List of references compiled by B. Zeiget, editor of Veda Science Magazine,
to locate the Vedic Foundation of the MPE-Project
August 2021
The articles and presentations on Minimal Phenomenal Experiences (MPE) are arranged in chronological order according to the date of publication, starting with the most recent and going backward in time. By tracing back the scientific discussion MPE it is seen that the concept had been inspired through an article by Evan Thompson on "The Relevance of a Classical Indian Debate to Cognitive Science" which prompted Jenifer Windt to coin the term Minimal Phenomenal Experience. In agreement with personal experience the Vedic literature describes this as "pure consciousness". The statements quoted from the articles point out the particular aspects of pure consciousness investigated and its relation to the MPE-Project.
Alexander Gamma,Thomas Metzinger
The Minimal Phenomenal Experience questionnaire (MPE-92M): Towards a phenomenological profile of “pure awareness” experiences in meditators.
PLoS ONE 16(7): e02536942021
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253694
Published 14 July 2021
As an empirical investigation, the current study allows for the possibility that the non-conceptual experience of consciousness as such can co-occur with conscious contents. The core of the questionnaire consisted of the 92 MPE items addressing facets of the experience of pure awareness that had previously been identified in a comprehensive review of the literature and with the help of advanced practitioners who mostly belonged to Buddhist meditation traditions. Inclusion in the final analysis sample required at least one experience of pure awareness and a nearly complete set of MPE items (at least 86 out of 92 items). 1403 participants met these requirements, while 2264 did not.
Ohad Nave, Fynn-Mathis Trautwein, Yochai Ataria , Yair Dor-Ziderman , Yoav Schweitzer, Stephen Fulder and Aviva Berkovich-Ohan
Self-Boundary Dissolution in Meditation: A Phenomenological Investigation.
Brain Science. 2021, 11, 819. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci1106081
Published: 21 June 2021
46 participants practizing Buddhist meditation: In a small group of participants( n = 9). experiences were often described as vague or formless and sometimes lacked any clear content—a state which can be referred to as ‘pure consciousness’ or ‘cessation’.
Jan Wallentin
Vägar till samadhi : en granskning av Robert K. C. Formans begrepp ”Pure Consciousness Event” (Roads to Samadhi : An Examination of Robert K. C. Forman’s Concept of ”Pure Consciousness Event”).
Umeå University: Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious studies, Bachelor thesis.
June 2021.
R. Forman (1990) defines PCE (Pure Consciousness Event) as ”a wakeful though contentless (non-intentional) consciousness”, but in the conventional wisdom of contemporary philosophy it is deemed impossible to be conscious without being conscious about something. A conceivable solution would be to replace the term ”PCE” with Thomas Metzinger’s less strict term ”Minimal Phenomenal Experience” (MPE), which allows for some, though minimal, mental content during these kind ofexperiences.
Cyril Costines, Tilmann Lhündrup Borghardt and Marc Wittmann
The Phenomenology of “Pure” Consciousness as Reported by an Experienced Meditator of the Tibetan Buddhist Karma Kagyu Tradition. Analysis of Interview Content Concerning Different Meditative States.
Philosophies 2021, 6, 5
https://doi.org/10.3390/ philosophies6020050
Published: 17 June 2021
Theories of consciousness in Western philosophy tend to be theories that are not derived from meditation experience and are based primarily on abstract conceptions of consciousness that are, at best, informed by empirical evidence. The methodological value of deep meditation as a tool for exploring the epistemic goal, i.e., consciousness pe se, is often neglected in empirically and philosophically informed consciousness research. The more fine-grained the phenomenological and neurophysiological descriptions and analyses become, the better the two perspectives can be related to each other, especially in the case of “pure” consciousness as an object of research, since, here, the “noise” of non-minimal states of consciousness is “smoothed out”, and, thus, only the essential features of consciousness are examined.
Oren Kolodny, Roy Moyal , Shimon Edelman
A possible evolutionary function of phenomenal conscious experience of pain
PsyArXiv.doi:10.31234/osf.io/hyu5s to appear in .
Neuroscience of Consciousness: Consciousness Science and Its Theories
Email: edelman@cornell.edu.
