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Description
In this thesis I argue for the idea that experience should be re-understood as permeating all levels of our reality. For centuries philosophical and scientific debates have occurred over exactly what conscious experience is and how it relates to the physical world. Dualism and materialism, broadly speaking, have dominated the characterization of experience in these debates. Experience, in these models, has been characterized either as an ethereal substance added to the physical world or a certain combination of already physical elements that produce said experience. For dualism, the problem arises in the explanation of the interaction of the mental substance of experience with the physical substance on a macroscopic scale. Where this interaction occurs has never been fully elucidated. For materialism, explaining how simple physical structures with no capability of experience could combine to create an experiencing entity has been an area of opaque explanations. Both problems surround the traditional acceptance of distinctions between objects and their properties. I provide an alternate example with latent modes of consciousness (modes underneath our typical conscious experience) as evidence for experience existing below distinctions of objects and properties. Tracking the idea of latent forms of consciousness in Buddhism, Daoism, early and modern psychology and cognitive science, I understand the commonality of the nonconceptuality of these latent modes. Although non-conceptual conscious states only take experience below subject-hood, I believe this to be the first step in finding experience a place at the foundational level of the universe. In this paper I argue that expanding the scope of the physical can solve the problem of having to introduce experience at some point of physical combination. Utilizing scientific experimental results and subject testimony on this subject, I highlight the state of Flow as a primary example of non-conceptual consciousness. Ultimately, these non-conceptual modes of consciousness have a pragmatic application in the study and progression of creativity and innovation.
