Publications  

Journal Articles

2024

Ramm, B.J., Lumma, AL., Sparby, T & Weger, U. (2024). Seeing the Void: Experiencing Emptiness and Awareness with the Headless Way Technique. Mindfulness. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-024-02341-6

Objectives:

Practitioners in contemplative traditions commonly report experiencing an awareness that is distinct from sensory objects, thoughts, and emotions (“awareness itself”). They also report experiences of a void or underlying silence that is closely associated with this awareness. Subjects who carry out the Headless Way exercises frequently report an experience of emptiness or void at the same time as other contents (void-like experiences). The goals of this study were to (1) assess the reliability of these methods in eliciting the recognition of awareness and void-like experiences in participants who had no prior exposure to these techniques, (2) investigate the prevalence of these experiences in these tasks, and (3) to differentiate these experiences from closely related and potential precursor experiences.

Method:

Twenty adults participated in in-depth individual interviews in which they were guided through the Headless Way exercises. A thematic analysis was conducted on the interview transcripts.

Results:

Twelve of the participants reported a void-like experience, and five participants reported an experience of awareness itself. These experiences were respectively categorized as subsets of the more general categories of perceptual absences and the sense of not being person-like. Another novel finding was the real-time reports of awareness and void-like experiences during the exercises.

Conclusions:

Our findings provide preliminary evidence that the Headless Way exercises can effectively induce experiences of emptiness and awareness in participants without prior experience. The findings suggest that such experiences can be elicited outside of a traditional meditation context, including in non-meditators. Furthermore, the experience of not being person-like and of perceptual absences may be precursors and more general forms of recognizing awareness itself and the void-like nature of the mind.

How to Know that You're Not a Zombie. Erkenntnis. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-023-00769-1  

I am aware of the tree and its leaves, but am I aware of my awareness of these things? When I try to introspect my awareness, I just find myself attending to objects and their properties. This observation is known as the ‘transparency of experience’. On the other hand, I seem to directly know that I am aware. Given the first observation, it is not clear how I know that I am aware. Fred Dretske thought that the problem was so acute that he issued the challenge of answering ‘How do you know that you are not a zombie?’ I propose that a view found in the Advaita Vedanta, that awareness is selfluminous, reconciles these two observations. I understand self-luminosity as the thesis that: (1) I am implicitly aware of my awareness and (2) I am phenomenally aware of a distinct phenomenal character of my awareness. In support of the first claim, that I apparently only attend to objects in the world when introspecting perceptual experience, suggests that I do not know my awareness explicitly, but rather that I must know it implicitly. In support of the second claim, I argue that the mere fact that I am perceptually conscious is not sufficient to allow me to know that I am perceptually conscious. In particular, the qualities I am perceptually aware of do not tell me that I aware of them, rather they just seem to be properties of objects. I also assess whether strategies for responding to Cartesian sceptical scenarios can be employed against Dretske’s consciousness scepticism. I argue that these strategies either fail to distinguish me from a zombie or they do not adequately describe my epistemic situation. By contrast to other accounts, if awareness has its own distinct phenomenal character, then it cannot be considered to be a prima facie property of the world, hence the self-luminosity of awareness provides a plausible account of how I know that I’m not a zombie.

2023

Pure Awareness Experience . Inquiry, 66: 3, 394-416, DOI: 10.1080/0020174X.2019.1592704 (published online 2019)

I am aware of the red and orange autumn leaves. Am I aware of my awareness of the leaves? Not so according to many philosophers. By contrast, many meditative traditions report an experience of awareness itself. I argue that such a pure awareness experience must have a non-sensory phenomenal character. I use Douglas Harding’s first-person experiments for assisting in recognizing pure awareness. In particular, I investigate the gap where one cannot see one’s head. This is not a mere gap because I seem to be looking from here. Critically, I claim, the experience of looking from here has a non-sensory phenomenal character. I argue that this sense of being aware cannot be reduced to egocentric visual spatial relations nor the viewpoint because it continues when I close my eyes. Neither is a multisensory origin sufficient to explain why I seem to be at this central point rather than elsewhere. Traditionally, claims of a pure awareness experience have been restricted to highly trained individuals in very restricted circumstances. The innovation of Harding’s approach is that it reliably isolates a candidate for pure awareness using methods which can be replicated at any time.

