iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

A great deal of thanks to @hohwy.bsky.social, many others and the @monash-m3cs.bsky.social in making this happen.

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Finally, we discuss what the decrease in conceptual complexity under deep deconstruction can tell us about core-knowledge structures that form the substrate for more abstracted experience. Link: academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...

We undertake the project by drawing on the Buddhist notion of defabrication and its phenomenology using active inference (predictive processing). In the process, we contextualise the jhanas and cessations, and mechanistically account for meditative notions like equanimity and stillness.

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The process reveals the existence of substrate layers of our model of the world underpinning object comprehension, and can ultimately result in cessations of consciousness.

We explore how deep meditative deconstruction can be understood as a meditator-initiated, stepwise process that drives the brain toward information seeking and away from preference pursuit.

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Grace Lindsay @neurograce.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

How do advanced meditators deconstruct experience? Happy to announce that the peer-reviewed version of Towards an Active Inference Account of Deep Meditative Deconstruction is now out open access in Neuroscience of Consciousness @nconsc.bsky.social - work with @kevinberryman.bsky.social🧵

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MIT has put out an "AI and Education" report summarizing what they've found at their own institution. Seems thoughtful. aiandeducation.mit.edu/report/

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Jakob Hohwy @hohwy.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

If you're interested in computational psychiatry (with a sprinkling of philosophy of science), then check out this new paper, led by Dr @bethfisher.bsky.social and with brilliant co-authors @noorsajid and Laura Convertino. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

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Heleen Slagter @haslagter.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

PhD position (4 years, paid) on an NWO-funded project on the Role of Foveal Processing in Spatial Attention at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands, supervised by Dr. Mieke Donk (main PI) and me! For more information: workingat.vu.nl/vacancies/ph...

workingat.vu.nl

Vacancy — PhD position (4 years) on the Role of Foveal Processing in Spatial Attention

Are you interested in understanding how attention shapes what we see? Would you like to combine behavioural experiments, psychophysics, and eye tracking to uncover how the brain selects and prioritise...

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Shawn Prest @shawnprest.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Stuck in some mud somewhere behind "The Prestigious Throne of Journal Acceptance"

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RedPen/BlackPen @redpenblackpen.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Tag yourself with your current location!

A map in the style of Tolkein titled 'The Map of Manuscript Earth'. This is something I'm calling 'artography' - and it lists lots of geographic locations on the way to submitting a (scientific) manuscript.

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Anil Seth @anilseth.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Philosophers out there - do consider submitting to the 4th annual conference of the The International Society for the Philosophy of the Sciences of the Mind - deadline July 31st, conference is 4-6 Nov online, via @niccolonegro.bsky.social philevents.org/event/show/1...

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Marco Facchin @marcofacchin.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

The deadline for submitting your paper to the International Society for the Philosophy of the Sciences of the Mind-ISPSM is approaching (31/07). The conference will take place between 4-6/11 ONLINE, so, no participation fees. Info below #philmind #philsci #philsky #philpsy #neurosky #neuroskyence

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Shawn Prest @shawnprest.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Hi Johannes, glad to hear from you and I appreciate. I'll follow up by email once back home.

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Shawn Prest @shawnprest.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

I'll also be presenting a poster on Wednesday: "The environmental sculpting of perception and action: Hierarchical inference dynamics drive environment-induced wellbeing" In Poster Session 3 / July 3, 2026 | 12:30 - 14:00 & 16:00 - 17:00 (poster P3-160)

Shawn Prest @shawnprest.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

As well as: "Deep Experiential Deconstruction: Modelling meditative deconstruction into formless experience, minimal phenomenal experience and cessations of consciousness with active inference" In Session 14 Meditation, Meaning & Phenomenology / July 1, 6:00 PM

