Pereira’s Triple-Aspect Monism

Philosopher of science Alfredo Pereira, Jr., has developed a “triple-aspect monism,” the physiological, mental unconscious, and conscious aspects of brain activity, positing that consciousness is a co-emergent property that arises from these three inseparable aspects of brain and mind, all grounded in a single substance with three aspects.

Three Aspects and Neurobiology

Physiological (Aspect 1): Covering all kinds of processes that involve matter and/or energy, including neuronal and biochemical processes, dendritic potentials, and interactions with glial cells.

Mental‑Unconscious (Aspect 2): Dynamic informational patterns—brain wave frequencies, amplitudes and phase-modulated waves, and synaptic network patterns that are embodied in neural activity. As Pereira says, “These patterns are variously operated (transmitted, stored, combined, matched, amplified, erased, etc.), forming cognitive and emotional unconscious processes.”

Mental‑Conscious (Aspect 3): First‑person perspective and cognitive functions grounded in experiences—feelings, qualia, attention, memories, voluntary action, selection of the focus of attention, voluntary aesthetic appraisal, and ethical evaluations.

In parallel, the neurobiology of triple-aspect monism consists of presenting consciousness as involving: (i) neuronal processes; (ii) glial‑astrocyte dynamics; and (iii) electromagnetic microstates of brain networks.

Pereira explains that “the triple-aspect monism is a philosophical theory that provides a model of the relation of the three aspects. Spatially distributed neuronal dendritic potentials generate amplitude-modulated waveforms transmitted to the extracellular medium and adjacent glial-astrocytes, prompting the formation of large waves in the astrocyte network, which are claimed to both integrate distributed information and instantiate feelings. According to the valence of the feeling, the large wave feeds back on neuronal synapses, modulating (reinforcing or depressing) cognitive and behavioral functions” (Pereira, 2014).

Feeling Self and Integration

Thus, Pereira’s framework treats the mind/brain/world relationship as a unified system—where conscious experience emerges from physical processes without dualism.

This non-dual view of the mind and the body leads to the concept of a 'Feeling Self,' “which is empty of essence and constituted by the dynamics of experience. This concept is consistent with the principles advanced by Nagarjuna in the Buddhist Mahayana tradition and the interdisciplinary ontology of Triple-Aspect Monism. The principles of co-origination and interdependence, advanced by Nagarjuna, suggest that the conscious Self is integrated in the whole of reality. The Feeling Self results from habits developed during the life history of a person, anchors in brain functions (attention, learning, memory) and persists during a lifetime (Leite & Pereira, 2018).