主観的で現象的な「○○であるという感じ」を意識と呼ぶ。近代心理学を創設したヴントやジェームズは，意識を心理学のテーマとしたが主観的な意識は実証主義を目指した心理学から排除されてきた。しかし近年は計算論的アプローチの導入や脳活動計測技術や心理学的実験パラダイムの発展により，主観的な意識を客観的な行動や脳活動と結びつける取り組みが進められてきた。これらの取り組みにより神経科学や工学，心理学等複数の分野にまたがる学際性を持つ重要なテーマとして意識の研究が進められている。

本シンポジウムでは様々な視座から意識の理解・解明に挑戦している5人の若手研究者が，現在最前線で意識研究を行っている土谷と議論する。川島は

とその階層性，中村は錯視の時間形成，森本は知覚処理と運動・決定に関する処理の分離，石原は身体と外環境のインタラクションの熱力学的定式化，渡部は意識の発達について話題提供する。本領域のトップランナーである土谷を迎え，現在の心理学研究は意識に迫ることができるか，また迫るためには何が必要かを皆さんと一緒に考えたい。

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In our recent essay [Tsuchiya, N. & Saigo, H. (2019). Understanding consciousness through category theory, Cognitive Studies: Bulletin of the Japanese Cognitive Science Society, 26, 462–477], we provided a general introduction of category theory to consciousness researchers. Further, we also provided our tentative theoretical sketches on our latest ideas on how to apply tools in category theory into consciousness research. In particular, we discussed how we can propose categories of level of consciousness and categories of contents of consciousness. We also speculated what (if any) these efforts will bring into consciousness research. In this short piece, we will address several comments we received on our essay in the same issue from six experts, providing some clarification on three issues: 1) significance of our proposal of a novel viewpoint to enrich what it means to define consciousness, 2) possibility of category theoretical interpretation of consciousness,and 3) understanding of consciousness through the enriched category theoretical framework.

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意識は長らく哲学や心理学において扱われてきたが，近年漸く神経科学の正当な研究対象として扱われるようになってきた。そこでは意識を科学的に扱うための実験的アプローチや情報理論に基づく数理的研究が進展してきた背景がある。本稿では神経科学における意識研究がどのように意識の問題に取り組んできたかを概観する。さらに意識と脳の複雑性の連関を踏まえた上で，統合情報理論に基づき意識の神経基盤を探求した自身の研究を紹介する

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　Meditation in Zen has received much attention in the scientific exploration of consciousness from metacognition and the social brain. Zen meditation provides effective clues to self-knowledge by providing awareness of “present self-being”. Our brains are thought to operate in dynamic equilibrium every day with two broad networks: the working memory network (WMN), which is oriented toward solving real problems (cognitive brain network), and the default mode network (DMN), which wanders in an internal imaginary and a creative world (social brain network). However, how these two cyclical networks operating in seesaw mode relate to meditation is not well understood. In this paper, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the process of meditation from a cognitive conflict situation in monks who had meditated in Rinzai Zen for over seven years and healthy adults who had not meditated before. The monks were asked to perform a Stroop task as a conflict task in the first half of the study, and were led to meditate in the second half. Behavioral experiments revealed that monks showed excellent performance under the Stroop task with fewer errors and shorter reaction times due to better control of attention, whereas healthy adults showed poor attentional control and were more affected by the conflicts. Two new findings about brain activity were found. First, it was suggested that the two networks were not in an anti-correlated relationship, as is usually claimed, on the time series, but were involved in a mutually cooperative manner. Second, in terms of functional connectivity, the monks' brains showed a strong inhibitory effect under meditation. As a result of years of Zen practice, the monks were found to be able to successfully deal with conflict situations in the DMN of the brain and maintain meditative awareness.

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This paper examines new biological naturalist theories of consciousness, focusing on Ginsburg and Jablonka, and Feinberg and Mallat as their representatives. In doing so, we compare and analyze the two theories from three perspectives: the signature, the ontology, and the function of consciousness. We point out several significant theoretical differences between them, especially that Ginsburg and Jablonka propose a novel naturalistic teleological understanding of the ontological status of consciousness, whereas Feinberg and Mallat's theory conforms with so-called type-B physicalism.

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　The mental capacity of mentalizing other’s mind and self-awareness that senses self mind introspectively is a key mental ability of the social brain to understand others and to know themselves. By extracting these mental abilities with wellestablished social brain tasks, we can observe the brain’s internal representation of the self and others in the social brain region centered on medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In addition, it has been found that disorders in boundary formation between self and others produce accompanying various social adaptive disorders. Modeling brain imaging data by brain science of the prefrontal lobe with graph theory of informatics, connecting it widely to new developments in humanities and social sciences research, and promoting the integrated social brain science becomes critical social demands it can be said that it is in progress.

