This paper re-examines Plato’s theory of perception through the comparative lens of contemporary cognitive constructivism (CC). Its focus is not the metaphysics of Forms as such, but the assumptions governing how perceptual worlds are disclosed, organized, and corrected. I distinguish epistemic passivity from organizational dependence and argue that Plato occupies a threshold position: he...
This paper argues that cultural artifacts function as distributed cognitive models through which societies construct, stabilize, and revise shared interpretations of reality. Drawing on cognitive constructivism, enactivism, predictive processing, and extended and distributed cognition, it treats narratives not as ornamental representations but as components of a supra-personal modeling...
This paper offers a rigorous examination of the concept of prosochē—the attentive mindfulness or vigilant focus on oneself—within Hellenistic Stoicism and its later transformations in Late Antiquity, and compares it to the modern psychological notion of the “flow state.” We analyze prosochē as a Stoic spiritual exercise (askēsis) essential to ethical development and life in accordance with...
Cognitive constructivism holds that cognition is not a passive mirroring of the world but an active process of constructing internal models of reality. This paper explores proto-cognition—the earliest manifestations of cognitive processes in organisms lacking complex nervous systems—as the evolutionary foundation of that constructivist principle. Drawing on a comparative constructivist...
How should we understand human agency and moral responsibility in a world governed by natural laws? This paper develops a compatibilist account grounded in cognitive constructivism, proposing that agency is best conceived as a model-control architecture. On this view, an agent is a self-constructing, self-controlling system defined by its capacity to generate, select, inhibit, and revise...
This paper offers a contemporary reinterpretation of Plotinus’s doctrine of emanation by translating the metaphysical sequence One → Nous → Psyche into an ontological–phenomenological account of human experience. The Plotinean One is refigured as the Ontological Now: the immediate, objective presence of reality as experienced under maximal present-constraint, with minimal conceptual and...
This paper develops a novel account of minimal-dual awareness as a disciplined epistemic method that systematically alters the access conditions of consciousness to reveal structures of temporality and cognition. Building on an Existential Realism (ER) framework, we argue that conventional, detached cognition often conflates reality with existence and thereby obscures the special role of the...
Dissociative psychoactive substances (such as ketamine and PCP) present a challenge to standard models of altered states of consciousness. Unlike classical hallucinogens which enrich or distort conscious content, dissociatives induce a peculiar fragility in the construction of one’s world-model – a breakdown of the high-level coherence that ordinarily binds perception, selfhood, and meaning....
We argue that a distinctive form of intersubjective experience – shared minimal-dual awareness (MDA) or “intercorporeal present” – can be jointly enacted by individuals. In this mode, two embodied persons co-engage in a present-centered attentional field such that each person’s habitual self-narrative falls silent, while a mutual salience‐space forms between them, yet without erasing their...
Hegel’s philosophy presents self-consciousness, negation, and social recognition as the driving forces of mind’s development and the pinnacle of Spirit’s self-realization. In this view, the narrative, self-relating subject is not a defect but the crowning achievement of reality coming to know itself. By contrast, contemplative traditions and certain phenomenological models treat the narrative,...
We examine the claim that a minimal-conceptual, “bare” awareness underlies ordinary experience, and whether this pre-conceptual awareness (PCA, or minimal-dual awareness) should be understood primarily as an earlier, biologically rooted developmental baseline, or as a disclosure of a deeper ontological reality. The Retrieval hypothesis treats PCA as a cognitive–neural default mode that can be...
In a world understood through Existential Realism (ER) – where only the present moment truly “exists” – and under Minimal-Dual Awareness (MDA) – a mode of consciousness with reduced self–other splits and narrative thought – a puzzle arises: What grounds our obligations, commitments, and ethical agency when the “story-self” dissolves? We propose that ethical authority is rooted in the relational...
Emerging research in contemplative science and psychedelic neuroscience suggests that deeply entrenched patterns of selfhood and cognition—often associated with mental disorders like depression—can be profoundly altered through both meditative practice and pharmacological intervention. This paper presents a neuroconstructivist framework for understanding how deep meditation and dissociative...
This paper explores how meditation serves as a tool to modulate and reconfigure the cognitive boundary between the subjective self and objective reality. By integrating Cognitive Constructivism (CC)—which views the mind as a "prediction machine" that constructs experienced reality—with Existential Realism (ER)—which emphasizes the primacy of the immediate "now"—the study examines the...
This paper develops a cognitive-constructivist account of consciousness focusing not on what consciousness does but on how it presents. Building on an Interpreter–Navigator model of mind, we argue that phenomenal experience (qualia) serves as a user interface (UI): a presentational format optimized for direct usability by an embodied agent. The central claim is that feeling is the utility...
Contemplative traditions often celebrate experiences of “pure” or non-dual awareness as insights into an ultimate reality beyond conceptual grasp. This paper offers a grounded alternative: such Bare Awareness or minimal-dual experiences are best understood not as ineffable metaphysical revelations, but as contingent phenomena constrained by procedural access (skills and practices) and...
Contemporary accounts of mystical “non-dual” or minimal-dual consciousness often describe a state beyond the ordinary subject–object framework. In this paper we propose a novel parametric introspection framework, according to which such a breakthrough is not achieved by doctrinal affirmation or mere insight into metaphysics, but by driving specific introspective parameters to critical values....
This paper develops a comparative philosophical analysis of minimal-duality and “bare” consciousness as introspective limit-concepts—notions that emerge when reflexive awareness approaches the edges of self-representation and differentiation. By examining selected traditions (Neoplatonism, Advaita Vedānta, Mahāyāna Buddhism, Taoism, and Kabbalah) as illustrative case studies rather than an...
Human cognition does not passively mirror reality; it actively constructs a world through perception and social interaction. Using a cognitive constructivist framework, this paper investigates how shared reality and intersubjectivity emerge from dynamic processes of calibration between minds. We synthesize evidence from psychology (e.g. shared reality theory, conversational alignment),...