33 theories
Anomalous: theories of consciousness
Psi phenomena, near-death experiences and altered states such as meditation and psychedelics may show that consciousness reaches beyond the brain. These are less theories of consciousness than evidence offered against reducing it to neural activity.
Open Anomalous on the mapAll theories A–Z
This category gathers ideas driven by experiences that seem to break the usual rules. They include extrasensory perception such as telepathy and precognition, out-of-body and near-death experiences, reports of past lives, and the altered states produced by meditation and psychedelics. If even a small share of these turned out to be genuine and to defy physics as currently understood, the claim that consciousness is nothing more than brain activity would be in trouble.
Psychical research began in the late nineteenth century, and William James and C. D. Broad took it seriously. James proposed that the brain works as a filter, letting through a narrow slice of a wider consciousness, an idea Aldous Huxley later called ‘Mind at Large’. Dean Radin and Charles Tart ran laboratory studies of psi, and the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia investigates near-death experiences and children who report memories of past lives.
The theories built on this evidence lean toward dualism or idealism but span every non-materialist position. Radin favors a quantum-oriented dualism, Tart an emergent interactionism, Carl Jung a collective unconscious linked by synchronicity, and Rupert Sheldrake morphic fields that carry memory through nature. Ken Wilber’s integral theory and Jean Gebser’s mutations of consciousness map stages through which consciousness develops.
Everything here rests on whether the evidence holds up. Etzel Cardeña’s 2018 review in American Psychologist argued that meta-analyses covering more than a thousand studies support psi. Arthur Reber and James Alcock replied in the same journal that psi effects are physically impossible and must come from flawed methods or chance. Replication problems and the dominance of anecdote over controlled study keep most scientists unconvinced.
Good places to start
- James's Plural Consciousness, Brain as Filter of a Wider Consciousness Consciousness as Plural and Transmitted by the Brain
- Radin's Challenge to Materialism Consciousness as Fundamental Ocean revealed by Psi
- Near Death Experiences, Survival, Past Lives Consciousness persists beyond brain death
- Jung’s Synchronicity and the Collective Unconscious ‘Consciousness linked by Acausal Meaning’
- Psychedelic Theories of Consciousness Consciousness as Altered State Epistemology
All 33 theories
- James's Plural Consciousness, Brain as Filter of a Wider Consciousness Consciousness as Plural and Transmitted by the Brain
- Broad’s Emergent Mind and Psychic/Psi Factors Consciousness as Strongly Emergent, Perhaps With a Psychic Factor
- Huxley’s Mind-At-Large Filter Theory Consciousness as Mind at Large Through a Reducing Valve
- Jung’s Synchronicity and the Collective Unconscious ‘Consciousness linked by Acausal Meaning’
- Radin's Challenge to Materialism Consciousness as Fundamental Ocean revealed by Psi
- Tart’s Emergent Interactionism ‘Consciousness as Emergent System Property of Dual Interaction’
- Mishlove’s Beyond-The-Brain Filtered, Survival Consciousness Consciousness as Universal Mind Filtered by the Brain
- Schlitz’s Theory of Mind Consciousness as an Interface Between Inner and Outer
- Josephson’s Psi-informed Models Understanding the brain via models informed by psi phenomena.
- Gebser's Ever-Present Origin: How Space, Time, and Self Change Shape Across Mutations of Consciousness Consciousness as Historically Mutating Structures of Presence
- Integral Theory Consciousness as an Evolutionary Spectrum
- Combs’s chaotic attractor and autopoietic systems Consciousness as a Chaotic Autopoietic Attractor
- Ferrer’s Participatory Enactive Realism Consciousness as Co-Creative Participation in the Real
- Schooler’s Resonance Theory and Subjective Time ‘Consciousness via Nested Resonance and Subjective Time’
- Sheldrake’s Morphic Fields Theory Consciousness and Form Governed by Morphic Fields
- Barušs’s Meaning Fields Consciousness and Meaning Fields Shaping Reality
- Grinberg’s Syntergic/Neuronal Field Theory Consciousness as a distortion in basic space-time structure
- Near Death Experiences, Survival, Past Lives Consciousness persists beyond brain death
- DOPS Theoretical Framework Consciousness as Filtered Universal Existence
- Shiah’s Contentless Consciousness Theory Consciousness as Contentless, Eternal Awareness
- Bitbol's Radical Neurophenomenology Primacy of Lived Experience and Hard Problem Dissolution
- Campbell’s Theory of Everything (My Big TOE) Consciousness as Fundamental Virtual Reality
- Mossbridge’s Informational Substrate as Collective Unconscious Consciousness as Writing Intentions to the Collective Unconscious
- Hiller’s eternal discarnate consciousness Consciousness as Eternal Discarnate Soul in a Universal Field
- Swimme’s Cosmogenesis ‘Consciousness as the Ultimate Aim of the Universe’
- Khasho’s NDE-Enabled Field-Substrate Translation Model Consciousness as a Field State Translated by the Brain
- Graboi’s three-aspect model Consciousness as Nonphysical Mind interacting with Pure Awareness
- Noël’s Nested Field Theory Consciousness as a High-Frequency Nested Information Field
- Harp’s Universal or God Consciousness Consciousness as Union with Universal or God Consciousness
- Johnson and Debold’s Urantia Theocosmic Cosmopsychism Consciousness as Participation in Divine Mind
- Hobson’s Dreaming Protoconsciousness Dreaming as the Brain’s Virtual Reality Training Ground
- Meditation and the Brain Consciousness Correlated with Altered Brain Rhythms
- Psychedelic Theories of Consciousness Consciousness as Altered State Epistemology