Meditation and the scope of mental action
Candace L. Upton, Michael Richard Brent
Philosophical Psychology September 18, 2018 DOI: 10.1080/09515089.2018.1514491 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Meditation |
| Citations | 12 |
| Key points | Argues that Galen Strawson's account of mental action, which holds that cognitive mental action consists in triggering the delivery of content to consciousness, fails to recognize several distinct types of mental action. Proposes that meditation serves as a useful model for understanding a wider range of mental actions, supported by psychological research on meditation and cognition and on meditation and introspection. |
Abstract
While philosophers of mind have devoted abundant time and attention to questions of content and consciousness, philosophical questions about the nature and scope of mental action have been relatively neglected. Galen Strawson’s account of mental action, the most well developed extant account, holds that cognitive mental action consists in triggering the delivery of content to one’s field of consciousness. However, Strawson fails to recognize several distinct types of mental action that might not reduce to triggering content delivery. In this article, we argue that meditation provides a useful model for understanding a wider range of types of mental action than heretofore recognized. Conclusions yielded by two distinct bodies of current psychological research on meditation and cognition, and meditation and introspection, buttress meditation’s suitability for this role.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition. | 2004 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mechanisms of mindfulness | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness | 2012 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cited by 5
- Defining Meditation: Foundations for an Activity-Based Phenomenological Classification System. Frontiers in Psychology 2021
- Imagination, endogenous attention, and mental agency Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences April 21, 2023
- Self-Experience and the Unconscious July 1, 2022
- A Reductive Account of Mindfulness as Metacognitive Control Review of Philosophy and Psychology February 3, 2025
- First-person dimensions of mental agency in visual counting of moving objects. Cognitive Processing April 5, 2021
Cites 7
- Mental Training Affects Distribution of Limited Brain Resources PLoS Biology May 4, 2007
- Intensive meditation training improves perceptual discrimination and sustained attention. Psychological Science June 1, 2010
- Investigation of mindfulness meditation practitioners with voxel-based morphometry Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience December 3, 2007
- Meditation Experience Predicts Introspective Accuracy PLoS One September 25, 2012
- The Illusion of Conscious Will The MIT Press September 20, 2018
and 2 more in the library