Consciousness, content, and cognitive attenuation

Abstract

Nirvana is sometimes described as stopping the world – transcending what phenomenologists describe as the (conventional) life-world. This chapter examines the implications of cognitive attenuation in such meditative absorptions, raising philosophical and phenomenological questions about the ways examination of such states, and their neuroscientific underpinnings, may play a role in resolving philosophical disagreements about the nature and character of consciousness and cognition. Do meditative absorptions have cognitive, conceptual, and/or intentional content? Do they exhibit an experiential structure? Are they only other-illuminating or also reflexive, self-illuminating? This chapter partly accepts the idea that phenomenology views this experiential structure as reflective of the reality of our life-world, but posits that non-ordinary states of consciousness do not deny this structure; rather, they invite that we revise certain (metaphysical) assumptions about it. This chapter’s analysis suggests that adopting a neurophenomenological perspective allows variable mental operations and contents to be brought into focus, captured, and categorized, and affords empirical scrutiny about their causal and conditioning factors. This analysis spans ancient Indian and contemporary philosophical sources, revealing that the issue is more philosophically complex than appears, thereby illustrating ways in which ancient Indian and contemporary Western approaches may unite in doing work in the philosophy of meditation.