A commentary on Şerife Tekin's book argues that computational neurophenomenology can complement the MuSe (Multidimensional Self in Experience) framework to address challenges of objectivity in psychiatry. The author proposes integrating mechanistic accounts of self-model dynamics with MuSe's focus on subjective experience, which would strengthen the scientific standing of subjective reports and expand the role of experience-based experts in psychiatric research. This integration offers epistemic advantages and extends MuSe in new directions by grounding its facets in underlying dynamics.
Derealization, a symptom of Derealization/Depersonalization Disorder, involves a sense of unreality about one's surroundings despite still perceiving them. This presents a challenge for naive realist theories of perception, which hold that real external objects centrally explain the phenomenology of perception. The author develops this into a new problem for naive realism: the problem of derealization. The naive realist can respond, the author argues, by proposing that perceptual experiences of derealization involve existentially degraded perceptual relations to external objects, where perception makes an object available without its existence. Such degradation occurs when perception is structured by background feelings of unreality.
Our conscious experience typically includes a subjective sense that time is passing, but some philosophers deny that such a feeling exists. This paper argues that altered temporal experiences during deep meditation and psychedelic states serve as contrast cases that reveal the ordinary experience of time's passage. By examining these acute disturbances of normal temporal experience, the author contends that the elusive feeling of temporal flow can be identified and studied. The argument uses phenomenal contrast to establish that passage phenomenology is a genuine feature of conscious experience, making it a viable subject for philosophical theorizing.