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A few months ago, prior to picking up researching Transformative Experiences, I made a list of the philosophical questions I had. Here is a list, with a key of abbreviations at the end:

• How can the study of C improve people’s lives?
• Why is C so interesting?
• What is the life of a person?
• What’s a person?
• Are all subjects persons?
• Do all points in spacetime have subjectivity?
• Do narrative accounts of personal ID/personhood have a good reason for
• emanding narrative rather than every other kind of story?
• Can narrative create a coherent diachronic personal ID out of episodic selves?
• Does ego death annihilate personal ID?
• What is the RS bw gender and personal ID?
• Can too much postmodern fiction annihilate personal ID?
• Can trauma annihilate personal ID?
• Can trauma non-trivially annihilate C?
• What’s a story?
• What is explanation?
• What are levels of explanation?
• Are there level-bridging explanations?
• What are stories made of?
• What RS do the media and content of stories have?
• What’s historical?
• What’s a historical fact?
• In what sense is evolution true?
• What do facts about the past acquire truth from?
• Are there facts about the future?
• What’s a self?
• How can we study C?
• How do we study C?
• How do we know anything about C?
• What does it mean to know something about C?
• What can we learn from ASCs?
• How do we manage to refer to C?
• Can all non-observational knowledge be paraphrased as predictions of experiences?
• What’s compelling about empiricism?
• What is phen knowledge?
• How reliable is phen knowledge?
• What’s the RS bw subject of knowledge and of C?
• Does C have a function?
• Is the phen psych?
• What does psychology study?
• What is psychiatry?
• What is medicine?
• How far should medical paternalism go?
• Does the psych supervene on the phys?
• Do the phys, psych, and phen exhaust reality?
• What does physics study?
• What is the RS bw physics and outer sense?
• What does quantum mechanics study?
• What implications does quantum mechanics have for C?
• What does chemistry study?
• Are theoretical entities in physics real?
• What is physical?
• What is energy?
• Is social psychology really part of psychology given its clinical focus?
• What does phenomenology study?
• How do the phen and psych relate to mind and body?
• Does eliminative materialism’s destruction of folk psychology take phil of mind with it?
• Why is there C?
• What’s a function?
• Are biological functions psych?
• Is psychology teleological?
• Is phenomenology teleological?
• What’s a teleological explanation?
• What is C?
• What is the RS bw world states and C?
• What’s the RS bw brains and C?
• Is the NCC enough for CE?
• How many Cs are there per brain?
• How prevalent is dissociation?
• What is dissociation?What kinds of dissociation are there?
• When is dissociation good/bad?
• What is depersonalization?
• What is derealization?
• What is neuroscience?
• What does biology study?
• What is the RS bw ACh and C?
• What is the RS bw the locus coeruleus and C?
• What’s an ASC?
• How do ASCs affect phen knowledge?
• What is ego death?
• Is the exp of ego death egoless?
• Is ego death subjectless?
• Is ego death desirable?
• What is the RS bw phen and social C?
• What is the RS bw unity of C and of culture?
• What kinds of unity of C are there?
• What is unity of C?
• What is the development of C?
• How does one raise C?
• What is class C?
• How can AP understand S’s theory of C?
• Is C of x identical with x?
• What is an object of C?
• What does it mean to think about mathematical entities?
• What is S’s RS w/idealism?
• What is Spinoza’s RS with idealism?
• What is infinite?
• What is universal quantification?
• Is ultrafinitism absolutely true or false?
• Are thoughts/beliefs kind/s of feelings?
• How can AP understand S’s claim that man is nothing?
• What is the RS bw self and C?
• How does JP’s Zen Buddhism address C?
• What arguments are there for the existence and prominence of holographic relations?
• Why does the brain appear holographic? (Or recursive?)
• What is the RS bw holographic relations and recursion?
• Is C ideal?
• Is the mind/body problem real?
• How does idealism differ f/other monisms?
• How does Hassidic idealism compare w/other idealisms?
• Does C require a subject?
• What’s the difference bw subject and object of C?
• What’s a subject, in general?
• What isn’t a subject or object?
• What’s an object, in general?
• How does JP incorporate GI?
• How does not-one not-two handle S?
• Does the no-self have the agential SP?
• Does the no-self have practical R?
• Is the agential SP indispensible?
• What debates have been had w/in “idealist” Vedic phil?
• How was the Eleatic school idealist?
• How does Taoism address C?
• How do B and K differ in their idealisms?
• Is anything in-itself not conscious/ness?
• Why do both rationalism and empiricism lead to idealism?
• Does N’s attack on idealism in BGE work?
