# Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation ![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/media/uploaded_book_covers/profile_1188016/mQOoCzYXemuqbQx_HUclu02nQQJRpWyLUn90KptcDk4-cove_3gfDzjF.png) ## Metadata - Author: [[Rick Repetti]] - Full Title: Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: The text discusses the first collection in Western philosophy to critically assess the validity and implications of meditation. It addresses the philosophical implications of meditation, its potential benefits, and its role in neuroscience research. The text also touches on the relationship between meditation, consciousness, and self-transcendence. - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/143819437 - Source File: Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation 2022.pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > The first concern is that the construct is typically explicated as a feature list. For example, mindfulness is often described as paying attention to the present moment without judgment, and that this practice will make one more insightful and less reactive in one’s daily life. Research into the psychology of concepts shows that people typically think of the understanding captured in their concepts to be disclosed by such features lists (Murphy and Medin 1985). A bird has wings and feathers, and it flies. What that same psychology research shows is that such features lists do not contain most of the understanding contained in the concept. This is because such feature lists do not contain the relations between the features, and it is often difficult to express the structural-functional organization that carries a lot of the burden of the meaning of the concept. So, for example, simply gathering together some wings and some feathers, and then flinging them in the air does not constitute a bird. These components must be put together in the right structure so that they function in a bird-like manner. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv1hz59f5j79jh9tpzd1qqzv)) > Notice that reflecting on the psychology of concepts in this way can aid the philosophical project of conceptually analyzing the notion of mindfulness. For we can now ask about the rela- tions between the features found in the standard psychological definitions of mindfulness. We can ask for causal relationships and part-whole relationships. Why would being present cause one to become more insightful? What is the relationship between being present and being less judgmental? As we address these questions, we can begin to distinguish between those features that are states of mind and those that are traits longitudinally acquired. In this way the philoso- phy of mindfulness can help to transform a misleading features list into a more helpful feature schema. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0xq36kqymx1kwq42q9fcvm)) > Mole (2010) points out that we talk about attention as if it is something we directly do, like shining a light on some object. This is the spotlight metaphor for attention. However, note that paying attention is more like training or practicing, i.e., we do these activities by modifying how we are doing some more direct action. So, for example, one trains one’s martial art by sparring and one trains chess by playing several games. Training is in this sense inherently adverbial in nature. Similarly, one pays attention not just by seeing, but by looking, or not just by hearing, but by listening. One can pay attention by checking for mistakes in what one is saying or imagining a scene described in a book. There does not seem to be a single simple action that one performs by paying attention. Instead, one seems to be coordinating other processes so that they have more of what Mole describes as cognitive union, i.e., they are co-relevant to the same goal. This coordination process is often largely tacit, as Polanyi (1966) pointed out. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0xs3qve141xyq2by5th59r)) > Consider an example used independently by both Polanyi (id.) and Merleau-Ponty (2011) of a blind person using a cane to tap on the floor so as to find their way around. Polanyi points out that attention is a relation between a subsidiary, tacit form of awareness and a focal, explicit form of awareness. The blind person is not directly aware of their cane or its tapping. Instead, they are aware through (in both senses of beyond, and by means of) the tapping of the cane on the floor. The sensations of movement and stoppage in the cane are coordinated and integrated to afford perception of the floor. Making use of a distinction from Apter (1982), the cane and its tapping movements are transparent because one perceives through them. However, one is focally aware of the floor. The floor is opaque in the sense that one is looking at it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0xt1g9j15nx6nn6ffpks90)) - Note: cool > Of course, one can ‘shift’ one’s attention by becoming directly aware of the cane, and one thereby loses focal awareness of the floor. One can continue this focal retreat, and shift one’s awareness to focus on how one’s hand is moving to manipulate the cane, and then the cane drops out of focal awareness. One can perform a series of such transparency-to-opacity trans- formations, thereby disclosing the layers of integration that are going on within attention. Notice how the scope of attention is retreating or shrinking, and that people often express this with metaphors of moving more inward towards some center from which attention originates. One’s attention is becoming increasingly less representational about the world, and – inversely equally – increasingly more disclosing about the actual process of attention itself. This is a shift from representing the world to the making-present, or presencing, of the process of attention within attention. None of this richness of attention is indicated by the spotlight metaphor of attention, and we can now explain being present as reducing the representational content of attention while increasing awareness of the process of attention by performing a series of transparency- to-opacity shifts. