Nondual Awareness and Minimal Phenomenal Experience

Mapping Intimacies ◽

10.31231/osf.io/h49dc ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Zoran Josipovic ◽

Vladimir Miskovic

Keyword(s):

Philosophy Of Mind ◽

Mental Representations ◽

Arousal Level ◽

Phenomenal Experience ◽

Two Dimensional ◽

Dimensional Model ◽

Phenomenal Content ◽

Two Dimensional Model

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.

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Commitment to pro- versus counter-attitudinal behavior and the dynamics of social representations

Swiss Journal of Psychology ◽

10.1024//1421-0185.61.1.34 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 61 (1) ◽

pp. 34-44 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Eric Tafani ◽

Lionel Souchet

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Social Representations ◽

Cognitive Restructuring ◽

Social Representation ◽

Two Dimensional ◽

Dimensional Model ◽

Social Actions ◽

The Social ◽

Two Dimensional Model ◽

Students Attitudes

This research uses the counter-attitudinal essay paradigm ( Janis & King, 1954 ) to test the effects of social actions on social representations. Thus, students wrote either a pro- or a counter-attitudinal essay on Higher Education. Three forms of counter-attitudinal essays were manipulated countering respectively a) students’ attitudes towards higher education; b) peripheral beliefs or c) central beliefs associated with this representation object. After writing the essay, students expressed their attitudes towards higher education and evaluated different beliefs associated with it. The structural status of these beliefs was also assessed by a “calling into question” test ( Flament, 1994a ). Results show that behavior challenging either an attitude or peripheral beliefs induces a rationalization process, giving rise to minor modifications of the representational field. These modifications are only on the social evaluative dimension of the social representation. On the other hand, when the behavior challenges central beliefs, the same rationalization process induces a cognitive restructuring of the representational field, i.e., a structural change in the representation. These results and their implications for the experimental study of representational dynamics are discussed with regard to the two-dimensional model of social representations ( Moliner, 1994 ) and rationalization theory ( Beauvois & Joule, 1996 ).

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