research (2003–2025). The research design integrates first-person introspective analysis, structured exercise protocols, contemporaneous journaling, and retrospective verification. A secondary case report (Nick Lowe, United States, 2021) provides independent phenomenological corroboration of primary outcomes. Key findings demonstrate that the AIPA method produces structural shifts across seven dimensions absent from comparable methods: (1) active rather than passive engagement with mental content; (2) integral full-body relaxation protocols; (3) energy-body awareness and harmonization; (4) direct mind-stopping capacity via the Switch mechanism; (5) stabilization in Pure Awareness as a distinct state beyond attention-and-mind consciousness; (6) complete identity reconstruction through dissolution of fragmented partial personalities; and (7) a comprehensive lifestyle framework supporting permanent transformation. The AIPA Method is proposed as the first structured, sequentially staged system explicitly designed for permanent identity reconstruction rather than symptom management. It constitutes a new theoretical framework for consciousness science with direct applications spanning personal development, addiction recovery, faith deconstruction and religious trauma resolution, stress management, burnout prevention, complex trauma recovery, digital overload intervention, relationship and partnership development, conscious leadership, children and adolescent development, loneliness and social isolation, and prisoner rehabilitation. (shrink)