This paper seeks to analyse an under-discussed kind of self-control, namely the control of thoughts and sensations. I distinguish first-order control from second-order control and argue that their central forms are intentional concentration and intentional mindfulness respectively. These correspond to two forms of meditation, concentration meditation and mindfulness meditation, which have been regarded as central both in the traditions in which the practices arose and in the scientific literature on meditation. I analyse them in terms of their characteristic intentions, distinguish (...) them from concentration and mindfulness in general, and examine the relations between them. Concentration involves keeping the mind focused on a single object, while mindfulness requires noticing whatever mental states occupy the focus of one’s consciousness. In the course of the investigation I examine the role of phenomenology and volition in the activity of meditating, and how they change as meditative capacities develop. (shrink)

Virtues, broadly understood as stable and robust dispositions for certain responses across morally relevant situations, have been a growing topic of interest in psychology. A central topic of discussion has been whether studies showing that situations can strongly influence our responses provide evidence against the existence of virtues (as a kind of stable and robust disposition). In this review, we examine reasons for thinking that the prevailing methods for examining situational influences are limited in their ability to test dispositional stability (...) and robustness; or, then, whether virtues exist. We make the case that these limitations can be addressed by aggregating repeated, cross-situational assessments of environmental, psychological and physiological variables within everyday life—a form of assessment often called ecological momentary assessment (EMA, or experience sampling). We, then, examine how advances in smartphone application (app) technology, and their mass adoption, make these mobile devices an unprecedented vehicle for EMA and, thus, the psychological study of virtue. We, additionally, examine how smartphones might be used for virtue development by promoting changes in thought and behavior within daily life; a technique often called ecological momentary intervention (EMI). While EMA/I have become widely employed since the 1980s for the purposes of understanding and promoting change amongst clinical populations, few EMA/I studies have been devoted to understanding or promoting virtues within non-clinical populations. Further, most EMA/I studies have relied on journaling, PDAs, phone calls and/or text messaging systems. We explore how smartphone app technology provides a means of making EMA a more robust psychological method, EMI a more robust way of promoting positive change, and, as a result, opens up new possibilities for studying and promoting virtues. (shrink)

Sensorimotor representations are essential for building up and maintaining corporeal awareness, i.e. the ability to perceive, know and evaluate one's own body as well as the bodies of others. The notion of embodied cognition implies that abstract forms of conceptual knowledge may be ultimately instantiated in such sensorimotor representations. In this sense, conceptual thinking should evoke, via mental simulation, some underlying sensorimotor events. In this review we discuss studies on the relation between embodiment and corporeal awareness. We approach the question (...) by issuing challenges from both ends. First, we ask whether bodily representations themselves can be disembodied or disconnected from underlying sensorimotor events. Second, we ask whether any concept, no matter how abstract, can actually be embodied in this way. The strong view of embodied cognition requires a negative answer to the first question, and an affirmative answer to the second. We also focus on the surprising range of cognitive processes that can be explained by linking them to corporeal awareness, such as aesthetic appreciation, and object constancy following brain damage. We conclude that (a) somatomotor simulation may help to understand the external world and the society of other individuals, but (b) some non-somatic forms of simulation may be required to explain how abstract knowledge contributes to understanding others' states. In this sense, the classic divide between sensorimotor and conceptual domains must remain in some form. (shrink)

Both the global workspace theory and Block’s distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness, are central in the current debates about consciousness and the neural correlates of consciousness. In this article, a unifying global workspace model for phenomenal and access consciousness is proposed. In the model, recurrent neural interactions take place in distinct yet interacting access and phenomenal brain loops. The effectiveness of feedback signaling onto sensory cortical maps is emphasized for the neural correlates of phenomenal consciousness. Two forms of top-down (...) attention, attention for perception and attention for access, play differential roles for phenomenal and access consciousness. The model is implemented in a neural network form, with the simulation of single and multiple visual object processing, and of the attentional blink. (shrink)

Many philosophers endorse the Transparency Thesis, the claim that by introspection one cannot become aware of one's experience. Recently, some authors have suggested that the Transparency Thesis is challenged by introspective states reached under mindfulness. We label this the Mindfulness Opacity Hypothesis. The present paper develops the hypothesis in important new ways. First, we motivate the hypothesis by drawing on recent clinical psychology and cognitive science of mindfulness. Secondly, we develop the hypothesis by describing the implied shift in experiential perspective, (...) the scope of introspectable qualities, and the level of skill. Thirdly, we defend the hypothesis against various philosophical arguments. We conclude that the Mindfulness Opacity Hypothesis is empirically and theoretically well motivated and supported. (shrink)