2021

Body, Self and Others: Harding, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on Intersubjectivity, Philosophies, 6(4), 100 

Douglas Harding developed a unique first-person experimental approach for investigating consciousness that is still relatively unknown in academia. In this paper, I present a critical dialogue between Harding, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on the phenomenology of the body and intersubjectivity. Like Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, Harding observes that from the first-person perspective, I cannot see my own head. He points out that visually speaking nothing gets in the way of others. I am radically open to others and the world. Neither does my somatic experience establish a boundary between me and the world. Rather to experience these sensations as part of a bounded, shaped thing (a body), already involves bringing in the perspectives of others. The reader is guided through a series of Harding’s first-person experiments to test these phenomenological claims for themselves. For Sartre, the other’s subjectivity is known through The Look, which makes me into a mere object for them. Merleau-Ponty criticised Sartre for making intersubjective relations primarily ones of conflict. Rather he held that the intentionality of my body is primordially interconnected with that of others’ bodies. We are already situated in a shared social world. For Harding, like Sartre, my consciousness is a form of nothingness; however, in contrast to Sartre, it does not negate the world, but is absolutely united with it. Confrontation is a delusion that comes from imagining that I am behind a face. Rather in lived personal relationships, I become the other. I conclude by arguing that for Harding all self-awareness is a form of other-awareness, and vice versa.

Panpsychism and the First-Person Perspective, Mind and Matter, 19(1), 75-106. 

In this paper, I argue for a version of panpsychist idealism on first-person experiential grounds. As things always appear in my field of consciousness, there is prima facie empirical support for idealism. Furthermore, by assuming that all things correspond to a conscious perspective or perspectives (i.e., panpsychism), realism about the world is arguably safeguarded without the need to appeal to God (as per Berkeley’s idealism). Panpsychist idealism also has a phenomenological advantage over traditional panpsychist views as it does not commit perceptual experience to massive error by denying that perceived colours are properties of things. Finally, I argue that the subject combination problem for panpsychism has been motivated by the problematic assumption that consciousness is in things. Thinking about subject combination from the first-person perspective is fruitful for reframing the subject combination problem and for seeing how subjects could potentially combine for the idealist.

The Technology of Awakening: Experiments in Zen Phenomenology. Religions, 12(3), 192.

In this paper, I investigate the phenomenology of awakening in Chinese Zen Buddhism. In this tradition, to awaken is to ‘see your true nature’. In particular, the two aspects of awakening are: (1) seeing that the nature of one’s self or mind is empty or void and (2) an erasing of the usual (though merely apparent) boundary between subject and object. In the early Zen tradition, there are many references to awakening as chopping off your head, not having eyes, nose and tongue, and seeing your ‘Original Face’. These references bear a remarkable resemblance to an approach to awakening developed by Douglas Harding. I will guide the reader through a series of Harding’s first-person experiments which investigate the gap where you cannot see your own head. I will endeavour to show that these methods, although radically different from traditional meditation techniques, result in an experience with striking similarities to Zen accounts of awakening, in particular, as experiencing oneself as empty or void and yet totally united with the given world. The repeatability and apparent reliability of these first-person methods opens up a class of awakening experience to empirical investigation and has the potential to provide new insights into nondual traditions.

2020

Experiments in Visual Perspective: Size Experience. Argumenta, 5 (2) : 263-278   PDF

Phenomenal objectivism explains perceptual phenomenal character by reducing it to an awareness of mind-independent objects, properties, and relations. A challenge for this view is that there is a sense in which a distant tree looks smaller than a closer tree even when they are the same objective size (perceptual size variation). The dual content view is a popular objectivist account in which such experiences are explained by my objective spatial relation to the tree, in particular visual angle (perspectival size). I describe a series of first-person experiments for investigating size experience. I use a ruler as a first-person method for operationalising perspectival size (Experiment 1). I use the corridor illusion (Experiment 2), outlining one’s head in the mirror (Experiment 3), and outlining the size of objects on glass (Experiment 4) to show a phenomenal difference in size for items in different depth contexts, despite being identical in visual angle. These findings demonstrate that visual angle cannot account for these spatial experiences. Psychological evidence provides further support for the thesis that subjects do not experience visual angle when depth information is present. Together this evidence supports the hypothesis that perceptual size variation cannot be accounted for by visual angle, hence undermining a plausible version of the dual content theory. This outcome, combined with problems raised by alternative objectivist accounts of size variation, provides support for a subjectivist account of size experience.                                                              

2018

First-Person Experiments: A Characterisation and Defence. Review of Philosophy and Psychology. 9, 449–467. 