April 6, 2021
August 2021
The articles and presentations on Minimal Phenomenal Experiences (MPE) are arranged in chronological order according to the date of publication, starting with the most recent and going backward in time. By tracing back the scientific discussion MPE it is seen that the concept had been inspired through an article by Evan Thompson on "The Relevance of a Classical Indian Debate to Cognitive Science" which prompted Jenifer Windt to coin the term Minimal Phenomenal Experience. In agreement with personal experience the Vedic literature describes this as "pure consciousness". The statements quoted from the articles point out the particular aspects of pure consciousness investigated and its relation to the MPE-Project.
Alexander Gamma,Thomas Metzinger
The Minimal Phenomenal Experience questionnaire (MPE-92M): Towards a phenomenological profile of “pure awareness” experiences in meditators.
PLoS ONE 16(7): e02536942021
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253694
Published 14 July 2021
As an empirical investigation, the current study allows for the possibility that the non-conceptual experience of consciousness as such can co-occur with conscious contents. The core of the questionnaire consisted of the 92 MPE items addressing facets of the experience of pure awareness that had previously been identified in a comprehensive review of the literature and with the help of advanced practitioners who mostly belonged to Buddhist meditation traditions. Inclusion in the final analysis sample required at least one experience of pure awareness and a nearly complete set of MPE items (at least 86 out of 92 items). 1403 participants met these requirements, while 2264 did not.
Ohad Nave, Fynn-Mathis Trautwein, Yochai Ataria , Yair Dor-Ziderman , Yoav Schweitzer, Stephen Fulder and Aviva Berkovich-Ohan
Self-Boundary Dissolution in Meditation: A Phenomenological Investigation.
Brain Science. 2021, 11, 819. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci1106081
Published: 21 June 2021
46 participants practizing Buddhist meditation: In a small group of participants( n = 9). experiences were often described as vague or formless and sometimes lacked any clear content—a state which can be referred to as ‘pure consciousness’ or ‘cessation’.
Jan Wallentin
Vägar till samadhi : en granskning av Robert K. C. Formans begrepp ”Pure Consciousness Event” (Roads to Samadhi : An Examination of Robert K. C. Forman’s Concept of ”Pure Consciousness Event”).
Umeå University: Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious studies, Bachelor thesis.
June 2021.
R. Forman (1990) defines PCE (Pure Consciousness Event) as ”a wakeful though contentless (non-intentional) consciousness”, but in the conventional wisdom of contemporary philosophy it is deemed impossible to be conscious without being conscious about something. A conceivable solution would be to replace the term ”PCE” with Thomas Metzinger’s less strict term ”Minimal Phenomenal Experience” (MPE), which allows for some, though minimal, mental content during these kind ofexperiences.
Cyril Costines, Tilmann Lhündrup Borghardt and Marc Wittmann
The Phenomenology of “Pure” Consciousness as Reported by an Experienced Meditator of the Tibetan Buddhist Karma Kagyu Tradition. Analysis of Interview Content Concerning Different Meditative States.
Philosophies 2021, 6, 5
https://doi.org/10.3390/ philosophies6020050
Published: 17 June 2021
Theories of consciousness in Western philosophy tend to be theories that are not derived from meditation experience and are based primarily on abstract conceptions of consciousness that are, at best, informed by empirical evidence. The methodological value of deep meditation as a tool for exploring the epistemic goal, i.e., consciousness pe se, is often neglected in empirically and philosophically informed consciousness research. The more fine-grained the phenomenological and neurophysiological descriptions and analyses become, the better the two perspectives can be related to each other, especially in the case of “pure” consciousness as an object of research, since, here, the “noise” of non-minimal states of consciousness is “smoothed out”, and, thus, only the essential features of consciousness are examined.
Oren Kolodny, Roy Moyal , Shimon Edelman
A possible evolutionary function of phenomenal conscious experience of pain
PsyArXiv.doi:10.31234/osf.io/hyu5s to appear in .
Neuroscience of Consciousness: Consciousness Science and Its Theories
Email: edelman@cornell.edu.