Shawn Prest @shawnprest.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

I'm here in Santiago, Chile for ASSC 29 @theassc.bsky.social I'll be giving the following talks today: "What can meditative experience teach us about affective valence: A computational perspective on the determinants of affect" In Session 6 Meditation & Contemplative States / July 1, 3:00 PM

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Luis Cásedas @lcasedas.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

📢 New #INMINDS interview with @trisbek.bsky.social (U of Cambridge) on neurophenomenology, altered states, and the use of the ‘Temporal Experience Tracing’ technique within and beyond the lab. Out in @cienciacog.bsky.social. English version: www.cienciacognitiva.org?p=2665 (1/2)

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Shawn Prest @shawnprest.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Deconstructing Yourself is a great podcast (and thanks for the positive feedback, I do think getting the pheno right really matters for the validity with these kinds of models!)

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For the bigger picture, check out my conceptual work on full deconstruction to cessations of consciousness with @kevinberryman.bsky.social : doi.org/10.31234/osf... and a deeper exploration of affective valence and hierarchical processing: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

doi.org

OSF

If you're interested, you can also have a look at this FitMind podcast interview I did discussing the model and meditation with the great Josh Richardson: fitmind.org/podcast/scie...

fitmind.org

FitMind

Thanks to the conferences where I had the opportunity to present this work: @iscr.bsky.social, @acnsau.bsky.social, and the The Australasian Society for Philosophy and Psychology.

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Lots of gratitude and thanks to @hohwy.bsky.social and the @monash-m3cs.bsky.social, @matthewsacchet.bsky.social, Björn Weghenkel and various others including reviewers for all of the very helpful feedback in making this the best it could be.

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The work moves toward the quantification of advanced meditative experience, paving the way for quantitative answers to questions like, how equanimous was experience during a given window of time?

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Taking a computational phenomenology approach, results show how deconstruction: ▪️ Increases short temporal scale perception ▪️ Reduces conceptual complexity ▪️ Increases equanimity (non-reactivity) and stillness ▪️ Aids the self-regulation of affective valence

The model casts the release of contraction (arising from clinging) as reducing the precision of beliefs about hidden states in a hierarchical generative model, driving increased lower-level inference.

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We know meditation attenuates the conceptual mind, increases equanimity (non-reactivity), and moves experience into the present moment. But what are the computational mechanisms behind this?

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wanjawiese.bsky.social @wanjawiese.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

My paper modelling and simulating meditative deconstruction via letting go is now out open access in Neural Computation at @mitpress.bsky.social 🧠 I show how the phenomenology of experiential deconstruction (defabrication) naturally emerges from the dynamics of hierarchical active inference. 🧵

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You can still submit an abstract for Models of Consciousness 7 #MoC7 (12-16 October 2026) 👇

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A huge thanks to my PhD supervisor @hohwy.bsky.social at the wonderful @monash-m3cs.bsky.social for the endless support, feedback and engagement during the drafting of the manuscript. Thanks as well to @kevinberryman.bsky.social and Edmundo Lopez-Sola for feedback on earlier drafts of the work.

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It also makes good evolutionary sense — we don't want to be running metabolically costly higher-order processing when we don't need to. There's a cost to its use, even if we're unaware it's a cost we've been paying.

Meditative deconstruction reduces the work the brain has to do by temporarily reducing hierarchical processing. In other words, "not knowing" feels better. And we don't need to take meditators' word on it: work on cognitive control and entropy studies on meditators both point the same way.

In the paper I explore what deep and transformative meditation can tell us about the mechanisms driving valenced experience. I show that the computational cost of processing associated with the depth of our hierarchical models of the world plays a key role in how we feel.

Yet if valence is all about effectively reducing uncertainty, why do meditators experience increasingly positive (in the sense of preferable) valence as they enter states of profound conceptual "not knowing" in deep practice?

In computational frameworks like active inference and predictive processing, affective valence (whether experience feels good or bad) tends to be treated as a consequence of changes in expected uncertainty. How good we believe we're doing at anticipating phenomena defines how we feel.

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