While first-person methods are essential for a science of consciousness, it is controversial what form these methods should take and whether any such methods are reliable. I propose that first-person experiments are a reliable method for investigating conscious experience. I outline the history of these methods and describe their characteristics. In particular, a first-person experiment is an intervention on a subject's experience in which independent variables are manipulated, extraneous variables are held fixed, and in which the subject makes a phenomenal judgement about the target experience of the investigation. I examine historical and contemporary examples of first-person experiments: Mariotte’s demonstration of the visual blind spot, Kanizsa’s subjective contours, the Tse Illusion, and investigations of the non-uniform resolution of the visual field. I discuss the role that phenomenal contrast plays in these methods, and how they overcome typical introspective errors. I argue that their intersubjective repeatability is an important factor in their scientific status, however, it is not the only factor. That they control for extraneous factors and confounds is another factor which sets them apart from pseudoscience (e.g., the perception of auras), and hence another reason for classifying them as genuine experiments. Furthermore, by systematically mapping out the structure of visual experience, these methods make scientific progress. Praises of such first-person experimental approaches may not always be sung by philosophers and psychologists, but they continue to flourish as respectable scientific methods nevertheless.

2017

Self-Experience. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 24(11-12), 142-166.  

Hume famously denied that he could experience the self. Most subsequent philosophers have concurred with this finding. I argue that if the subject is to function as a bearer of experience it must: (1) lack sensory qualities in itself to be compatible with bearing sensory qualities and (2) be single so that it can unify experience. I use Douglas Harding’s first-person experiments to investigate the visual gap where one cannot see one’s own head. I argue that this open space conforms to the above criteria and hence is consistent with being the subject. I respond to the objection that this location is merely a lack of visual experience. I argue that this space also encompasses sound and touch properties and hence functions as a bearer for other sensory modalities. These first-person findings provide prima facie support for the view that the subject is a thin bearer of experience.

2016

Dimensions of Reliability in Phenomenal Judgment. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23(3-4), 101-127. 

Eric Schwitzgebel (2011) argues that phenomenal judgments are in general less reliable than perceptual judgments. This paper distinguishes two versions of this unreliability thesis. The process unreliability thesis says that unreliability in phenomenal judgments is due to faulty domain-specific mechanisms involved in producing these judgments, whereas the statistical unreliability thesis says that it is simply a matter of higher numbers of errors.  Against the process unreliability thesis, I argue that the main errors and limitations in making phenomenal judgments can be accounted for by domain-general factors: attention, working memory limits and conceptualization. As these factors are shared with the production of perceptual judgments, errors in phenomenal judgments are not due to faulty domain-specific processes. Furthermore, this account defends phenomenal judgments against general scepticism by providing criteria for distinguishing between reliable and unreliable phenomenal judgments.                                                                                                                        

2015

Bruza, P. D., Kitto, K.,  Ramm, B. J. and Sitbon, L.  A Probabilistic Framework for Analysing the Compositionality of Conceptual Combinations . Journal of Mathematical Psychology 67:26-38.  PDF

Cutmore, T. R. H., Halford, G. S., Wang, Y., Ramm, B. J., Spokes, T. and Shum, D. H. K.  Neural Correlates of Deductive Reasoning: An ERP Study with the Wason Selection Task. International Journal of Psychophysiology 98(3):381-388.  PDF

2014

Luca, C., Halford, G. S., Zalesky, A., Harding, I. H., Ramm, B. J., Cutmore, T.  Shum, D. H. K. and Mattingley, J. B.  Complexity in Relational Processing Predicts Changes in Functional Brain Network Dynamics . Cerebral Cortex 24 (9):2283-2296. PDF

2012

Ramm, B. J. and Halford, G. S.  Novelty and Processing Demands in Conceptual Combination.  Australian Journal of Psychology 64 (4):199-208.  PDF

Bruza, P. D., Kitto, K., Ramm, B. J., Sitbon, L., Song, D.  and Blomberg, S.  Quantum-Like Non-Separability of Concept Combinations, Emergent Associates and Abduction. Logic Journal of IGPL, 20(2), 445-457. PDF

2011

Kitto, K., Ramm, B. J., Sitbon, L. and Bruza, P. D.   Quantum Theory Beyond the Physical: Information in Context . Axiomathes 21 (2):331-345. PDF

2010

Ramm, B. J., Cummins, T. D. R. and Slaughter, V.  Specifying the Human Body Configuration.Visual Cognition 18 (6):898-919.   PDF

Chapter

2019

Bruza, P. D. and Ramm, B. J. Absolute Present, Zen and Schrödinger's One Mind. In, Quanta and Mind: Essays on the Connection between Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness. de Barros J., Montemayor C. (eds.), p. 189-200. Synthese Library, vol 414. Springer, Cham.  PDF

PhD Dissertations

First-Person Investigations of Consciousness, School of Philosophy, The Australian National University, 2016

Attention and Relations in Conceptual Combination, School of Psychology, University of Queensland, 2006.  PDF