April 6, 2021
That feelings such as pain are an integral part of any conscious experience is indicated by extensive evidence from psychology, neurobiology, and evolutionary science Feelings are, therefore, integral also to all other types of consciousness that are built on top of basic phenomenal awareness - Basic phenomenal awareness is thus the most stripped-down variety of consciousness that still allows for any sensorimotor experience; what may be left if that too is taken away is minimal phenomenal experience (MPE; Metzinger, 2018, 2020), as in lucid dreamless sleep (Windt, 2015).
Zoran Josipovic1 and Vladimir Miskovic
Nondual Awareness and Minimal Phenomenal Experience
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 August 2020 | Volume 11 | Article 2087
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.0208
Department of Psychology, New York University, New York City, NY, United States, 2 Department of Psychology, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, United States
Published 21 August 2020
The term MPE, as originally used, refers to episodes of greatly reduced or minimal phenomenal content, accompanied by reduced levels of arousal (Windt, 2015). At times, the term has been greatly stretched to include many types of contemplative experiences with differing amounts and complexity of phenomenal contents and levels of arousal, and with different properties of non dual awareness NDA.. We will stay with the original meaning of the term MPE, as referring to episodes of reduced or minimal phenomenal content and reduced arousal. During such MPE there may, or may not, be an explicitly present NDA, which indicates that the term NDA refers to something essentially different from such MPE.. we show that the two-dimensional model of consciousness as the arousal level plus the experiential content does not adequately specify consciousness-as-such. In line with our previous work we advance the perspective that consciousness-as-such is first and foremost a type of awareness, that is non-conceptual, non-propositional, and nondual, in other words, non-representational. This awareness is a unique kind, and cannot be reduced to a level of arousal and phenomenal content, or to their mental representations and representational models
Narayanan Srinivasan
Consciousness Without Content: A Look at Evidence and Prospects
Psychol.,| https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01992 (https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01992)
Centre of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Allahabad, Allahabad, India
Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Science, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India
07 August 2020
One of the phenomenal aspects that is very rarely considered in most of the models or theories of consciousness, is Ananda or bliss. Since emotions or feelings are thought to be intentional mental states, it is not clear why there should be a reported experience of bliss, if there is no content. Consistent with this argument, bliss is not a phenomenal constraint for MPE according to Metzinger. In the spherica models of consciousness (Berkovich-Ohana and Glicksohn, 2014; Paoletti and Ben-Soussan, 2019), the putative point in the three dimensional space representing a state of consciousness without content has zero emotion (neither pleasant nor unpleasant). It is not clear why this point is associated with reports of bliss. Proposers of nondual awareness doi nclude bliss as one of the dimensions of such an awareness (Josipovic, 2019). The term Brahman, the underlying reality according to the Upanishads is generally characterized as satchitananda (sat – existence or truth, chit – consciousness, and ananda – bliss). It could be important to consider how ananda is linked to consciousness without content or MPEs, in general.
Wanja Wiese
The science of consciousness does not need another theory, it needs a minimal unifying model
Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2020, 6(1): niaa013
Department of Philosophy, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, German
wawiese@uni-mainz.de
11 July 2020
There are some commonalities between “minimal unifying model of consciousness” MUM and the notion of MPE. If MPE underlies all types of experience, then MPE may have a unifying phenomenal character, and a model of MPE may provide a crucial building block for a complete theory of consciousness. However, it would not be a unifying model in the sense of MUM, because it would not point to assumption that most existing theories of consciousness have in common (this is simply because most existing theories are theories of structured consciousness, not of minimal phenomenal experience) ... which constitutes a key difference to features implied by a MUM. Developing a model of MPE and developing MUMs can be seen as complementary strategies.
Raphaël Millièr, Thomas Metzinger
Radical disruptions of self-consciousness - Editorial introduction
Philosophy and the Mind Science , 1(I), https://doi.org/10.33735/phimisci.2020.I.50
raphael.milliere@philosophy.ox.ac.uk
Why is the Ubiquity Thesis intuitively appealing? One possible explanation is that it is simply very difficult – if not outright impossible – to imagine what it would be like to be in a state of consciousness lacking any kind of self-consciousness.
