CFP: Consciousness and Its Limits

CFP: Consciousness and Its Limits

Belgrade Philosophical Annual

https://www.f.bg.ac.rs/bpa

Institute for Philosophy, University of Belgrade

ISSN: 0353-3891

Belgrade Philosophical Annual invites submissions for a special issue on Consciousness and Its Limits.

The philosophical debate about the nature of consciousness is far from being settled. Questions such as “What is it like to have an experience?” and “How does subjective awareness relate to cognition and the brain?” remain among the most persistent and theoretically significant problems in contemporary philosophy of mind. Consciousness lies at the intersection of metaphysics, epistemology, cognitive science, and ethics, and continues to generate extensive discussion across a wide range of philosophical approaches. Moreover, the rapid development of artificial intelligence has brought renewed urgency to long-standing philosophical questions concerning cognition, subjectivity, and the possibility of consciousness in artificial systems.

This special issue aims to provide a broad forum for current debates on the nature, structure, and explanatory status of conscious experience. While the primary focus will be on fundamental philosophical questions concerning phenomenal consciousness, access consciousness, and the relationship between consciousness and representation, argumentative discussions of competing theoretical frameworks, as well as responses to recent influential contributions in the literature, are also welcome.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• What is consciousness, and how should it be characterized?
• Phenomenal consciousness and its relation to access consciousness
• The explanatory gap and the “hard problem” of consciousness
• Representational theories of conscious experience
• Higher-order theories and self-consciousness
• Debates about cognitive access, attention, and the scope of phenomenal experience
• Consciousness and attention
• The metaphysics of qualia
• Consciousness and physicalism: reductionism vs. anti-reductionism
• The epistemology of consciousness: introspection and first-person authority
• The unity of consciousness and the structure of experience
• Neuroscience and the philosophical limits of empirical explanation

Consciousness beyond the human mind:
• Consciousness in non-human animals and artificial systems
• Artificial intelligence and the prospects of machine consciousness
• Computational and functionalist approaches to consciousness
• Recent AI systems and their implications for theories of mind and consciousness
• The ethical and moral implications of artificial consciousness

Invited Contributions

William G. Lycan (University of Connecticut)
Peter Carruthers (University of Maryland)
Daniel Stoljar (Australian National University)

Submission Deadline

June 30, 2026

All inquiries can be directed to the managing editor: [email protected].

General Notes

Submitted papers should be prepared for anonymous review. All other relevant information should be sent in a separate document containing the author’s name and affiliation, the title of the paper, an abstract of no more than 250 words, and 4–5 keywords. Documents should be submitted in *.doc, *.docx, or .pdf format.

Submissions should not be longer than 10,000 words, including notes. Authors will be notified of the editorial decision.

Belgrade Philosophical Annual is an open access journal published by the Institute for Philosophy, University of Belgrade, committed to the double-blind peer reviewing process. Previous issues of the journal, including previous special issues with downloadable papers and other relevant information, can be accessed at https://www.f.bg.ac.rs/bpa.