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Updated: May 12, 2026

Perspectives on Neuroscience
Published on: July 31, 2007
A structural-phenomenological typology of mind-matter correlations
Harald Atmanspacher1, Wolfgang Fach2
1Freiburg, Germany, Zurich, Switzerland.
Abstract:
We present a typology of mind-matter correlations embedded in a dual-aspect monist framework as proposed by Pauli and Jung. They conjectured a picture in which the mental and the material arise as two complementary aspects of one underlying psychophysically neutral reality to which they cannot be reduced and to which direct empirical access is impossible. This picture suggests structural, persistent, reproducible mind-matter correlations by splitting the underlying reality into aspects. In addition, it suggests induced, occasional, evasive mind-matter correlations above and below, respectively, those stable baseline correlations. Two significant roles for the concept of meaning in this framework are elucidated. Finally, it is shown that the obtained typology is in perfect agreement with an empirically based classification of the phenomenology of mind-matter correlations as observed in exceptional human experiences.
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