Thomas Metzinger
Zoran Josipovic1 and Vladimir Miskovic
Nondual Awareness and Minimal Phenomenal Experience
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 August 2020 | Volume 11 | Article 2087
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.0208
Department of Psychology, New York University, New York City, NY, United States, 2 Department of Psychology, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, United States
Published 21 August 2020
The term MPE, as originally used, refers to episodes of greatly reduced or minimal phenomenal content, accompanied by reduced levels of arousal (Windt, 2015). At times, the term has been greatly stretched to include many types of contemplative experiences with differing amounts and complexity of phenomenal contents and levels of arousal, and with different properties of non dual awareness NDA.. We will stay with the original meaning of the term MPE, as referring to episodes of reduced or minimal phenomenal content and reduced arousal. During such MPE there may, or may not, be an explicitly present NDA, which indicates that the term NDA refers to something essentially different from such MPE.. we show that the two-dimensional model of consciousness as the arousal level plus the experiential content does not adequately specify consciousness-as-such. In line with our previous work we advance the perspective that consciousness-as-such is first and foremost a type of awareness, that is non-conceptual, non-propositional, and nondual, in other words, non-representational. This awareness is a unique kind, and cannot be reduced to a level of arousal and phenomenal content, or to their mental representations and representational models
Narayanan Srinivasan
Consciousness Without Content: A Look at Evidence and Prospects
Psychol.,| https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01992 (https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01992)
Centre of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Allahabad, Allahabad, India
Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Science, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India
07 August 2020
One of the phenomenal aspects that is very rarely considered in most of the models or theories of consciousness, is Ananda or bliss. Since emotions or feelings are thought to be intentional mental states, it is not clear why there should be a reported experience of bliss, if there is no content. Consistent with this argument, bliss is not a phenomenal constraint for MPE according to Metzinger. In the spherica models of consciousness (Berkovich-Ohana and Glicksohn, 2014; Paoletti and Ben-Soussan, 2019), the putative point in the three dimensional space representing a state of consciousness without content has zero emotion (neither pleasant nor unpleasant). It is not clear why this point is associated with reports of bliss. Proposers of nondual awareness doi nclude bliss as one of the dimensions of such an awareness (Josipovic, 2019). The term Brahman, the underlying reality according to the Upanishads is generally characterized as satchitananda (sat – existence or truth, chit – consciousness, and ananda – bliss). It could be important to consider how ananda is linked to consciousness without content or MPEs, in general.
Wanja Wiese
The science of consciousness does not need another theory, it needs a minimal unifying model
Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2020, 6(1): niaa013
Department of Philosophy, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, German
wawiese@uni-mainz.de
11 July 2020
There are some commonalities between “minimal unifying model of consciousness” MUM and the notion of MPE. If MPE underlies all types of experience, then MPE may have a unifying phenomenal character, and a model of MPE may provide a crucial building block for a complete theory of consciousness. However, it would not be a unifying model in the sense of MUM, because it would not point to assumption that most existing theories of consciousness have in common (this is simply because most existing theories are theories of structured consciousness, not of minimal phenomenal experience) ... which constitutes a key difference to features implied by a MUM. Developing a model of MPE and developing MUMs can be seen as complementary strategies.
Raphaël Millièr, Thomas Metzinger
Radical disruptions of self-consciousness - Editorial introduction
Philosophy and the Mind Science , 1(I), https://doi.org/10.33735/phimisci.2020.I.50
raphael.milliere@philosophy.ox.ac.uk
Why is the Ubiquity Thesis intuitively appealing? One possible explanation is that it is simply very difficult – if not outright impossible – to imagine what it would be like to be in a state of consciousness lacking any kind of self-consciousness.
