Minimal phenomenal experience

This paper proposes that the simplest form of conscious experience, termed "minimal phenomenal experience" (MPE), can be identified with the state of "pure awareness" reported in meditation. The authors derive six semantic constraints from existing literature and analyze sixteen phenomenological case studies to develop this concept. They hypothesize that pure awareness corresponds to a Bayesian predictive model of tonic alertness, which on an abstract level represents an unpartitioned epistemic space. This offers a minimal model explanation for conscious experience, grounding it in predictive processing theory.

Study at a glance

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.