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv1jb971x8z573k6v2hfpsyq)) - Note: "the making present of presencing" > Attention also has another dynamic dimension according to the current psychology and cognitive science of attention. Attention can shift between features and more encompassing gestalts, i.e., structural-functional organizations. Consider the two words together, ‘THE CAT’. However, visualize what they would look like if they were depicted in a font with an ambiguous version of the letter ‘H’ that is exactly the same shape as an ambiguous version of the letter ‘A’. In a non-ambiguous letter ‘A’, both side lines normally slope upward and inward toward the top and touch at their peaks. However, in the ambiguous letter, both side lines slope upward and inward toward the top, as an ‘A’ does, but without touching at their peak, as an ‘H’ does not. The ambiguous letter thus somewhat closely resembles both the ‘A’ and the ‘H’, or a hybrid letter 194 ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0xxcj20mvv5f3scra3byr0)) - Note: shifting between features and more encompassing gestalts > based on both of the otherwise non-ambiguous letters.3 What renders the ambiguous letter as an ‘H’ in the word ‘THE’ but renders the identical letter as an ‘A’ in the word ‘CAT’, yielding ‘THE CAT’ instead of, say, ‘TAE CHT’? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0xy79avyawgnmeyrs0heyq)) > . Just as attention is operating in a parallel and self-organizing fashion within the trans- parency/opacity dimension, so it is operating in a parallel and self-organizing fashion within the feature/gestalt dimension. Here the metaphors used are not in and out, but up and down. Attention is bottom-up from the features and top-down from the gestalt. Note again how the spotlight metaphor of attention completely misses this second dimension of dynamic integra- tion within attention. We can also reduce the representational content of our cognition when one shifts from the gestalt to the featural level. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0yajrt0q883hqvfx6j5685)) > Thus, being more present may also be explained as the reduction of representational con- tent by the shifting of attention to a more featural level. This is accomplished by focusing on individual sensations rather than the perceptual gestalts that they can form. It is similar to how one could disrupt awareness of what a particular passage of text is conveying by focusing on the letters to the exclusion of the words and sentences of the text. Once again, this shift of attention would have the effect of disclosing the operations of attention as it attempts to make sense of the world. This would involve a shift from modeling the world to modeling the modeling/sense making process itself. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0yck94swhdk5tg5qh0zjfw)) > . One can step back increasingly into the mind while increasingly breaking up gestalts of perception and vice versa. These two processes can undergo cognitive unison when they share the goal of reducing representational content and disclos- ing the enactment of attention. Vervaeke and Ferraro (2016) propose that this is what is going on when one is engaging in being present within the practice of mindfulness meditation. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0ydrc5sxp3m0ys9qt54145)) > The ancient Greek word for this directing of attention is ‘theoria’, and it is the etymological root of our word ‘theory’, because in a theory we form larger gestalts through which we see deeper realities. However, when ‘theoria’ was translated into Latin it was translated as ‘contemplatio’, from which we get our word ‘contempla- tion’. Originally, theoria was a contemplative activity in which one was directing one’s attention to catch a vision of ontologically deeper patterns and principles. This directing of attention to make a larger frame is also predictive of an insight.4 ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv1jv9ykp5red39h9efjmfqj)) > Meditation in this sense thus directs attention to break up gestalts and do transparency-to- opacity shifting that can break up misleading framing. And contemplation in this sense directs attention to form new larger gestalts through which one can realize deeper patterns and prin- ciples by doing an opacity-to-transparency shift in a way that is analogous to the blind person not looking at their cane but at the world through it. In this way contemplation affords a new framing of reality. Each process corrects and constrains the other, and them working together increases the probability of the reframing that generates the ‘aha!’ moment of insight. Breaking frame and making frame are coordinated into reframing. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0ykma7c4fg6v29sv1txjtt))