In this paper, I will delve into Evan Thompson’s analysis of dream experiences, which has challenged philosophers and scholars in the past. Many thinkers argue that dreams are not conscious experiences; there is an opposite view in which philosophers still argue for dreams as conscious phenomena. The paper primarily focuses on the hypothesis: ‘Thompson’s explication of dreams as conscious...
Radical neurophenomenology offers new ways to re-thinking subjectivity and objectivity, and the relation between them. More specifically, radical neurophenomenology crucially relies on the notion of constitution to circumvent the pitfalls that were associated with older, dualistic frameworks. Building on existing work, our paper has two primary goals. First, we will argue that Merleau-Ponty's...
This special issue unites original theoretical and empirical research on two topics that are gaining traction in cognitive neuroscience and psychology, but so far have small philosophical footprints: dreaming and waking mind wandering. While the fields of dream and mind wandering research are largely separate, phenomenological and neurophysiological similarities between waking mind wandering...
ABSTRACT The classical scientific method, particularly its deterministic approach, encounters limitations when attempting to fully capture the complexities of human beings. Although many 20th‐century philosophers criticized this method, their arguments were primarily philosophical. I see a need for a critique of the scientific method grounded in empirical science itself. The complexity paradigm...
The Assessment of Clinician's Subjective Experience (ACSE) is a self-report questionnaire developed to evaluate clinicians' subjective experiences during patient interactions. While its psychometric properties and clinical validity have been supported, its neurobiological correlates have not yet been investigated. In this pilot study, two clinicians and ten patients participated in a...
The increasing number of diagnoses of anxiety disorders has highlighted the need for discussions about anxiety in its affective, psychopathological, and mundane dimensions. This scoping review mapped 36 scientific articles (2014-2025) to analyze how Phenomenology contributes to the understanding of anxiety as a global phenomenon. The results highlight trends in the field in 4 discursive...
Computational phenomenology has been recently presented as a novel and promising approach to modelling human experience with the use of computational techniques. More specifically, as it has been discussed in recent work, it links phenomenological descriptions and analyses of lived experience and generative modelling techniques, most prominently, through Active Inference. It is argued that the...
Psychedelics and meditation can facilitate transformative experiences with acute changes in sensory processing and self-perception, but research about their relation to narrative and affective-attitudinal body image remains limited. We examined body image themes in psychedelic and meditative experience narratives, compared these between experience types, and examined their associations with...
The article aims to clarify the concept of naivety as it is presented in the works of Georges Bachelard. Although this concept is frequently mentioned, it has not yet been clearly defined. The significance of this research lies in its connection to antagonistic phenomena such as naive science and the naive image in poetry, which are system-forming elements of Bachelard’s philosophical project....
This article offers a critical analysis of D. I. Dubrovsky’s informational theory of conscious ness, which claims to solve the hard problem. At the center of the theory is the idea that consciousness is a special kind of information, instantiated in the brain but subjectively perceived “in pure form”, without reference to the physical properties of neural processes. The paper examines the core...
This paper has a critical and a constructive part. The first part formulates a political demand, based on ethical considerations: Until 2050, there should be a global moratorium on synthetic phenomenology, strictly banning all research that directly aims at or knowingly risks the emergence of artificial consciousness on post-biotic carrier systems. The second part lays the first conceptual...
Abstract In the Beiträge zur Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung , Wilhelm Schapp develops a phenomenology of perception centered on how the world manifests itself to the senses. Building on and extending Husserl’s account, the analysis shows how the thing of everyday experience appears as a unified object whose “character of reality” emerges through the interplay of the senses. This expansion...
The aim of this study is to establish and analyze the qualitative characteristics of Russian-speaking mystical-esoteric online discourse in its metaphysical, epistemological, and phenomenological aspects. The research employs a methodological composite consisting of content analysis, discourse analysis, conceptual engineering, and imagological analysis. The research material comprises a corpus...
Open Mind2026Oakley Charlotte Author, MacKenzie Matthew Advisor, Kasser Jeff Committee Member et al.
There has been a recent resurgence of both cultural and scientific interest in altered states of consciousness. Among the most puzzling and widely reported are mystical experiences—anomalous events where one’s ordinary sense of self is replaced by an overwhelming and transcendent feeling of connectedness or unity. These ‘unitive’ mystical experiences challenge many of our common intuitions...
Sleep paralysis (SP) is a transient sleep-wake phenomenon characterised by conscious awareness accompanied by temporary muscle atonia and, often, vivid multisensory hallucinations. Although SP is widely recognised within sleep science and estimated to affect a substantial number of individuals globally, little is known about its prevalence and phenomenology within Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ),...
Doyon’s book aims to demonstrate that perceptual experience is oriented by norms of coherence and optimality, and that it is in virtue of this orientation that perceptions count as perceptions in the first place. Doyon contends that these norms should not be understood merely as epistemic norms but instead as sui generis, belonging to the internal structure of perceptual experience itself and...
This research-creation study introduces and contextualizes the three-act audio artifact Anamnesis: Pre-Existence, offering an autoethnographic and phenomenological investigation into the threshold between pre-linguistic states of consciousness and the symbolic, name-driven reality of post-natal existence. Grounded in Plato’s doctrine of anamnesis, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Chion’s acousmatic...
This paper introduces phenomenology as a mode of thinking grounded in appearance and experience, focusing on Husserl’s foundational ideas and their broader philosophical implications. The phenomenological framework is built upon intentionality and constitution. Intentionality is the structured relation where diverse experiences converge to form a coherent appearance. Constitution describes how...
AbstractPsychedelics often produce a rich, intricate, and dynamic experience that is challenging to capture effectively. This chapter explores the essential phenomenological features of psychedelic experiences, emphasizing elements with potential implications for religious practices. I will start by highlighting the key aspects of mystical experiences commonly associated with psychedelic use....
The new mechanistic philosophy (NMP) seeks to identify and explain the mechanisms of various phenomena, including their overall organization and the interactions between the individualized components. I argue that mechanistic explanation focuses on mechanisms conceived of as organized complex systems and should not be considered as merely a form of metaphysical reductionism. I discuss that...