• What’s a POV?
• What is the RS bw C and conscience?
• What is phen C?
• What is the RS bw phen and phys/psych varieties of C?
• \What is self-C?
• Can someone have an exp as someone else?
• How do K’s C1 categories apply to C?
• Can universals be conscious?
• What kinds of things are conscious?
• Which humans are conscious?
• Are people conscious while blacked out?
• Are groups of humans conscious?
• Is C countable?
• Is C discrete?
• Is C finite?
• Are DID alters unified in their C w/each other?
• What are the persistence questions for a stream of C?
• Is DID diachronic dissociation, as opposed to a synchronic variety?
• Can C be understood both temporally and atemporally?
• Are synchronous dissociative states multiply conscious?
• Is C ubiquitous?
• Is anything not an object of C?
• In what sense are rocks conscious?
• What does Amerindian phil say about C?
• Is C representational?
• What is C representing?
• What is representation?
• What is auto-representation?
• What is presentation?
• To whom is C representing?
• Is C cognitive?
• What is cognition?
• What is the RS bw cognition and R?
• Is willpower a thing?
• What is addiction?
• Why is weakness of will impossible?
• Can the architecture of human cognition be modeled w/out content? E.g. as a weighted digraph?
• When is a cognitive state subpersonal vs personal?
• What is the RS bw desires and agitations?
• Can intentions be reduced to beliefs?
• Is cognition computable?
• What are the restraints on cognition?
• What states can be simulated?
• Could I temporarily exp what it’s like to be someone else?
• Which states can be simulated for whom?
• Are the senses part of C?
• What does Africana phil say about C?
• Did Douglass write on C?
• What are Amo’s views on C?
• What is?
• Why is there something rather than nothing?
• Why are there relations?
• What is a relation?
• What’s a grounding relation?
• What would it be for there to be nothing?
• What exists?
• What is reality?
• What is a truth?
• Can truths change?
• Are there real inifinities?
• What are things?
• \Can we universally quantify over the domain of things?
• What does it mean for something to be real?
• What is being?
• What is the RS bw being and C?
• How can using stories aid the study of C and CE?
• What tools can CE use?
• What roles do stories play in sciences?
• What determines the usefulness of a story?
• What determines the truth of a story?
• What’s a fact?
• What is verisimilitude?
• What makes for verisimilitude of a story?
• What is the RS bw coherence and verisimilitude?
• How do race, racism, racialism, etc. affect C and its study?
• What is racial C?
• Does racial C require that races exist?
• Do races exist?
• What are the practical implications of racial eliminativism?
• What is a nation?
• What is a state?
• What is racism?
• Is racism a disease?
• How can racism be treated?
• Can social/cultural states be understood as diseases?
• What is a disease?
• Is nihilism a disease?
• What is a race?
• What is ethnicity?
• What is the RS bw race and ethnicity?
• What RS do phil of race, phil of gender, etc. have w/each other?
• How can SC be created?
• What can SC learn f/other sciences?
• Is SC continuous w/any other sciences?
• Which sciences are unified?
• What topological spaces are relevant to C?
• How should we model C?\
• What is it for an interpretation of a model to be true?
• What is an interpretation?
• Which interpretation of quantum mechanics is true?
• How can recursion be used to understand C?
• What is recursion?
• Why does recursion seem so powerful?
• What’s a model?
• What logics does C follow?
• What is topology?
• What are R’s roles in science?
• What is R?
• Is every reason a reason for someone?
• Can external reasons be explained away as reasons for one person for another person to do something?
• How does time affect R?
• Is R epiphenomenal?
• What forms can R take?
• Is all R practical?
• What role does faith play in practical R?
• What is a science?
• What role should intuitions play in SC?
• What are the foundations of topology?
• What decision-making methods are best?
• How can a framework for CE be created?
• What would CE entail?
• What is engineering?
• What can CE learn from other engineerings?
• How does engineering use metaphysics?
• What RS should hold bw SC and CE?
• What progress has been made in CE?
• Is VR a protoCE?
• What would fully immersive VR be like?
• Can memory be fully simulated?
• Is full VR necessarily delirious?
• How prone is each sense modality to hallucination, illusion, and delusion?
• How common is confusion of imagination and sense-perception?
• What is imagination?
• Are virtual exps less valuable?
• Is reality valuable?
• Can virtual exps be beautiful?
• How do we make aesthetic judgements?
• Why is one painting beautiful and another ugly?
• Does ugliness have a purpose?
• Are orgasms beautiful?
• Should we value truth?
• Is lying forbidden?
