In prior essays I have sketched a “modal model” of (self-) consciousness. That model “factors” out several distinct forms of awareness in the phenomenological structure of a typical act of consciousness. Here we consider implications of the model à propos of contemporary theories of consciousness (e.g. higher-order and self-representational forms of awareness). In particular, we distinguish...
Pike’s phenomenology of mystical experiences articulates sharply where theological content may enter the structure of Christian mystics’ experiences (as characterized in their own words). Here we look to Buddhist (and other) accounts of “pure” or “nibbanic” consciousness attained in experiences of deep meditation. A contemporary “modal” model of inner awareness is considered whereby a form of...
THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM IN HUSSERL Husserl is often read as an idealist, more like Kant than Berkeley, or else as a dualist, with epistemological motivations like those of Descartes. It would be only fitting for Husserl then to set aside the physical world and study pure consciousness. Phenomenology, the science of consciousness, would become the whole of philosophy. However, when we look closely...
What are we to make of the cogito (cogito ergo sum) today, as the walls of Cartesian philosophy crumble around us? The enduring foundation of the cogito is consciousness. It is in virtue of a particular phenomenological structure that an experience is conscious rather than unconscious. Drawing on an analysis of that structure, the cogito is given a new explication that synthesizes...