I would like to begin by thanking Jennifer Windt for her outstanding, constructive commentary (Windt 2015b, this collection) on my target article (Thompson 2015a, this collection), and by expressing my great admiration for her rich discussion, which goes well beyond being a commentary and instead amounts to an original and substantive article in its own right. It is especially gratifying to see the ideas and arguments that I presented be refined and advanced in such a creative and precise way. Indeed, given the wealth of new material that she presents, her paper calls not so much for a reply as for a commentary of its own. Such a task, however, is beyond the scope of this short reply. Instead, I wish to highlight the advances that Windt makes, so that new experimental research can begin in this area.
The main aims of my target article were (i) to use debates about sleep from classical Indian philosophy to call into question the “default view” in cognitive neuroscience that “consciousness is that which disappears in dreamless sleep,” (ii) to suggest instead that there may be states or phases of dreamless sleep in which consciousness is present, (iii) to argue that sleep science accordingly needs a more refined neurophenomenological taxonomy of sleep states, and (iv) to demonstrate how contemplative methods of mind training provide important resources for the neurophenomenology of sleep and consciousness.
Windt’s commentary advances each of these four aims in substantive ways, as I will describe in the following sections.