Minimal phenomenal experience

Abstract

This is the first in a series of instalments aiming at a minimal model explanation for conscious experience, taking the phenomenal character of “pure consciousness” or “pure awareness” in meditation as its entry point. It develops the concept of “minimal phenomenal experience” (MPE) as a candidate for the simplest form of consciousness, substantiating it by extracting six semantic constraints from the existing literature and using sixteen phenomenological case-studies to incrementally flesh out the new working concept. One empirical hypothesis is that the phenomenological prototype of “pure awareness”, to which all such reports refer, really is the content of a predictive model, namely, a Bayesian representation of tonic alertness. On a more abstract conceptual level, it can be described as a model of an unpartitioned epistemic space.

“I” and “Me”: The Self in the Context of Consciousness

“…One example of such situation may be the experience of a dreamless sleep, which “is characterized by a dissolution of subject-object duality, or (…) by a breakdown of even the most basic form of the self-other distinction” ( Windt, 2015 ). This is a situation which can be regarded as an instance of the state of minimal phenomenal experience – the simplest form of conscious experience possible ( Windt, 2015 ; Metzinger, 2018 ), in which there is no place for even the most rudimentary form of “Me.” Another example may be the phenomenology of systems with grid-like architectures which, according to the integrated information theory (IIT, Tononi et al, 2016 ), possess conscious experience 6 . If IIT is correct, then these systems experience some form of conscious states, which most likely lack any phenomenal distinction between “Me” and “not-Me.” However, because they may possess a stream of conscious experience, and conscious experience is necessarily subjective, there remains a valid question: who or what is the subject of that experience?…”

“…I will argue that in most of the cases (arguably all) this distinction maps onto the distinction between the phenomenal self (reflecting self-related content of consciousness) and the metaphysical self (representing the problem of subjectivity of all conscious experience), and as such these two issues should be investigated separately using fundamentally different methodologies. Moreover, by referring to Metzinger’s (2018) theory of phenomenal self-models, I will argue that what is usually investigated as the phenomenal-“I” [following understanding of self-as-subject introduced by Wittgenstein (1958) ] can be interpreted as object, rather than subject of experience, and as such can be understood as an element of the hierarchical structure of the phenomenal self-model. This understanding relates to recent predictive coding and free energy theories of the self and bodily self discussed in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy.…”

Radical disruptions of self-consciousness

“…Thomas Metzinger (2020) proposes a new methodological alternative to classical reductionist research strategies. These strategies target conscious experience by isolating minimally sufficient neural correlates and developing a functional analysis, ultimately leading to computational descriptions and mechanistic explanations.…”

Breaking the self

“…Phenomenal consciousness is particulary vexing in this respect, because defining the explanandum is notoriously difficult. Although it seems we can, conceptually, distinguish phenomenal consciousness from mere tonic alertness (Metzinger, 2020), attention, the capacity for integrated control of behavior, and other cognitive capacities (see Chalmers, 1995;Revonsuo, 1998), we cannot completely dissociate phenomenal consciousness from these phenomena, and their relationship remains debated. This points to a central feature of theory-building in consciousness research, viz.…”

“…If correct, this would provide an example of an impossible conscious experience. However, as some of the other contributions to this special issue show, that claim is at least controversial (and probably false, see Letheby, 2020;Metzinger, 2020;Millière, 2020, all in this special issue; for the opposite view, see Sebastián, 2020, this special issue) -hence, I will not take a stance on the question whether conscious experiences without any kind of self-consciousness whatsoever are possible.…”