# Transparency and the Mindfulness Opacity Hypothesis ![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/media/uploaded_book_covers/profile_1188016/JUiwTrvitbGi8h--U9LLWA7CakCtdLvD7_pIWE1jFVU-cove_E2Ldqq3.png) ## Metadata - Author: [[Victor Lange]] - Full Title: Transparency and the Mindfulness Opacity Hypothesis - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: This document explores the Transparency Thesis (TT) and the Mindfulness Opacity Hypothesis (MOH) in relation to introspection and mindfulness practices. It argues that certain forms of mindfulness can lead to introspective awareness conflicting with the TT. The study delves into how mindfulness introspection may involve a qualitative aspect where phenomenal properties are experienced as non-object properties, challenging traditional views on introspection. Researchers suggest that mindfulness can result in properties appearing as non-object properties, with varying scope and skill levels affecting the breadth of introspective abilities in mindfulness practitioners. - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/144819597 - Source File: Transparency and the mindfulness opacity hypothesis Lange by Victor and Thor Grünbaum.pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > First, it remains unclear exactly how introspective awareness under mindfulness is supposed to be in conflict with TT. TT allows that individuals can attend to their experiences and describe them on the basis of their properties. The thesis even allows that subjects can think of phenomenological properties as non-object properties when they are engaged in introspection. It is not clear how MOH opposes TT on these matters. Second, it remains unclear what would motivate the claim that mindfulness practice can involve a form of introspection that is in conflict with TT. What kind of evidence could support such a claim? We address these two questions. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0v1vpqbs8z4r1dj7tt0wzr)) > To understand the argument of this paper, it is important to be clear about basic aspects of TT. The central claim of TT is often explained by the analogy with a painting (Harman 1990). Imagine perceiving Delacroix’ famous Liberty Leading the People. You can perceptually experience or be aware of the properties of the painting in two ways. You might experience the colours and forms as properties of the represented objects in the represented scene. You might perceive the red colour as a part of the French flag and yellow folding structure as the texture of the dress of the woman holding the flag. However, you might also perceive the colours and forms as non-object properties of the painting itself. You might look at the painting in such a way that the red colour and folding lines now genuinely and perceptually appear as properties of the painting. TT claims that introspecting one’s experience is different from perceiving a painting in the following sense. When we introspect our experience, no properties can genuinely appear to us as non-object properties. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqb5gnpetgn4e01s3nx4nn2e)) - Note: although non-object properties is a weird way of putting it > If TT is to count as evidence for metaphysical positions like strong Representationalism, it must cover all kinds of phenomenological characters, including pain experiences and more cognitive states like conscious thinking. We shall approach TT as this broader thesis (Aydede 2019; Kind 2003). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqb5mnaya87nk4t8djnayj7e)) > TT allows that individuals can in some sense be aware of their own experiences. It permits that individuals can acquire an increased awareness of the fact that they have this experience of pain in their knee. This would allow that individuals can think about the phenomenal properties of their experience as non-object properties. For example, an individual undergoing pain might think to herself that the involved phenomenal properties (e.g. the stinginess, bodily location, etc.) are not properties of her bodily damage, but instead non-object properties. Of course, TT- supporters like strong Representationalists would claim this kind of thinking to be erroneous, since there are no non-object properties metaphysically speaking. > In contrast to the subject’s cognitive classification of her own experiences, TT is incompatible with a kind of introspective awareness where some phenomenological properties genuinely appear to the subject as non-object properties. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0v8s0v5w97yhd8st8tcjm3)) - Note: What the transparency thesis can and can't allow re: introspection. > The dispute over TT is then the question of whether phenomenal properties can genuinely appear to us in our introspective awareness as properties of the relevant experience. If mindfulness introspection is to constitute a problem case for TT, it is not sufficient that mindfulness introspection involves thinking of properties as non-object properties. Mindfulness introspection must involve a qualitative dimension where phenomenal properties are experienced as non-object properties. Multiple philosophers have already argued that TT is implausible. Our argument is in line with arguments according to which special forms of introspective practice are in conflict with TT. Philosophers have pointed to possible conflicts between TT and oblique reflection (Loar 2002), certain kinds of conscious meta-representation (Nicholson 2014), an inward focus (Kind 2003), or the phenomenology of active attention (Watzl 2018). We point to special forms of introspection in some mindfulness practices. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqb61h9t57qpb8z0755j5m7p)) > Philosophers have pointed to possible conflicts between TT and oblique reflection (Loar 2002), certain kinds of conscious meta-representation (Nicholson 2014), an inward focus (Kind 2003), or the phenomenology of active attention (Watzl 2018). We point to special forms of introspection in some mindfulness practices. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0vc423hym5add46ra4xxa0)) - Note: @toread #toread > An experience is opaque under introspection to an individual if and only if when the individual is introspecting their experience, some properties appear to them as non- object properties. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0vdbqkzqp2nacgjm1nha0f)) > Philosophical readers might stress that the above quote only concerns cognitive states— it refers to experiencing thoughts as mental states. By contrast, TT is often phrased as a thesis about perceptual experience, as highlighted in Section 2. This raises important questions about how to understand MOH. Do researchers think that only cognitive states can be opaque under mindfulness introspection, whereas perceptual states might remain transparent? Or maybe, could researchers understand the opaqueness of thoughts to be different from the opaqueness of perceptual states? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0vjnfys25w6bbnvq25wqe2)) > If one endorses this idea, one could understand mindfulness as involving introspective awareness of cognitive phenomenological properties appearing as non-object properties. If a TT-supporter is committed to strong Representationalism, they are most likely deniers of proprietary cognitive phenomenology (Tye & Wright 2011). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0vm0rw61fssezj77rbbddr)) > Take the depressive thought of ‘my life is hopeless’. This thought involves multiple sensory qualities like inner speech, mental imagery, or some kind of bodily-affective feeling. Introspecting this thought as opaque would then involve that these sensory qualities genuinely appeared to the subject as non-object properties. That is, the properties would not appear as properties of the objects represented by these sensory states. Hence, the conflict between MOH and TT does not presuppose that MOH accepts cognitive phenomenology. MOH is consistent with the phenomenology of thought being explained both by a proprietary cognitive phenomenology or by sensory phenomenology, as long as the phenomenal properties of the cognitive process can appear as non-object properties. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqb6jmf4xb96ve9d7stfs9tj)) - Note: hmmm. Would these properties be attributed to the thought itself? > An example would be the influential metacognitive model of mindfulness proposed by Jankowski and Holas (2014: 67). The authors state that the metacognition involved in mindfulness ‘imposes at least two levels of cognition: (1) the lower level which refers to the qualia (basic qualities of experience such as perceptions) occurring in the present, and (2) the higher level constituted by awareness of the flowing qualia.’ (Jankowski & Holas 2014: 68) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqb6nm0tc0ephbwp5cynwdka)) - Note: worth looking up this. > Jankowski and Holas (2014: 68) go on to stress that mindfulness can be seen as involving a form of meta-awareness, or meta-level, at which ‘qualia are re-represented in the context of related meta-knowledge and form meta-experiences’. Meta-experiences are here experiences of experiences and appear ‘when a person not only thinks about the content of experience as events in the mind, but when he/she sees them as such’ (Jankowski & Holas 2014: 70). These authors include perceptual states as targets of this meta-awareness. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqg6gsds7safvgrkpvn4pv08)) > m ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv6s8j2y4p9gx5gmfng3ja1t)) > Dereification is described as ‘experiencing thoughts as mental events, and not as the things that they seem to represent’ (Dunne, Thompson & Schooler 2019: 307), and as the process where ‘thoughts lose their representational integrity and are experienced simply as mental events’ (Lutz et al. 2015: 644). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqg6jnjhgdf23m1fyfy34rj2)) > kinds of mental states in which ‘phenomenal content is experienced as just a mental process’ (Lutz et al. 2015: 644). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv6s9bnq9c30v4crrvdf7hhr)) > kinds of mental states in which ‘phenomenal content is experienced as just a mental process’ (Lutz et al. 2015: 644). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv6sacbcsc925cjd07gskjh2)) > (see Jankowski & Holas 2014; Dunne, Thompson & Schooler 2019). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv6s7zw58wv8zm3m3adjrsek)) > This view of mindfulness as involving a higher-level awareness of one’s own experiences as experiences—whether cognitive or perceptual in nature—is adopted by a number of psychologists and cognitive scientists studying mindfulness ( ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0vww2m0j8xqwrpat4zr355)) > It is also worth stressing that a number of different notions of opacity seem to be operative in the scientific literature on mindfulness. We can capture some of this variation by distinguishing between opacity as non-object awareness (where individuals have introspective awareness of phenomenal properties that appear as non-object properties) and opacity as construction (where the content of one’s experience appear as a construction of one’s own mind). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0vyt1y75qh15ahdwwf5j4m)) > Concerning the two different notions of opacity, we interpret the relevant psychologists and cognitive scientists as stating that opacity as construction is sufficient for opacity as non-object awareness. We think this is reasonable given the general argumentation among authors like Lutz, Mattout & Pagnoni (2019). These interpretations also seem to align with how other philosophers have interpreted the relevant literature (Metzinger 2013; Letheby 2021). