Publisher of academic journals and books. Specialising in consciousness studies, philosophy, psychology, and politics. @SocietasImprint
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ALT This issue is a mixed issue, with some regular papers and a symposium on eric schwitzgebel’s book the weirdness of the world. Regular papers include: 'Emotion, Consciousness, and the Heart–Brain Connection: A Quantum Biological Perspective', by José Luis Díaz-Palencia & Celia Ortega-Gómez; and 'Clearing the Air About Psychedelic Spirituality', by Adam Greif & Gabriela Bezáková.
ALT Further regular papers include: 'How Meaning Turns Out-of-Body Experiences into Life Change: A Phenomenological Qualitative Study', by Jenny Moix & Claudia Rodríguez Rodríguez; 'The Metaphysics of Self-Causality', by Chris Nelson; 'The Near-Death Experience as an Instance of Higher-Dimensional Phenomenal Consciousness?', by Pekka Rechardt; 'Cross-Modal Experiences and the Problem of Phenomenal Overlap', by Zhiwei Yang; and 'Representational Adequacy, Natural Selection, and Quantum Ontology: Against a Three-Dimensionally Spatial Reality', by Lyu Zhou.
ALT The symposium includes: 'Précis of The Weirdness of the World', by Eric Schwitzgebel; 'Flights of Fancy: Comment on Eric Schwitzgebel’s The Weirdness of the World', by Edouard Machery; 'AI Weirdness and Distributive Gaming', by Luke Roelofs; 'Is a Data Centre Conscious? The Quantum Weirdness of Substrate', by Susan Schneider; and 'How Weird the World Is: Replies to Machery, Roelofs, and Schneider', by Eric Schwitzgebel & Jacob Barandes.
ALT Volume 2 issue 2 of the Journal of Sortition is out now. This issue features Editorial, by Gil Delannoi; a Review Symposium on James Fishkin, Can Deliberation Cure the Ills of Democracy, featuring Overview of Published Book, by James Fishkin; Preface to Symposium, by Jane Mansbridge; Deliberation Can’t Cure Democracy, But Might Save It, by John Gastil; and Making Democracy Think: But Who Sets the Question?, by Jane Suiter.
ALT Additionally, the review symposium features Sortition, Elections and the Will of the People, by Cristina Lafont; Comments on Fishkin, by Mark E. Warren; A Contingency Theory of Sortition, by Jane Mansbridge; and Response to Commentaries, by James Fishkin. Regular papers include: Electoral Lottocracy, by Jordan Rose.
ALT Regular papers also include On Poachers and Gamekeepers, by Keith Sutherland as well as The Lottocratic Mentality and Lottocracy: Talking Past One Other?, by Eric Shoemaker. The jury trial symposium features: Introduction, by Ethan Leib; Reforming the Jury in England and Wales, by Nancy S. Marder; Two Cheers for Jury Democracy, by Michael J. Beloff KC; and The View from the Dock, by Nichola Arch.
ALT The symposium also features The View from the Magistrates’ Bench, by Barbara Goodwin and The Jury as a Popular Check on Executive Power, by Oliver Dowlen. Additionally, this issue includes a memoir (A Conversation with Habermas and the Unfinished Work of Deliberative Democracy, by Baogang He) and a piece on the history of sortition (‘Sortition Helped Brussels Out of a Mediaeval Crisis’, by Hugh Pope).
ALT "Clearing the Air About Psychedelic Spirituality" by Adam Greif and Gabriela Bezáková, published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 33, issue 9-10.
ALT The first half of the abstract reads as follows: Psychedelic-assisted therapy occasions mystical experiences and their intensity often predicts therapeutic outcomes. Owing to their spiritual import psychedelics have been linked to supernatural thinking, religions, and cults. Several authors within the psychedelic field argue these associations render the field scientifically and ethically questionable with some calling for the mystical framework of therapy to be replaced. This paper examines the controversy surrounding psychedelic spirituality to diagnose the issue and offer proposals for easing tensions. We argue that the question of the veracity of mystical insights is the primary source of controversy, but is a philosophical rather than scientific question and can, for now, be bracketed. To read the rest of the abstract, please refer to the link in the post.
ALT 1: Consciousness is fundamentally subjective, private and personal, and encompasses rich and deep experiences with qualities that are hard—maybe even impossible—to describe or quantify precisely.
ALT 2: There are a number of distinct states of consciousness, such as waking and sleeping, each with its own unique features.
ALT 3: There is something about animate and conscious beings that is fundamentally different from things that are inanimate and seemingly not conscious. This question is particularly pertinent to current discussions about whether artificial intelligence (AI) can be conscious.
ALT "Is a Data Centre Conscious? The Quantum Weirdness of Substrate" by Susan Schneider, published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 33, issue 9-10.
ALT Functional and behavioural analogues of consciousness in LLMs trained on data about consciousness should not be treated as evidence of LLM consciousness. A system trained to predict human text can produce human-like reports of experience not because it has the states those reports describe, but because those reports are probable outputs of its training distribution. This is an error theory: an account of why the evidence is systematically misleading. The point is that this is the wrong kind of evidence for the conclusion. A functional analogue of global broadcasting is not yet evidence of phenomenal consciousness; it may instead be evidence that the system has learned to reproduce the functional profile associated with conscious humans.
ALT "Is a Data Centre Conscious? The Quantum Weirdness of Substrate" by Susan Schneider, published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 33, issue 9-10.
ALT Functional and behavioural analogues of consciousness in LLMs trained on data about consciousness should not be treated as evidence of LLM consciousness. A system trained to predict human text can produce human-like reports of experience not because it has the states those reports describe, but because those reports are probable outputs of its training distribution. This is an error theory: an account of why the evidence is systematically misleading. The point is that this is the wrong kind of evidence for the conclusion. A functional analogue of global broadcasting is not yet evidence of phenomenal consciousness; it may instead be evidence that the system has learned to reproduce the functional profile associated with conscious humans.
ALT "Emotion, Consciousness, and the Heart–Brain Connection: A Quantum Biological Perspective" by José Luis Díaz-Palencia and Celia Ortega-Gómez, published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 33, issue 9-10.
ALT Could consciousness and emotion be better understood as properties of an integrated brain–heart system? Might the heart’s neurons and rhythmic activity actively shape our feelings and even our sense of self? Furthermore, could quantum biological processes within and between these organs be of relevance in the emergence of consciousness, hence connecting physical mechanisms and subjective experience?
