Educating graduate students about praxis represents a challenge and an opportunity. This essay explores an experience of learning praxis along with Transformative Phenomenology, the combination of which indicates a promising means for scaffolding graduate students to deeper self-reflection and changed thinking. The emergence of changed thinking is reasoned as a shift from subconscious thought...
Auditory verbal hallucinations [AVH] are one of the most common psychopathological symptoms in psychosis and schizophrenia [SZ]. While various studies demonstrate the neuronal features of AVH in specific regions and networks including changes in structural and functional connectivity, the relation of their neuronal topography to the organization or structure of the subjects' experience, i.e....
Abstract This study contributes to the theoretical integration of phenomenology and behavioral science by examining how expertise reorganizes conscious experience. From a developmental and communicative perspective, skilled performance represents an epigenetic reconfiguration of awareness—from linguistically mediated control to embodied intuition. We develop an empirical phenomenology of this...
The Free Energy Principle (FEP) and active inference unify perception, action, and learning within a single variational framework, yet they remain silent on why there is phenomenal experience at all. Awareness-First Theory (AFT) proposes an ontological inversion: rather than deriving consciousness from non-experiential dynamics, it takes awareness as ontologically primitive—taken as the base...
Serotonergic psychedelics, particularly psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and dimethyltryptamine (DMT), are increasingly recognised as powerful tools to advance the understanding of consciousness and its relation to brain activity. Psychedelic research has informed neuroscientific theories that attempt to map neural observations of network connectivity and signal diversity to...
The meta-analysis of the 11-dimensional Altered States of Consciousness (11D-ASC) included three studies that contained duplicated data from other papers: Duerler et al. (2021), Lewis et al. (2017), and Preller et al. (2017). When these studies are removed from the analysis, the results are generally similar to the previously reported findings. Out of 33 comparisons (3 doses x 11 dimensions)...
This micro-phenomenological study examines altered states of consciousness (ASC) during Floatation-REST, a sensory isolation method where individuals lie in a tank filled with Epsom salt-saturated water in complete silence and darkness. Salubrious effects of Floatation-REST have been shown in persons suffering from mental health conditions; these positive outcomes might be related to the...
5-Methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT) is a naturally occurring psychedelic tryptamine. Plants containing 5-MeO-DMT have been used throughout history, and in recent years both synthetic and toad-derived 5-MeO-DMT use is being increasingly reported in naturalistic settings as well as clinical research. However, its subjective effects are not well characterised, and no qualitative research...
Psychedelics are being investigated as therapies for major depression and other mood disorders, but the “tripping” experience remains poorly understood. This paper argues that the epistemic dimensions of psychedelic experience should be considered more carefully, both to characterize better the psychedelic state and to develop and explain therapeutic approaches. I propose a tripartite framework...
The relationship between schizophrenia and psychedelic drug states has long attracted scholarly interest and psychedelics have sometimes been described as psychotomimetic. Sense of self can be understood as the feeling of “mineness” that normally characterizes all experiences. In both schizophrenia and psychedelic experiences, alterations to sense of self are present and correlate with clinical...