A computational formalism called deep parametric active inference, rooted in Bayesian mechanics, can bridge first-person phenomenological accounts of experience and third-person physiological measurements, fulfilling the neurophenomenology programme's goal of mutual constraints. The dual information geometry of Bayesian mechanics allows generative passage between lived experience and its neural instantiation under certain conditions. This paper argues that incorporating trained reflective awareness into empirical protocols yields incremental explanatory gains, shifting focus from the contents of experience to the how of experience—the activities of consciousness that constitute meaningful appearance. The resulting deep computational neurophenomenology gains explanatory power from disciplined circulation between perspectives, enabled by generative models that form beliefs about their own modelling parameters.
This paper extends the neurophenomenology program by using Bayesian mechanics, specifically deep parametric active inference, to show how first-person accounts of experience and third-person physiological data can mutually constrain each other. The dual information geometry of Bayesian mechanics establishes generative passages between lived experience and its physiological instantiation under certain conditions. The authors argue that shifting focus from the contents of experience to the activities of consciousness—the 'how' of experience—yields incremental epistemic gains. The resulting framework, deep computational neurophenomenology, gains explanatory power from disciplined circulation between perspectives, enabled by generative models that form beliefs about their own modeling parameters. Trained reflective awareness is essential for this approach.
The minimal self, often described as the pre-reflective sense that experience is 'mine,' is not neutral about the body but is fundamentally embodied and agential. Evidence from multisensory integration and interoceptive processing shows that neurocognitive mechanisms for bodily ownership and presence span brain and body, grounding the quality of mineness. Phenomenologically, the lived body manifests as an absolute 'here' inseparable from a practical, outward orientation toward the world. This orientation corresponds to background agency: a passive, pre-reflective bodily self-awareness captured by the 'I can.' Enactive and dynamical approaches suggest that processes underlying background agency and bodily ownership are entangled and co-emergent, giving rise to minimal selfhood as an embodied and agential subjectivity.