• Is violence an acceptable response to lying?
• How we communicate with the uncooperative?
• What is communication?
• Does valuing truth require valuing honesty?
• Are there valuable lies?
• Is PP a protoCE?
• What is the RS bw PP and psychology?
• How have racism, sexism, etc. affected CE so far?
• Under what conditions is AI conscious?
• What use does CE have for metaphysics?
• What implications does idealism have for CE?
• What are all the idealist positions?
• What is idealism?
• What is ideality?
• Are physicalism and idealism compatible?
• Is there an important RS bw AP’s group C and GI?\What are potential goals of CE?
• Which states of C are preferable to others?
• Why bother with CE?
• What is valuable?
• What is valuing?
• How many metamaxims are possible?
• How can a human/person’s life be viewed from an atemporal SP? (I.e. as a metamaxim?)
• What is N’s account of nihilism?
• What metamaxim does a nihilist follow?
• How do we value?
• How do we defeat nihilism?
• How do we treat nihilism?
• Is valuing valuable?
• What good is good?
• Is valuing reasonable?
• What should we value?
• Should we value happiness?
• Should we value morality?
• What is moral?
• What do we owe each other?
• Should we value greatness?
• Should we value beauty?
• What is the RS bw C and beauty?
• Is C beautiful?
• Does Wilde’s account of beauty as for-itself work?
• Should we value phil?
• What good is phil?
• What good is learning phil?
• What determines which phil is good for whom?
• Can phil be learned via labor/internship?
• Should we value?
• Is religion worthwhile?
• Is coherence valuable?
• What is coherence?
• Is anything foundational?
• Is anything normatively foundational?
• Is anything epistemically foundational?
• Are there foundational relations?
• Are there foundational recurance relations?
• How are religious disagreements understood?
• Which religious elements are coherent?
• Why are orgasms generally liked?
• What is disvaluable?
• Why do people generally dislike being on fire?
• What matters?
• How would the world be different if different things mattered?
• Should CE aim for therapy or enhancement?
• Should PP aim for therapy or enhancement?
• Why not put academics on stimulants?
• Why ban steroids for athletes?
• What distinguishes enhancement f/therapy?
• Is being a cyborg choiceworthy?
• What is the RS bw bioengineering and biotechnology?
• What is the diff bw engineering and technology?
• Should all these questions about CE be about C technology?
• Is medicine engineering, technology, or something else?
• Should CE be used to treat gender dysphoria, if possible?
• What personality changes can psychiatry ethically produce?
• What do we owe to DID alters?
• What is a DID alter
• Is ego death ever choiceworthy?
• Could CE make a trans person cis?
• Can one experience what it’s like to be a different gender?
• Does gender have a phen aspect?
• What is gender?
• How can we model gender?
• What is possible?
• What Cs are possible?
• What is contingency?
• What is necessity?
• Are numbers necessaily in the order that they’re in?
• Why are prime numbers randomly spaced?
• Is there any regularity to prime numbers?
• What is it for something to be possible?
• What are the bounds of human freedom?
• How does time affect freedom?
• How could CE be used for evil?
• How could CE be used disvaluably?
• What is evil?
• How could we create/generate kinds of C?
• How should we value C?
• What kinds of C are there?
• What is C a kind of?\
• Whatt differences correspond with diff kinds of C?
• What generates kinds of C?
• How can we create CBs?
• When in development does C arise?
• Under what conditions should we make CBs?
• When is abortion permissible?
• When is euthanasia permissible?
• Are CBs or C more basic?
• Could CE help increase empathy?
• Is emapthy good?
• What is empathy?
• What is love?
• How does McTaggart understand the intersubjectivity of time?
• Can time dilation be asymptotic?
• What is time dilation?
• What is time?
• What is C of time?
• What is C of spacetime?
• Does time exist?
• Is time ideal?
• Is C in time?
• Is C in space?
• If time is ideal, then why do we seem to have intersubjective agreement about it?
• What is spacetime?
• Would asymptotic time dilation be subjective immortality?
• Is this kind of immortality good?
• Under what conditions is immortality good?
• Can we live past asymptotic time dilation?

Key

• AP=Analytic phil
• ASC=altered state of C
• B=Berkeley
• C=consciousness
• CB=conscious being
• CE=C engineering
• exp=experience
• GI=German Idealism
• JP=Japanese phil
• K=Kant
• N=Nietzsche
• phen=phenomenal
• phil=philosophy
• phys=physical
• PP=psychopharmacology
• psych=psychological
• R=Reason
• RS=relationship
• S=Sartre
• SC=science of C
• SP=standpoint