Nondual Awareness and Minimal Phenomenal Experience

Minimal phenomenal experiences (MPEs), episodes of greatly reduced phenomenal content and arousal, have been proposed as examples of consciousness-as-such. This paper argues that consciousness-as-such is better understood as a unique kind of non-conceptual, non-propositional, nondual awareness that is non-representational. The authors suggest that the standard two-dimensional model of consciousness—arousal level plus phenomenal content—cannot adequately capture this awareness. They propose that consciousness-as-such, and consciousness more broadly, should be studied as a distinct phenomenon.

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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.