[FRIAM] differential diagnosis of psychopathic vs spiritual experiences

[glen]

Progress or Pathology? Differential Diagnosis and Intervention Criteria for Meditation-Related Challenges: Perspectives From Buddhist Meditation Teachers and Practitioners
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7403193/

Based on our conversation attempting to identify behavioral markers for consciousness, I thought this paper might give some insight into Dave's straddling of mystical and materialistic descriptions of experiences he marks as conscious. In the paper, they lay out 11 levers for making the distinction:

• Circumstances of Onset
• Control
• Critical Attitude
• Cultural Compatibility
• Distress
• Duration
• Functional Impairment
• Health History or Condition
• Impact
• Phenomenological Qualities
• Teachers’ Skills or Resources

 From my perspective that consciousness is a kind of fusion function, Control, Critical Attitude, Distress, and Functional Impairment are primary and the rest are secondary. The ability to (change one's) focus of attention is a hallmark of consciousness, and those 4 levers direclty target one's ability to focus. Duration may well be secondary and the rest tertiary, I guess. Because there's something like a half-life of controllability. If, say, you're a conspiracy theorist, and you *entertain*, say, flat earth for long enough, maybe you'll lack the ability to re-focus and don a critical attitude. Similarly, if you embed into, say, procedural programming long enough, maybe you'll lose the ability to re-focus and think functionally ... a kind of Functional Impairment (sorry for the polysemy of "functional", there).

-- 
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