Thomas Metzinger
Minimal phenomenal experience - Meditation, tonic alertness, and the phenomenology of “pure” consciousness
Philosophy and the Mind Sciences, 1(I), 7. https://doi.org/10.33735/phimisci.2020.I.46
https://philosophymindscience.org ISSN: 2699-0369
Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany,
Published March 24, 2020
This is the first instalment aiming at a minimal model explanation for conscious experience, taking the phenomenal character of “pure consciousness” or “pure awareness” in meditation as its entry point. It develops the concept of “minimal phenomenal experience” (MPE) as a candidate for the simplest form of consciousness, substantiating it by extracting six semantic constraints from the existing literature and using sixteen phenomenological case-studies to incrementally flesh out the new working concept. One empirical hypothesis is that the phenomenological prototype of “pure awareness”, to which all such reports refer, reallyis the content of a predictive model, namely, a Bayesian representation of tonic alertness. Ona more abstract conceptual level, it can be described as a model of an unpartitioned epistemic space.
Aman Agarwal, Shimon Edelman
Functionally Effective Conscious AI (Artificial Intelligence) Without Suffering
Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness
February 2020
In he MPE approach all other phenomenal experiences such as the Phenomenal Self Model PSM are superimposed onto the MPE, so it should be possible to attend to regular conscious phenomena while simultaneously being aware of the inherent all-encompassing MPE in the background.." This includes "the possibility of shifting the agent’s self-identification from the affective states to MPE, the minimal phenomenal experience that underlies all conscious states according to Metzinger’s analysi. A second, complementary approach focus on expanding in the self in such a manner that the agent identifies not only with the affective states but also with their causal predecessors ..(this).involves an attempt to modify the Phenomenal Self-Model, the first-person self, so as to break the default connection between dispreferred outcomes and the inescapable negative affect that amounts to suffering.
Michal Polák, Tomáš Marvan
How to Mitigate the Hard Problem by Adopting the Dual Theory of Phenomenal Consciousness.
Frontiers In Psychology (IF2.99), DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02837 (http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02837)
Pub Date : 2019-12-17,
By separating phenomenality from consciousness as such, the dual framework clarifies the items in the space of explanations within consciousness studies, and their relations. According to the pure dual theory, conscious and non-conscious mental states are episodes of the same fundamental kind because they can share their phenomenal character. What differentiates between those two types of states might be a relatively simple neural process, the general neural correlate of awareness as such. What remains to be solved is the “hard problem” of the phenomenal character.
Thomas Metzinger
Minimal Phenomenal Experience: The ARAS-model theory: Steps toward a minimal model of conscious experience as such
Carnap Lecture , Bochum, Germany
8.March 2018,
There are five reasons that make MPE interesting: It could be the common phenomenological denominator that is always present whenever there is conscious experience at all, however rich or limited; second, a concerted attempt to isolate this hypothetical common denominator could lead to interdisciplinary unification by connecting different domains and experimental approaches in a new way; third, by aiming at a minimal model explanation (cf. Section 2) we could arrive at an entirely new theoretical model of conscious experience providing us with a fresh perspective and possibly even a new understanding; fourth, the MPE-approach could lead to unification within philosophy of mind itself, by elevating comparative and transcultural philosophy of mind to a new and more systematic level; and finally, reports about “pure consciousness” experiences are a neglected empirical phenomenon worth studying in itself.
Evan Thompson
Steps Toward a Neurophenomenology of Conscious Sleep - A Reply to Jennifer M. Windt
In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 37(R). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958571181
evan.thompson @ ubc.ca
University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC, Canada
Online-Publikationsdatum: 1-Dez-2016
Windt’s groundbreaking commentary expands and enriches my target article by presenting new considerations against the default neuroscience view that “consciousness is that which disappears in dreamless sleep,”Windt proposes that dreamless sleep experience is a candidate for minimal phenomenal experience, one characterized only by the phenomenal “now” and a sense of duration, but having no further intentional content. Both Advaita Vedānta and Husserl would take issue with this conception of a phenomenal state as “selfless.” Advaita Vedānta describes dreamless sleep experience as a state in which the true nature of the self as non-intentional, re-flexive consciousness is more apparent than in the ordinary waking and dreaming states. Husserl also describes the pre-egological retentional time consciousness as a minimal structure of self-experience. It may be that this issue is in part terminological, but there are also likely to be deeper conceptual disagreements about how to analyze the notion of self - whether this notion can be applied to the reflexivity of passive retention (Husserl) or the reflexivity of pure awareness (Vedanta), or whether such states do not meet the criteria for minimal phenomenal selfhood.
