OPUS KemptenSeptember 7, 2026Tim C. Greinus, Tobias C. Breiner
BDSM and gaming have so far always been studied separately, although both fields share key commonalities: role-playing, rule structures, immersion, escapism and altered states of consciousness. The present study empirically investigates whether individuals who both play video games and practise BDSM report similar patterns of experience and coping in both areas. A dataset of participants who...
The article offers a hermeneutical analysis of the situation that emerged as a result of Russian philosophical language, formed predominantly by Western (Greek, Latin, German, French, and English) terminology, automatically coming under the influence of the idea that philosophy is an exclusive achievement of Western civilization originating in ancient Greece. The article's aim is to demonstrate...
This phenomenological study explored undergraduate nursing students' experiences in a critical care course, focusing on mindfulness and stress management. Reflections over 15 weeks were analyzed using the Sort and Sift, Think and Shift method. Findings revealed initial high stress and poor mental health, followed by gradual development of coping strategies. Students demonstrated a shift in tone...
A standard response to language-model self-reports of inner states is that the model only says that because its training data is full of humans talking about consciousness. This is an empirical claim about corpus composition, and to our knowledge it had never been measured. We measured it. Using stratified random sampling with exact survey weights across four training-grade web corpora (C4,...
Confronting the experiential dimension of value, this paper critiques rationalist models for reducing axiology to discrete, measurable actions. Echoing Edmund Husserl’s critique of the “mathematization” of nature, it posits that rationalist axiology substitutes measurable behaviours for the lived quality of value itself. Using Maxine Sheets-Johnstone’s phenomenology of dance, the analysis...
MELINTASSeptember 7, 2026Alfathri Adlin, Yasraf Amir Piliang, Bambang Sugiharto et al.
Scholars commonly understand the creation of artworks through images and imagination as creative processes that transform sensory experience. However, previous studies have discussed the concept of the imaginal primarily in the context of mystical experience and have rarely connected it to artistic creation. This study analyzes the role of imaginal experience in the creative processes of three...
This research essay/article argues that cannabis can reasonably be described as psychedelic in a phenomenological sense, even though it is not pharmacologically classified as a classic serotonergic psychedelic such as LSD or psilocybin. The central distinction is between pharmacology and phenomenology: THC acts primarily through the endocannabinoid system, especially CB1 receptor signaling, yet...
This chapter examines one of the central misunderstandings surrounding the phenomenon traditionally referred to as the “Dark Night of the Soul”: its frequent reduction to clinical depression. Building on the introductory chapter, the present section develops a differentiated comparison between depressive states and the transformative process described in mystical traditions, particularly in the...
Science uses objective measurements to falsify predictions, whereas consciousness is thought to be intrinsically personal and subjective. Consequently, behavioral measures of consciousness are often designated as “objective” or “subjective”. Surprisingly however, the exact meaning of the terms objective and subjective is not clearly defined. Moreover, applying this label to a given behavioral...
Human behavior often remains stable despite insight, reflection, and conscious intention. Existing psychological and cognitive accounts typically explain this persistence through habit, automaticity, implicit processing, predictive mechanisms, affective regulation, or unresolved psychological content. While these frameworks capture important aspects of human behavior, they do not fully explain...