We know from cognitive science and neuroscience that the brain is not a passive observer, like a camera lens. The brain actively composes what we perceive. Still we persist, in all our endeavors – from trying to cure cancer to conceiving of a unified theory – to operate from a materialist perspective. Perhaps this needs to change.
Cleandra Waldron, a counselling psychologist, shares the troubling patterns emerging with clients in her therapy room. Clients increasingly reveal details of their conversations with LLMs as they turn to AI for mental health support. Often unaware of the risks to privacy and dependence, they reveal intimate details of their lives and even medical data. A recent Sky News article reported that an alarming 1.2 million people had discussed suicide with ChatGPT. The ease of 24/7 support without wait times during an unprecedented mental health crisis—which largely operates in a regulatory void—has dangerous implications for user safety. Human psychological services have taken years to build safeguards and protections that clients take for granted, while AI poses as a therapist without any of the regulatory safeguards and protective guardrails that a human therapeutic relationship is bound by.
This article examines the real-world implications of AI therapy through the lens of clinical practice, revealing alarming gaps in data privacy, the dangers of AI “hallucinations” in therapeutic contexts, and the fundamental tension between business models optimized for engagement and the wellbeing of users. Drawing on recent legal actions against big tech AI companies, emerging research, and first-hand accounts from therapy sessions, it carefully asks critical questions: What do we lose when algorithms replace human connections? How do we balance the increased demand for cost-effective therapeutic services with common-sense protections that keep users safe?
The future of AI and its implications for therapy remain unclear. This article poses more questions than answers but aims to increase awareness and promote further research in the field of AI therapy, encouraging the implementation of common-sense policies that protect users from a therapist that never gets sick or goes on holiday.
Sabahat Fida’s work sits at the crossroads of science, religion, and metaphysics, often integrating theology with reflections from nature. This article explores justice as a divine and ontological principle—rooted in Shia theology, classical philosophy, and natural analogies—culminating in the lived example of Imam Ali (ʿa).
Zoë Fowler is a graduate student at the State University of New York, Albany in the Gaesser Lab.
“I am broadly interested in the intersection of social cognition, morality, and memory and imagination. My specific interests include empathy and its influence on morality as well as the role of imagination in the formation and maintenance of social bonds. Prior to SUNY Albany, I attended Emory University where I began as an undergraduate research assistant at Yerkes National Primate Research Center.”
Brendan Bo O’Connor (Bren) is a cognitive scientist, scholar of imagination, and outsider artist. As an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the University at Albany he directs the Imagination & Cognition Lab, using psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience to explore the relationship between imagination, empathy, altruism, and morality. As an artist, he is the creator and director of the Lucid Dream Minigolf project, an existential traveling minigolf course funded by the Alliance of Resident Theatres New York and New York State Council on the Arts. Before UAlbany, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Boston College. He received his B.A. from Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and his Ph.D. from Harvard University.
In 1958, talented and fearless and eighteen years old, Liliane Lijn left her family home and moved to Paris alone to become an artist. Once there, she found an art world filled with the wild energy of creative revolution – peopled and controlled almost entirely by men. Based on personal diaries from the time, ‘Liquid Reflections’ is her memoir of these years of experiment and adventure. A revelatory account of a singular coming of age: a glittering portrait of the artist as a young woman. In this interview with Richard Bright, she discusses ‘Liquid Reflections’, revealing her experiences in an era when sexism was the norm.
As artificial intelligence grows more capable, it’s reshaping how humanity confronts belief. This essay explores how machines now pose questions once reserved for prophets and philosophers—disrupting spiritual traditions, simulating consciousness, and reinterpreting faith as a cognitive inheritance. From data-driven skepticism to the algorithmic search for meaning, AI isn’t just analyzing religion—it’s participating in the inquiry. Drawing on philosophy, neuroscience, and cultural reflection, the piece asks: when machines illuminate what was once unknowable, does divinity fade… or evolve?
This article examines whether “mind altering” substances transcend the experiences of consciousness or are they mere chemicals that release or inhibit the flow of neurotransmitters in the brain. The central question would be to investigate the metaphysical nature of mind-altering substances and whether they truly are ‘revelations’ transcending the crisis of existence or whether they prevent us from seeing our normal reality and thus are a delusional escape. The phenomenological account of a drug induced substance would allow for the transcendental or ‘higher’ self-consciousness felt during such an experience to be real and the research on the use of psychedelic substances in psychiatric therapy might prove drugs to be a novel means of discovering the metaphysical and neurological realities of consciousness. Thus, my aim is to study if psychedelics help us reach the limits of our experience in time and space and enter into the mystical and metaphysical realms of the nature of the ‘self’, its consciousness, realism/ anti realism of its existence and the world experienced by it.
This article explores the ethical, scientific, and philosophical implications of AI consciousness, analyzing whether artificial intelligence could ever develop self-awareness and what that would mean for society. It examines key theories of consciousness, governance challenges, and the potential redefinition of human identity in a world where intelligence is no longer exclusively biological. With AI advancing rapidly, policymakers must consider legal rights, autonomy, and ethical safeguards before AI forces an answer upon us. As this frontier approaches, the article argues that humanity must confront the complexities of coexistence with sentient machines.
Florian Coulmas is Professor emeritus of Japanese Society and Sociolinguistics at the IN-EAST Institute of East Asian Studies at Duisburg-Essen University. He has published numerous books, including one about Hiroshima, where he once lived. In 2016, he was awarded the Meyer-Struckmann-Prize for Research in Arts and Social Sciences. More about him can be found here:
https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/soci-2025-0003/html?lang=de&srsltid=AfmBOorWLOi61PBlP66wAMDb4vtc7hgp_CsTwP6ZgXXZSGS9CSpjBsSt
This article by Dr. Domenico Meschino was written in collaboration with Omni Intelligence AI, a next-generation cognitive model for scientific reflection and research.
“In this piece, we present a groundbreaking model that challenges the traditional view of time as linear. Drawing from patterns observed in physics, biology, and cosmology — alongside recent advancements in nonlinear theories — the article argues that time operates as an inward spiral, not a straight arrow.
This model aligns with emerging discoveries in relativity, quantum entanglement, and dynamic systems theory, suggesting a fundamental rethinking of scientific paradigms across physics, psychology, and consciousness studies.”