Research on bodily awareness has focused on body illusions with an aim to explore the possible dissociation of our bodily awareness from our own body. It has provided insights into how our sensory modalities shape our sense of embodiment, and it has raised important questions regarding the malleability of our sense of ownership over our own body. The issue, however, is that this research fails to consider an important distinction in how we experience our body. There are indeed two ways (...) in which we can be aware of our body: via observational awareness, which involves attending to the body as an object, and via non-observational awareness, where the body is given as the subject of experience and does not involve attention. The research to date has focused on the former—observational bodily awareness—and has left the latter—non-observational bodily awareness—in the dark. This is detrimental to ever formulating a complete account of how we are aware of our body. It is understandable, however, because of the inherent problem in studying non-observational bodily awareness: how would you instruct subjects to report on their unattended bodily awareness? In view to resolving this problem, I propose here a working hypothesis on the basis of research on interoception and the rubber hand illusion, and on the effect of meditation on awareness and attention. This working hypothesis can show us a way to begin studying non-observational bodily awareness, and finally build a complete theory of bodily awareness. (shrink)

The great variety of meditation techniques found in different contemplative traditions presents a challenge when attempting to create taxonomies based on the constructs of contemporary cognitive sciences. In the current issue of Consciousness and Cognition, Travis and Shear add ‘automatic self-transcending’ to the previously proposed categories of ‘focused attention’ and ‘open monitoring’, and suggest characteristic EEG bands as the defining criteria for each of the three categories. Accuracy of current taxonomies and potential limitations of EEG measurements as classifying criteria are (...) discussed. (shrink)

According to many first-person accounts, consciousness comprises a subject-object structure involving a mental action or attitude starting from the “subjective pole” upon an object of experience. In recent years, many paradigms have been developed to manipulate and empirically investigate the object of consciousness. However, well-controlled investigation of subjective aspects of consciousness has been more challenging. One way, subjective aspects of consciousness are proposed to be studied is using meditation states that alter its subject-object structure. Most work to study consciousness in (...) this way has been done using Buddhist meditation traditions and techniques. There is another meditation tradition that has been around for at least as long as early Buddhist traditions with the central goal of developing a fine-grained first-person understanding of consciousness and its constituents by its manipulation through meditation, namely the Tantric tradition of Yoga. However, due to the heavy reliance of Yogic traditions on the ancient Indian Samkhya philosophical system, their insights about consciousness have been more challenging to translate into contemporary research. Where such translation has been attempted, they have lacked accompanying phenomenological description of the procedures undertaken for making the precise subject-object manipulations as postulated. In this paper, I address these issues by first detailing how Tantric Yoga philosophy can be effectively translated as a systematic phenomenological account of consciousness spanning the entirety of the subject-object space divided into four “structures of consciousness” from subject to object. This follows from the work of the 20th century polymath and founder of the Tantric Yoga school of Ananda Marga, Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, who expounded on the “cognitivization” of Samkhya philosophy. I then detail stepwise meditation procedures that make theoretical knowledge of these structures of consciousness a practical reality to a Tantric Yoga meditator in the first-person. This is achieved by entering meditative states through stepwise experiential reduction of the structures of consciousness from object to subject, as part of their meditative goal of “self-realization.” I end by briefly discussing the overlap of these putative meditation states with proposed states from other meditation traditions, and how these states could help advance an empirical study of consciousness. (shrink)

In the waking state, in the absence of meta-awareness, mind wandering with specific contents can lead to negative mood. Such negative mood can be incorporated into dreaming according to the continuity hypothesis of dreaming. In this paper we argue that in the presence of what we call ‘sustained phenomenal meta-awareness’, negative mood would not follow mind wandering in waking. Sustained phenomenal meta-awareness has a non-sensory, non-affective phenomenal character. It is essentially intransitive, prereflectively self-aware, non-propositional, non-conceptual and devoid of subject-object structure. (...) In other words, this unique kind of meta-awareness is non-representational. Evidence is then provided that such sustained phenomenal meta-awareness can be incorporated into the subsequent dream state as non-dual lucid dreaming in which, again, no negative mood would arise. Based on the latter observation, we have coined the term ‘mindful mind wandering’ and defined it as mind wandering in the presence of sustained phenomenal meta-awareness. We argue that not only does mindful mind wandering not lead to negative mood in waking, but also its incorporation into dreaming, as non-dual lucid dreaming, result in a state that is free of negative affection. (shrink)