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 One of the biggest mysteries in current science is how subjective experience, or consciousness, arises from objective substance and its physical interactions, such as human brains. Since 1990s, empirical and scientific studies on the relationship between consciousness and brain have advanced massively, especially thanks to neuroscientific approaches. Despite its empirical progress, there remains skeptical philosophers, cognitive scientists, and psychologists, who consider the science of consciousness is impossible,partly because the concept of consciousness is so difficult to define. Due to this difficulty, they argue, scholars who claim that they are empirically researching consciousness even do not know what they themselves are talking about. These skeptics hold that scientific methods cannot be applied to concepts that are not possible to define. In this article, we argue that consciousness is possible to rigorously define in a strict mathematical sense. To build this logic, we introduce category theory, which is a theory developed in mathematics in the latter half of the 20th century. Category theory is a framework originally invented to deal with relationships among objects, in particular between algebra and geometry. In recent years, category theory has been recognized for its potential to be applied to consciousness research. Throughout this paper, we propose several concrete examples of Consciousness Category and, eventually, we conclude that we can apply “Yoneda’s lemma” to Consciousness Category. Yoneda’s lemma, one of the most fundamental and powerful tools in category theory, says, in simple terms,that definitions of any concept is the same as descriptions of all relationships between the concept and the others. This striking viewpoint, which is founded mathematically,provides the validity to the act of defining consciousness through descriptions of relationships. We end with a future perspective; enriching Consciousness Category will provide a common language among researchers who disagree in some aspects of their respective definitions of consciousness. Common language is a necessary component for the big breakthrough to solve the mystery of consciousness.

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　G. T. Fechner proposed his logarithmic law between physical continuum of stimulus and an attribute of sensation in 1860. Fechner also proposed the distinction between outer and inner-psychophysics. Outer-psychophysics deals with the relation between the observable participant's response and stimulus. In outer-psychophysics, it can be postulated that the response is located on the interval scale when the logarithmic law between stimulus and response is established.
　In inner-psychophysics, the logarithmic law is established in mind on the assumption that the equality of subjective size of just noticeable difference (jnd). However, it is difficult to verify the equality of jnd using empirical procedures. Bergson strongly criticizes that Fechner's law is based on an assumption that cannot be verified.
　Zwislocki (1991) defines that the measurement entails matching of common attributes of things or events. According to his definition of “Natural Measurement”, we can match the different things or events on the common psychological continuum. As a result, matching operation can ensure the point of subjective equality (PSE) to be a common attribute among different objects. When an appropriate measure is applied, the same PSE from different things or events confirms the same point on the continuum of common attribute of sensation. The PSE is a physical measure. It can be measured using objective or empirical procedure. An important role of psychophysics is to find an appropriate physical measure. Usually, the standardized physical measure of adequate stimulus is modified on the basis of psychophysical data and reflects the characteristics of sensation. Therefore, a good relationship between subjective response to adequate stimulus and a standardized measure can be expected.
　It is true that the relation between the loudness judgment of various kinds of nonsteady sounds and a standardized index (e. g. equivalent continuous A-weighted sound pressure level: L_Aeq) exhibits a high coefficient correlation. However, a law derived from the experimental results depends on the psychophysical method used. For example, the method of category scaling results logarithmic law and magnitude estimation results power law.
　The result of the experiment using the scale discriminative method was introduced to verify whether the logarithmic law or the power law was valid for the loudness judgment. The results showed that participants' quantitative judgments were well adapted to the experimental procedure. Torgerson (1960) suggests that the participants seem to judge the stimulus taking a different strategy depending on the purpose of the experiment. In daily life situations, we are very adaptive to quantitative behavior for satisfying the purpose of the behavior. This poses a problem of ecological validity in psychophysics. Therefore, it is necessary to select the appropriate stimuli and method to simulate the daily life situations in the psychophysical experiments.
　Main attributes of auditory sensation are loudness, pitch and timbre. Both loudness and pitch are one dimensional, but timbre or tone quality is multidimensional. It is difficult to constitute rating scale of tone quality expressed by only one physical dimension, and at present, it is far from to establish a general psychophysical rule for applying to tone quality. However, if the sound source is limited, a possibility of establishing a physical scale to predict tone quality. Some examples of the machine sound's tone quality control were introduced.

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フリストンの自由エネルギー原理では，外界に関する生成モデルと現在の認識から計算される変分自由エネルギーを最小化するために，1) 脳状態を変えることによって正しい認識に至る過程（perceptual inference）と2) 行動によって感覚入力を変えることによって曖昧さの低い認識に至る過程（active inference）の二つを組み合わせていると考える．本解説の前半では自由エネルギー原理について，我々が視線を移動させながら視覚像を構築してゆく過程を例にとって，簡単な説明を試みた．本解説の後半では，このようにして理解した自由エネルギー原理を元にして「自由エネルギー原理と現象学に基づいた意識理論」を提唱した．この理論において，意識とは自由エネルギー原理における推測と生成モデルとを照合するプロセスそのものであり，イマココでの外界についての推測と非明示的な前提条件の集合である生成モデルとが一体になって意識を作り上げている．この考えはフッサール現象学における意識の構造についての知見と整合的である．

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