Jenifer Windt
Just in Time—Dreamless Sleep Experience as Pure Subjective Temporality.
Philosophy and the Mind Sciences, 1(I), 7. https://doi.org/10.33735/phimisci.2020.I.46
https://philosophymindscience.org ISSN: 2699-0369
Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany,
Published March 24, 2020
This is the first instalment aiming at a minimal model explanation for conscious experience, taking the phenomenal character of “pure consciousness” or “pure awareness” in meditation as its entry point. It develops the concept of “minimal phenomenal experience” (MPE) as a candidate for the simplest form of consciousness, substantiating it by extracting six semantic constraints from the existing literature and using sixteen phenomenological case-studies to incrementally flesh out the new working concept. One empirical hypothesis is that the phenomenological prototype of “pure awareness”, to which all such reports refer, reallyis the content of a predictive model, namely, a Bayesian representation of tonic alertness. Ona more abstract conceptual level, it can be described as a model of an unpartitioned epistemic space.
Aman Agarwal, Shimon Edelman
Functionally Effective Conscious AI (Artificial Intelligence) Without Suffering
Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness
February 2020
In he MPE approach all other phenomenal experiences such as the Phenomenal Self Model PSM are superimposed onto the MPE, so it should be possible to attend to regular conscious phenomena while simultaneously being aware of the inherent all-encompassing MPE in the background.." This includes "the possibility of shifting the agent’s self-identification from the affective states to MPE, the minimal phenomenal experience that underlies all conscious states according to Metzinger’s analysi. A second, complementary approach focus on expanding in the self in such a manner that the agent identifies not only with the affective states but also with their causal predecessors ..(this).involves an attempt to modify the Phenomenal Self-Model, the first-person self, so as to break the default connection between dispreferred outcomes and the inescapable negative affect that amounts to suffering.
Michal Polák, Tomáš Marvan
How to Mitigate the Hard Problem by Adopting the Dual Theory of Phenomenal Consciousness.
Frontiers In Psychology (IF2.99), DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02837 (http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02837)
Pub Date : 2019-12-17,
By separating phenomenality from consciousness as such, the dual framework clarifies the items in the space of explanations within consciousness studies, and their relations. According to the pure dual theory, conscious and non-conscious mental states are episodes of the same fundamental kind because they can share their phenomenal character. What differentiates between those two types of states might be a relatively simple neural process, the general neural correlate of awareness as such. What remains to be solved is the “hard problem” of the phenomenal character.
Thomas Metzinger
Minimal Phenomenal Experience: The ARAS-model theory: Steps toward a minimal model of conscious experience as such
Carnap Lecture , Bochum, Germany
8.March 2018,
There are five reasons that make MPE interesting: It could be the common phenomenological denominator that is always present whenever there is conscious experience at all, however rich or limited; second, a concerted attempt to isolate this hypothetical common denominator could lead to interdisciplinary unification by connecting different domains and experimental approaches in a new way; third, by aiming at a minimal model explanation (cf. Section 2) we could arrive at an entirely new theoretical model of conscious experience providing us with a fresh perspective and possibly even a new understanding; fourth, the MPE-approach could lead to unification within philosophy of mind itself, by elevating comparative and transcultural philosophy of mind to a new and more systematic level; and finally, reports about “pure consciousness” experiences are a neglected empirical phenomenon worth studying in itself.
Evan Thompson
Steps Toward a Neurophenomenology of Conscious Sleep - A Reply to Jennifer M. Windt
In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 37(R). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958571181
evan.thompson @ ubc.ca
University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC, Canada
Online-Publikationsdatum: 1-Dez-2016
Windt’s groundbreaking commentary expands and enriches my target article by presenting new considerations against the default neuroscience view that “consciousness is that which disappears in dreamless sleep,”Windt proposes that dreamless sleep experience is a candidate for minimal phenomenal experience, one characterized only by the phenomenal “now” and a sense of duration, but having no further intentional content. Both Advaita Vedānta and Husserl would take issue with this conception of a phenomenal state as “selfless.” Advaita Vedānta describes dreamless sleep experience as a state in which the true nature of the self as non-intentional, re-flexive consciousness is more apparent than in the ordinary waking and dreaming states. Husserl also describes the pre-egological retentional time consciousness as a minimal structure of self-experience. It may be that this issue is in part terminological, but there are also likely to be deeper conceptual disagreements about how to analyze the notion of self - whether this notion can be applied to the reflexivity of passive retention (Husserl) or the reflexivity of pure awareness (Vedanta), or whether such states do not meet the criteria for minimal phenomenal selfhood.