Meditation is an umbrella term for a number of mental training practices designed to improve the monitoring and regulation of attention and emotion. Some forms of meditation are now being used for clinical intervention. To accompany the increased clinical interest in meditation, research investigating the neural basis of these practices is needed. A central hypothesis of contemplative neuroscience is that meditative states, which are unique on a phenomenological level, differ on a neurophysiological level. To identify the electrophysiological correlates of meditation (...) practice, the electrical brain activity of highly skilled meditators engaging in one of six meditation styles was recorded. A mind-wandering task served as a control. Lempel–Ziv complexity showed differences in nonlinear brain dynamics during meditation compared with mind wandering, suggesting that meditation, regardless of practice, affects neural complexity. In contrast, there were no differences in power spectra at six different frequency bands, likely due to the fact that participants engaged in different meditation practices. Finally, exploratory analyses suggest neurological differences among meditation practices. These findings highlight the importance of studying the electroencephalography correlates of different meditative practices. (shrink)

In the current hypothesis paper, we propose that focusing attention on silence can be used as a paradigm conceptually similar to sensory deprivation, to study consciousness without content. We briefly overview recent influential models of consciousness and consider how they assess the relationship between consciousness and contents. After discussing the strengths and weaknesses of current models, we suggest an extension based on the Sphere Model of Consciousness (SMC) and introduce new definitions for identification and self-awareness as states of consciousness. We (...) further compare Paoletti’s theoretical model for the development of self with other influential models, highlighting similarities and differences. We conclude with a discussion of how attentional focus on silence can be empirically tested. (shrink)

Over the past ten to fifteen years, medical interventions, therapeutic approaches and scientific studies involving mindfulness meditation have gained traction in areas such as clinical psychology, psychotherapy, and neuroscience. Simultaneously, mindfulness has had a very strong public appeal. This article examines some of the ways in which the medical and scientific meaning of mindfulness is communicated in public and to the public. In particular, it shows how experts in the field of mindfulness neuroscience seek to communicate to the public at (...) large the imperative of brain fitness for the promotion of health, wellbeing and happiness. The study identifies claims being made in popular outlets that, by and large, bypass traditional mass media, such as self-help books, websites and online videos. By treating this material as a form of personalized science communication, this article contributes to the body of literature that understands science communication as a continuum and the boundary between science and popularized science as the outcome of human negotiations. The study finds that processes of personalization help to build bridges between scientific findings and their supposed application, that they infuse science with subjective meaning, and turn expert communication with the public into a moral vocation. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on somatosensory attenuation of bodily signals as a core mechanism underlying the phenomenon of 'losing' one's sense of self in meditation. Specifically, I argue that somatosensory attenuation of bodily signals does not make the bodily self 'disappear' experientially. Rather, during the subjectively reported phenomena of 'self-loss', bodily sensory signals are self-attenuated, physiologically, and experientially processed in the background. Hence the term 'losing' the self or 'selfless' states may be misleading in describing these peculiar types of (...) experiences reported during deep meditative states. What is 'lost', I claim, is a particular, ordinary way to explicitly, mentally model oneself in relation to the body and the world. Yet, the experience of being a living body, i.e.a self-organizing organism, is never 'lost' in this process. The proposal is that the explicit feeling of selfless minds may be tacitly accompanied by the implicit feeling of unlimited body, as two sides of the same coin. (shrink)

Mindfulness training is often promoted as a method to train cognitive functions and has shown such effects in previous studies. However, many conventional mindfulness exercises for beginners require cognitive effort, which may be prohibitive for some, particularly for people who have more pronounced cognitive problems to begin with. An alternative mindfulness-based approach, called restoration skills training, draws on a restorative natural practice setting to help regulate attention effortlessly and promote meditative states during exercises. Previous research has shown that a 5-week (...) ReST course requires less effort and is attended by higher compliance with practice recommendations than a conventional mindfulness course, without compromising long-term outcomes. Here, we compare ReST and a formally matched conventional mindfulness course regarding the role that initial individual differences in cognitive functioning play in determining practice compliance and long-term improvements in dispositional mindfulness and cognitive functioning. In line with expectations, ReST participants who had more pronounced cognitive problems to begin with practiced more during the course, which in turn explained much of their improvement in dispositional mindfulness and cognitive functioning. In contrast, initial cognitive functioning did not explain practice and improvement in the conventional mindfulness course. The results provide further support for the potential utility of ReST as a low-effort method for enhancing cognitive functioning among people who would struggle with the demands of conventional mindfulness training. With careful integration of mindfulness practices with a restorative natural setting, these people can develop mindfulness and self-regulation capabilities without relying on effortful training. (shrink)