Meditation research mostly examines neurophysiology, but the actual moment-to-moment experience of meditating—what it feels like at different stages and in different practices—remains largely unstudied. This article reports a pilot project that used 'micro-phenomenological' interview methods to help meditators describe their lived experience with rigor and precision. The results show that such detailed descriptions can deepen understanding of meditation, improve practice, and inform teaching, revealing a valuable but overlooked dimension of contemplative science.
A recent thermodynamic theory of the central nervous system proposes that its function—and that of living autopoietic units generally—is to minimize surprise by adapting internal organization or ecological niche to maximize predictability and minimize entropy production. The first-person correlate of this minimized-surprise state is plausibly déjà vu or habitual monotony. Contrastingly, philosopher Henri Maldiney describes surprise as a sudden encounter with radically unexpected reality, a concussion for the brain and a risk for the organism, yet lived as an awakening to what exists.
The paper argues that standard questions linking quantum mechanics and consciousness—such as how consciousness could cause a quantum state reduction or how a quantum process could produce consciousness—reflect a cultural bias toward dualism. Adopting the monistic standpoint of phenomenology, it contends that consciousness is not a thing or property that exists but a precondition for any ascription of existence. From this view, several quantum conundrums, especially the measurement problem and state reduction, dissolve when using a phenomenology-compatible interpretation like QBism, which starts from a first-person standpoint.