Many Phenomenologies of Mind-Wandering

Abstract

Mind-wandering (MW) refers to spontaneous shifts of attention away from external tasks or stimuli toward internally generated thoughts, memories, or imaginings. The phenomenon gained scientific prominence with the discovery of the Default Mode Network—a brain network that becomes active during rest or when thought is decoupled from the immediate environment. Prior to this discovery, cognitive science had largely overlooked MW, despite its ubiquity: studies suggest that such experiences occupy more than half of our waking mental life, with estimates ranging from 55% to 80%.

While research on MW is now thriving, it tends to focus on behavioral and physiological aspects. The first-person perspective—what it actually feels like to mind-wander—remains underexplored. Yet the few systematic studies of the experiential dimension of MW have yielded strikingly rich, colorful, and often surprising results.

In the talk, I will highlight two phenomenological dimensions of thought: so called "illustration" and the felt sense of content. We will explore the kinds of social encounters that unfold in our inner wandering worlds, and consider what these imagined or remembered interactions might reveal about the nature of the self. Most importantly, I will share a series of concrete examples of mind-wanderings as they were actually experienced—offering glimpses into the many faces of a phenomenon that shapes more than half of our mental lives.