Jenifer Windt
Just in Time—Dreamless Sleep Experience as Pure Subjective Temporality.
In T. K. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds.), Open MIND. Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. https://doi.org/10.15502/9783958571174
jennifer.windt @ monash.edu
Monash University Melbourne, Australia
Online-Publikationsdatum: 10-Nov-2016
The key idea is that the transition from dreaming to dreamless sleep experience occurs when even the minimal form of phenomenal selfhood is lost. The analysis of dreamless sleep experience may provide a glimpse of a simpler (and perhaps even minimal) form of phenomenal experience than phenomenal selfhood. It is a prereflective awareness that consciousness has of itself, its self-luminousness, reflexivity, or being , this minimal form of phenomenal experience is the condition for the emergence of minimal phenomenal selfhood.
Evan Thompson
Dreamless Sleep, the Embodied Mind, and Consciousness:
The Relevance of a Classical Indian Debate to Cognitive Science
evan.thompson @ ubc.ca
University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC, Canada
Online-Publikationsdatum: 2-Nov-2016
Yoga - by stilling the “fluctuations” of consciousness, when the “seer” or “witness” abides in its true form, namely, pure awareness - according to Patanjalies Yoga Sutras identifies five kinds of fluctuation or changing states of consciousness: correct cognition, error, imagining or conceptual construction, sleep, and memory. Sleep is defined as a state of consciousness that is without an object (because) .according to Yoga, we feel this peculiar absence while we sleep and we remember it upon awakening, The debate about dreamless sleep between the Advaita Vedānta and Nyāya schools of Indian philosophy raises important conceptual and methodological issues for the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness. The argument runs as follows: When you wake up from a dreamless sleep, you are aware of having had a peaceful sleep directly from memory, so the argument (Vedanta) asserts, not from inference (Nyaya). From a purely textual perspective, the metaphysical and the phenomenological are thoroughly intertwined in the Indian discussions.
jennifer.windt @ monash.edu
Monash University Melbourne, Australia
Online-Publikationsdatum: 10-Nov-2016
The key idea is that the transition from dreaming to dreamless sleep experience occurs when even the minimal form of phenomenal selfhood is lost. The analysis of dreamless sleep experience may provide a glimpse of a simpler (and perhaps even minimal) form of phenomenal experience than phenomenal selfhood. It is a prereflective awareness that consciousness has of itself, its self-luminousness, reflexivity, or being , this minimal form of phenomenal experience is the condition for the emergence of minimal phenomenal selfhood.
Evan Thompson
Dreamless Sleep, the Embodied Mind, and Consciousness:
The Relevance of a Classical Indian Debate to Cognitive Science
evan.thompson @ ubc.ca
University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC, Canada
Online-Publikationsdatum: 2-Nov-2016
Yoga - by stilling the “fluctuations” of consciousness, when the “seer” or “witness” abides in its true form, namely, pure awareness - according to Patanjalies Yoga Sutras identifies five kinds of fluctuation or changing states of consciousness: correct cognition, error, imagining or conceptual construction, sleep, and memory. Sleep is defined as a state of consciousness that is without an object (because) .according to Yoga, we feel this peculiar absence while we sleep and we remember it upon awakening, The debate about dreamless sleep between the Advaita Vedānta and Nyāya schools of Indian philosophy raises important conceptual and methodological issues for the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness. The argument runs as follows: When you wake up from a dreamless sleep, you are aware of having had a peaceful sleep directly from memory, so the argument (Vedanta) asserts, not from inference (Nyaya). From a purely textual perspective, the metaphysical and the phenomenological are thoroughly intertwined in the Indian discussions.