Explanation, scope, and perspective: sources of schismogenesis in consciousness science Contemporary consciousness science faces an impasse: competing theoretical frameworks—structuralist versus functionalist, universal versus local, intrinsic versus extrinsic—appear to be inducing philo...

New open-access paper out in Trends in Cognitive Sciences:

Explanation, scope, and perspective: sources of schismogenesis in consciousness science
Francesco Ellia & Naotsugu Tsuchiya

A thread 1/n🧵

www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Mind, Language and Embodied Cognition MSc - Postgraduate taught programmes This programme provides the intellectual foundation and practical skills required for engaging in linguistics research, either by itself, or as part of cross-disciplinary research.

If you or your undergrad students are interested in philosophy of mind, this excellent MSc program at U Edinburgh is open for applications until April 30. An exceptional opportunity to study with the best in the field. Please share widely! #philsci #philsky #philai study.ed.ac.uk/programmes/p...

We are recruiting!

My lab at the University of Haifa is looking for new team members to join our research on the links between sensory perception (focus on #smell and human #olfaction) and human memory.

Please help me spread the word

#newPI #academia #neurostuff

Thanks @johanneskleiner.bsky.social ! @liadmudrik.bsky.social and I have a forthcoming book chapter on C-tests. It might be useful because it surveys some of the literature on this. It's available here: philsci-archive.pitt.edu/25164/

And applications are officially OPEN.

Deadline to apply to join us is --- April 13

🔸Work with open consciousness datasets
🔸Build a preregistered research project with an interdisciplinary team
🔸Compete for $25,000 in seed funding to carry it forward

consciousness-commons.github.io/cc-assc-2026/

Something is emerging in Santiago this July.
A new kind of scientific gathering. Open data. Interdisciplinary teams. A shared question that's been challenging researchers for decades.
Introducing Consciousness Commons: A satellite workshop for early-career researchers @assc2026.bsky.social #ASSC29

Happy to share our preprint mapping the structure of theories of consciousness and their predictions, with @edenelbaz.bsky.social, @shaifischer.bsky.social, @maorschreiber.bsky.social, and @liadmudrik.bsky.social. Accessible here: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Supplementary: osf.io/9xug8/overview

Mid-level perceptual features, and not ambiguity, accelerate access to awareness Abstract. Current theoretical accounts of perception and high-level cognition suggest that awareness plays an active role in disambiguating incoming sensor

🚨New paper alert!! 🚨
In this work by Nadav Amir, with Uri Maoz, we fail to find evidence for ambiguous objects emerging slower/faster to awareness, but do find support for more symmetrical stimuli enjoying preferential access
academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...

And now @shaifischer.bsky.social presents his beautiful work on consciousness and expectation violation! #ISCOP

This should be great - would love to see you all there!

I wouldn’t go that far, @ronyhirsch.bsky.social ;-)))

And don’t miss this super cool website that @ronyhirsch.bsky.social created for you to be able to explore the data yourself!

Another beautiful work from @ronyhirsch.bsky.social , now with @niccolonegro.bsky.social : they find that contrary to may philosophical stands, public views do not consider consciousness to be neither necessary nor sufficient for moral status! Find this, and many other interesting results, below 👇

We delve into 37 studies that examined NCCs at the level of populations of neurons and single neurons in humans. 🤓 Most used the contrastive approach, where neural activity is compared between trials where the same stimulus is consciously perceived or not (we discuss limitations of this approach).

If it doesn’t work, send me an email and I’ll send it to you! Happy holidays 🎉

Which paper? Both should be open access now

My own experience was of a change in experience, not in confidence(I was confident first of not hearing anything and then similarly confident that I actually did)

In our experiment it was a pretty strong subjective experience of having realized you actually heard something before, despite denying it with high levels of confidence in real time

Thanks for asking! If I am not mistaken, this refer to this earlier work of mine:

www.sciencedirect.com:5037/science/arti...

Now I think that what happened there was that noticing the change allowed for retrospective access to the phenomenality of the sound, which made it consciously experienced

2/2 With the great @nfaivre.bsky.social @schurger.bsky.social and Michael Pitts.
Your thought and comments are greatly welcomed!

1/2 🎉🎉🎉 New paper alert!!

Read this to see why we don’t think P and A are two *types* of C, but two conditions for C. And why we think this can truly advance the field and solve controversies. Open access until Feb 5th:

authors.elsevier.com/a/1mHug4sIRv...

>> Huge thanks to Lucia Melloni, Marcello Massimini and Bob Kentridge for organizing, and to CIFAR and TWCF for making it happen!

A wonderful experience - meeting and interacting with the next generation of consciousness researchers. So many great ideas and outstanding people from all over the world. Join us next year for the #CIFARwinterschool 2026!
>>

Wonderful and inspiring opening session at the CIFAR/TWCF Winter School for the Neuroscience of Consciousness, here in beautiful wintery Montebello, in Quebec. All of the participants gave 60 second intros to themselves and their interests. What a great group of people.

Consciousness science: where are we, where are we going, and what if we get there? Join me, @axc.bsky.social, @liadmudrik.bsky.social, @lucinauddin.bsky.social & @metzinger.bsky.social for a Frontiers Deep Dive at 3pm GMT. Registration link is below

Understanding consciousness is one of the greatest scientific challenges of the 21st century, made urgent by rapid advances in AI. Join me, @anilseth.bsky.social, and @axc.bsky.social in this #FrontiersForum webinar to explore our Frontiers in Science article ➡️ fro.ntiers.in/x64CgqQpPXb

2/2 Thank you, Patrick Butlin, and the entire group for this journey 🙏

Identifying indicators of consciousness in AI systems Rapid progress in artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities has drawn fresh attention to the prospect of consciousness in AI. There is an urgent need …

1/2 if you found the Butlin et al report on consciousness in AI interesting, we hope you will enjoy this TiCS paper! We explain more about the indicators approach and how it can be applied when assessing C in AI.>>

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Scientists on ‘urgent’ quest to explain consciousness as AI gathers pace As AI - and the ethical debate surrounding it - accelerates, scientists argue that understanding consciousness is now more urgent than ever.

Gratitude to the @erc.europa.eu for supporting my work and that of @anilseth.bsky.social and @liadmudrik.bsky.social

erc.europa.eu/news-events/...

Advancing consciousness science Defining new directions in consciousness research and exploring implications for medicine, technology, and ethics

1/🧵 Out today in @frontiersin.bsky.social : “Consciousness science: where are we, where are we going, and what if we get there?” By @axc.bsky.social @liadmudrik.bsky.social, & me (a CIFAR & @erc.europa.eu production 🧠). www.frontiersin.org/journals/sci...