Nondual Awareness and Minimal Phenomenal Experience.
Zoran Josipovic, Vladimir Miskovic
Frontiers in Psychology 2020 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02087 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Consciousness-as-such Lucid nrem sleep Minimal phenomenal experience Nondual awareness |
| Citations | 67 |
| Key points | Proposes that consciousness-as-such is a unique, non-representational type of awareness that cannot be adequately specified by the two-dimensional model of consciousness or by minimal phenomenal experiences. |
Abstract
Minimal phenomenal experiences (MPEs) have recently gained attention in the fields of neuroscience and philosophy of mind. They can be thought of as episodes of greatly reduced or even absent phenomenal content together with a reduced level of arousal. It has also been proposed that MPEs are cases of consciousness-as-such. Here, we present a different 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 adequately specified by the two-dimensional model of consciousness as the arousal level plus the phenomenal content or by their mental representations. Thus, we suggest that to understand consciousness-as-such, and by extension consciousness in general, more accurately, we need to research it as a unique kind.