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0w37vq7ps6paqpngqmndk2)) > We might initially ask, if experience can be opaque under mindfulness introspection, what kind of change in consciousness does mindfulness introspection involve? One answer would be that mindfulness involves a change in perspective such that (some) phenomenological properties that prior to mindfulness introspection appeared as properties of the objects represented now appear as properties of the experience—that is, properties that appeared as object-properties transform into appearing as non-object properties. Notice that most mindfulness researchers and practitioners view mindfulness as an introspective skill (Wielgosz et al. 2019). We expect that this transformation of the appearance of properties would demand practice and sufficient skill level in mindfulness. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqgckfj4b8a70jdsmjg6s1hy)) > What would be an example of this shift in perspective and its involved transformation? Reading the mindfulness literature, a paradigmatic example could be that of affective properties in pain experience. These properties have to do with the qualities of badness, hurtfulness, or displeasure typically involved in pain experience (Corns 2014). The mindfulness literature contains multiple descriptions of mindfulness meditators going through a shift of perspective 7 ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0tzw5xw9xv9zqah16rqn7p)) > by which the affective properties of their pain experience transform from appearing as object- properties of the involved extramental representational object (i.e. their bodily damage) to appearing as non-object properties of their own mental states. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0w9t7qf2rct404t7ba3cbq)) > Mindfulness researchers seem to think that other types of properties can appear as non-object properties as well. To capture this conceptually, we might distinguish between global and local transformation. This distinction stresses that we can understand the transformation in mindfulness as varying in scope and as occurring on a spectrum. The larger the number of types of properties that can transform to appearing as non- object properties, the more global the transformation is. The more restricted the transformation is to a limited type of properties (say, limited to tactile properties), the more local it is. The degree to which a transformation is global versus local is determined by how many types of experiential properties are shifted to appearing as non-object properties. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0wcpw7fgfkcpkh3hkpqvdn)) > We might view the above suggestion concerning pain experience as a more local transformation. Maybe only affective properties involved in the pain episode can appear as non-object properties, leaving it open that sensory properties still appear as properties of the represented object (the bodily damage). However, the statements from the previous Section 3 suggest that mindfulness researchers think that dedicated mindfulness training can enable very global transformation. For instance, Lutz and colleagues write that ‘thoughts [and other mental states and processes] lose their representational integrity and are experienced simply as mental events’ and ‘phenomenal content is experienced as just a mental process’ (Lutz et al. 2015: 644). These authors seem to stress that any property present in one’s awareness can appear as a non-object property (see also Dunne, Thompson & Schooler 2019; Lutz, Mattout & Pagnoni 2019: 169-70; see also Davis 2016 for a relevant philosophical discussion). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqgcysfqaz820vc72z3tbzjh)) - Note: "lose the representational integrity" > Mental paint refers to phenomenal properties that play some representational role (i.e. they enable representation of objects and their features), although these phenomenal properties are in fact non-object properties ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0wj3r77j2jk9t1sjhbbtv2)) > . Just like ordinary paint on a canvas enables representation of objects but is itself a non-object property of a painting, we could understand mindfulness introspection of ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqgd3e9h0d9px3vqgv6ptxve)) > pain as introspection of mental paint. Mindfulness meditators become introspectively aware of phenomenal properties like heat, itchiness, and negative affect that play representational roles in representing the relevant bodily damage, but under the right kind of introspection these phenomenal properties shift to appear as non-object properties. However, notice that the notion of mental paint was originally introduced to make a metaphysical argument. It was introduced to defend the claim that some phenomenal properties are non-object properties. We target TT as a phenomenological thesis and investigate whether some properties appear as non-object properties under mindfulness. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqgd3x2yg5rwgtfrqsm4mfr7)) > With the above in mind, future work on MOH should acknowledge the different ways in which one could philosophically elaborate MOH. Such research should also aim to compare the different elaborations. For example, Vervaeke (2022) proposes that mindfulness involves opaqueness by the breaking down of perceptual gestalts, while Letheby (2021) describes it as a matter of experiencing one’s own representations as models of one’s mind. It is not clear how these proposals relate to each other or to the interpretations presented in this section. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqgd5mj0dg9yh2b5fm4qyrhq)) > Vervaeke (2022) proposes that mindfulness involves opaqueness by the breaking down of perceptual gestalts, while Letheby (2021) describes it as a matter of experiencing one’s own representations as models of one’s mind. It is not clear how these proposals relate to each other or to the interpretations presented in this section. