From Retrieval to Revelation: Is Pre-Conceptual Awareness a Baseline or an Ontological Ground?

The authors argue that a minimal, pre-conceptual awareness (PCA) underlying ordinary experience can be understood both as a biological default mode of the mind, retrievable through contemplative practice (the Retrieval hypothesis), and as a disclosure of a deeper ontological reality (the Revelation hypothesis). Drawing on philosophy of mind, developmental psychology, neuroscience, and metaphysical traditions from Plotinus and Eckhart, they propose a dual-aspect framework where PCA is both an earlier developmental baseline and a window into unconditioned presence. They distinguish explanatory from ontological uses of 'priority' and argue that neuroscience explains mechanisms while metaphysics describes meaning. The paper outlines testable implications and responds to reductionist, inflationary, and category-mistake objections.

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Abstract

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 regain via contemplative practice – essentially a practical baseline of the mind – whereas the Revelation hypothesis treats PCA as an existentially fundamental sphere (akin to “being as presence”) that the brain can glimpse but not fully produce. We argue that these readings are not mutually exclusive but serve different explanatory roles. Drawing on contemporary philosophy of mind, developmental psychology, neuroscience, and metaphysics – as well as reflective analysis of Plotinian and Eckhartian notions of return and ground – we show that PCA can coherently be both earlier in function and deeper in meaning. In particular, we distinguish explanatory versus ontological indexical uses of “priority” or “ground,” emphasizing that neuroscience may explain the how (the mechanisms by which baseline consciousness arises) while metaphysics may describe the meaning (the way presence is disclosed). We propose a “dual-aspect” framework: evolution and development shape a baseline mode of functioning, yet that baseline mode also affords a mode of experience closer to what is described as the ground of being. We outline testable implications of this view and respond to objections (reductionist, inflationary, or category-mistake) to show how the dual description avoids both triviality and mystification. By uniting retrieval and revelation as complementary perspectives, we suggest a unified ontology in which the ever-present “now” is both an early developmental datum and a window into unconditioned presence.