Nondual Awareness and Minimal Phenomenal Experience
Summary
Minimal phenomenal experiences (MPEs) are episodes with significantly reduced or absent phenomenal content and lower arousal. A new perspective suggests that consciousness-as-such should be viewed as a type of awareness that is non-conceptual, non-propositional, and nondual. This awareness cannot be fully captured by existing models that combine arousal and phenomenal content. To better understand consciousness, it is essential to study this unique form of awareness.
Study at a glance
| Key finding | Consciousness-as-such is proposed to be a unique type of non-representational awareness that cannot be adequately described by current models of consciousness. |
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Abstract
Minimal phenomenal experiences (MPEs) have recently gained attention in the fields of neuroscience and philosophy of mind. They can be thought of as episodes of greatly reduced or even absent phenomenal content together with a reduced level of arousal. It has also been proposed that MPEs are cases of consciousness-as-such. Here, we present a different perspective, that consciousness-as-such is first and foremost a type of awareness, that is, non-conceptual, non-propositional, and nondual, in other words, non-representational. This awareness is a unique kind and cannot be adequately specified by the two-dimensional model of consciousness as the arousal level plus the phenomenal content or by their mental representations. Thus, we suggest that to understand consciousness-as-such, and by extension consciousness in general, more accurately, we need to research it as a unique kind.