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv0wmfcph7c863aabvrv0878)) > This means that mindfulness introspection cannot be used as an introspective case to refute TT, since this kind of introspective practice presupposes antipathy against TT (see Struhl 2022 for related discussions on meditation and the self). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqgdn87wpdpgfh68temjkm5v)) > The TT-supporter might claim that the MOH- supporter faces a dilemma. Either the MOH-supporter thinks that this higher-level awareness is established by a cognitive, thought-like mechanism, or she thinks that it is established by a perceptual, sensory-like mechanism. Yet, each choice has unattractive implications. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqgdxnnph0rcdpb61pqdkyhx)) > On the one hand, it is hard to see how a cognitive, thought-like introspective mechanism could yield the direct introspective awareness of experiences as opaque. Having a thought-like higher-level awareness of your own pain experiences will only allow you to think of this experience as an experience with non-object properties. Thinking about one’s experience as an experience is fully compatible with TT. TT is only challenged by MOH if mindfulness involves a direct form of awareness of genuinely appearing non-object properties. The only way we can make sense of such direct awareness of non-object properties is to think of it as being perceptual, sensory-like in nature. > On the other hand, adopting the view that the introspective mechanism of mindfulness is structured like a perceptual, sensory-like ability is confronted with a number of philosophical and empirical problems. The only way we can make sense of a perceptual, sensory-like introspective mechanism is to understand it as kind of internal monitoring, a form of inner sensing (as in Armstrong 1968; Lycan 1996). If this is indeed an implication of MOH, the TT- supporter would have number of ways to argue against MOH. There are at least two reasons for thinking that the idea of such an internal monitoring mechanism is mistaken. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqgdxtmjtaqzecjpj2yeare6)) > The MOH-supporter is not obliged to provide or commit to any general theory of introspection. The task is much narrower—it only concerns providing a theory of the introspection of mindfulness. This means that the MOH-supporter can be a pluralist about introspection. She could adopt other theories for more ordinary types of introspection and claim that these cases of introspection work by other mechanisms than that of mindfulness (Schwitzgebel 2012). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqge92y1tqba4fn44wtqjmf4)) > Second, the MOH-supporter could dismiss the dilemma as resting upon the dichotomous assumption that introspective mechanisms must either be exclusively cognitive (thought-like) or perceptual (sensory-like). This assumption is controversial. Consider a theory like predictive coding (Clark 2015; Hohwy 2013). This theory states that the phenomenal character of any experience is created by the interaction of top-down predictive models and bottom-up sensory feedback. This also concerns introspection. The phenomenal character of introspective awareness is constituted by top-down modelling (predicting or modelling one’s state of experience) and sensory feedback updating these models (Hohwy 2013: 245). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqgeasyax1jjmdszcv93kfff)) > A third way to respond to the dilemma would be the following. Assume for the sake of the argument that the MOH-supporter accepts the basic structure of the dilemma and chooses the second horn according to which the higher-level awareness of mindfulness introspection is enabled by a sensory-like introspective mechanism. Still, this choice might not imply commitment to the idea of an inner monitoring mechanism. > Here is an important observation about mindfulness research. The claim that introspection is an inner form of monitoring is not widespread in the mindfulness literature. Mindfulness researchers do not typically propose any mechanistic account of inner sense. They think of mindfulness more as the act in which the mind allocates its general processing resources to its own current state of awareness by entering an explicit self-reflexive mode (e.g. Dorjee 2016; Malinowski 2013). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqgenryxvjc113fmna10qhj4)) > One way to philosophically interpret descriptions like these would be to state that the higher-level awareness in mindfulness introspection is not established by the activation of a higher-level monitoring mechanism that is separate from the first-order experience. Instead, one might claim that the higher-level awareness of mindfulness exploits the general reflexive nature of conscious awareness. Numerous philosophers believe, for independent reasons, that consciousness is in general characterised by an immanent reflexivity, i.e. an inbuilt self- consciousness of one’s own experiential state (e.g. Frankfurt 1988; Grünbaum 2012). The MOH-supporter might claim that mindfulness introspection enhances or makes explicit this immanent reflexivity of consciousness to such a degree that some phenomenological properties transform from appearing as object-properties to appearing as non-object properties (see also Spackman 2022). Mindfulness is not an introspective operation of a separate monitoring mechanism that tracks first-order mental states. It is the operations of enhancing or making explicit the already reflexive nature of consciousness. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqgetw8vxcgdnvg1jj5z2dfc)) > Farrell, J. (2018) ‘Higher-order theories of consciousness and what-it-is-like-ness’, Philosophical Studies, 175/11: 2743-2761. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqgf0pyrnpwxy76pwczqv28r))