Was Descartes right after all? An affective background for bodily awareness

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frédérique de Vignemont
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Interoceptive Awareness ◽  
Experimental Literature ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Bodily Awareness ◽  
Privileged Status ◽  
Bodily Sensations ◽  
The Many

Recent accounts of interoception have highlighted its role for self-awareness, but what gives it such a privileged status compared to other sources of information about the body, and is it actually warranted? This chapter first explores the many ways one might understand the notion of interoception, rejecting most definitions that are too liberal. It further focuses on the interoceptive feelings that we spontaneously experience, such as thirst, fatigue, or hunger, highlighting the limits of the attentional notion of interoceptive awareness in use in the experimental literature. Interoceptive feelings inform us about the welfare of the organism as a whole and their spatial principle of organization is holistic. This chapter then assesses the contribution of these feelings for the awareness of one’s body as one’s own. In brief, their role is not to fix the spatial boundaries of the body but rather to provide an affective background to our bodily sensations.

Mind the Body

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frédérique de Vignemont
Keyword(s):  
Neurological Disorders ◽  
The Body ◽  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Bodily Awareness ◽  
Prosthetic Hands ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Bodily Sensations ◽  
Internal Information ◽  
The Relationship

Our own body seems to be the object that we know the best for we constantly receive a flow of internal information about it. Yet bodily awareness has attracted little attention in the literature, possibly because it seems reducible to William James’s description of a “feeling of the same old body always there” (1890, p. 242). But it is not true that our body always feels so familiar. In particular, puzzling neurological disorders and new bodily illusions raise a wide range of questions about the relationship between the body and the self. Although most of the time we experience our body as our own, it is possible to report feeling parts of our body as alien. It is also possible to experience extraneous objects, such as prosthetic hands, as our own. Hence, what makes us feel this particular body as our own? The fact that we feel sensations there? The fact that we can voluntarily move it? Or the fact that it needs protection for self-preservation? To answer these questions, we need a better understanding of the various aspects of bodily self-awareness, including the spatiality of bodily sensations, their multimodality, their role in social cognition, their relation to action, and to self-defence. Mind the Body thus provides a comprehensive treatment of bodily awareness and of the sense of bodily ownership, combining philosophical analysis with recent experimental results from cognitive science.

The body as first prior: Interoceptive predictive processing and the primacy of self-models

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Micah Allen ◽  
Manos Tsakiris
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Interoceptive Awareness ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Cortical Hierarchy ◽  
Privileged Status ◽  
The Stability

Embodied predictive processing accounts place the visceral milieu, its homeostatic functioning, and our interoceptive awareness thereof on the center stage of self-awareness. Starting from the privileged status that homeostatic priors have within the cortical hierarchy of an organism whose main imperative is to maintain homeostasis, we focus on the mechanisms that underlie interoceptive precision and its impact on embodiment and cognition. Beyond their privileged status for ensuring the stability of organism, this chapter considers the psychological importance that interoceptive priors and interoceptive precision have for self-awareness and the grounding of a coherent self-model. In a manner analogous to the role that interoception plays for homeostasis, interoception at the psychological level seems to contribute to the stability of self-awareness. This psychological role of interoception is illustrated by a growing body of research that considers the antagonism but also the integration between exteroceptive and interoceptive models of the self.

scholarly journals The body self-awareness among women practicing fitness: a preliminary study

2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Brytek-Matera ◽  
Anna Kozieł
Keyword(s):  
Body Awareness ◽  
The Body ◽  
Interoceptive Awareness ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Body Attitude ◽  
Attitude Test ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Body Self ◽  
Body Attitude Test ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract The purposes of the present study were to explore the relationship between body awareness and negative body attitude, interoceptive body awareness and physical self in women practicing fitness as well as to analyze the determinants of body awareness. The Body Awareness Questionnaire, the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness, the Physical Self-Description Questionnaire and the Body Attitude Test were applied to 43 women practicing fitness and 32 non-fitness practitioners. Bodily self-awareness was connected with greater fitness practitioners’ interoceptive body awareness and greater physical self. Noticing and global esteem predicted body awareness in women practicing fitness.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frédérique de Vignemont
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Bodily Awareness ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Phantom Limbs ◽  
Flow Of Information

The embodied approach claims to return the mind to the body. This book returns the body to the mind. Let us leave aside what the body can do for cognition and focus on what it feels like to have a body. We constantly receive a flow of information about it, and yet the phenomenology of bodily awareness is relatively limited. It seems at first sight reducible to the “feeling of the same old body always there” or to a mere “feeling of warmth and intimacy” (James, 1890, p. 242). But when our body becomes less familiar we can grasp the many ways our body can appear to us. In particular, the experience of phantom limbs in amputees best brings bodily awareness into the limelight. The chapter describes a series of puzzling results, which raise fundamental questions about how we experience our body.

Representing utility and deploying the body

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Spurrett
Keyword(s):  
Functional Activity ◽  
Degrees Of Freedom ◽  
The Body ◽  
Target Article ◽  
Processing Demands ◽  
The Many

Abstract Comprehensive accounts of resource-rational attempts to maximise utility shouldn't ignore the demands of constructing utility representations. This can be onerous when, as in humans, there are many rewarding modalities. Another thing best not ignored is the processing demands of making functional activity out of the many degrees of freedom of a body. The target article is almost silent on both.

All Animals Are Equal, or Are They? The Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ’s Animal Epistle and its Unhappy End

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 42-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarra Tlili
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Final Outcome ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Main Text ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Privileged Status

The Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ’s animal epistle is an intriguing work. Although in the body of the narrative the authors challenge anthropocentric preconceptions and present nonhuman animals in a more favourable light than human beings, inexplicably, the narrative ends by reconfirming the privileged status of humans. The aim of this paper is to propose an explanation for this discrepancy. I argue that the egalitarian message reflected in the body of the narrative is traceable back to the Qur'an, the main text with which the authors engage in the fable, whereas the final outcome is due to the Ikhwān's hierarchical worldview.

DARCY RIBEIRO UNIVERSITY CAMPUS MAP – 2017- TECHNICAL NOTE

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Sanzio Araújo dos Anjos ◽  
Jose Leandro de Araujo Conceição ◽  
Jõao Emanuel ◽  
Matheus Nunes
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Data ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Technical Note ◽  
University Campus ◽  
Communication Tool ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Data Manipulation ◽  
Geographic Space ◽  
The Many ◽  
New Generation

The spatial information regarding the use of territory is one of the many strategies used to answer and to inform about what happened, what is happening and what may happen in geographic space. Therefore, the mapping of land use as a communication tool for the spatial data made significant progress in improving sources of information, especially over the last few decades, with new generation remote sensing products for data manipulation.

Integrating Focusing and Differentiation: A Therapeutic Path for Couples in Intimate Relationships

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evi Zohar
Keyword(s):  
Couples Therapy ◽  
Therapeutic Potential ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Body ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Emotional Healing ◽  
Felt Sense ◽  
Inner World

Continuing the workshop I've given in the WPC Paris (2017), this article elaborates my discussion of the way I interlace Focusing with Differentiation Based Couples Therapy (Megged, 2017) under the systemic view, in order to facilitate processes of change and healing in working with intimate couples. This article presents the theory and rationale of integrating Differentiation (Bowen, 1978; Schnarch, 2009; Megged, 2017) and Focusing (Gendlin, 1981) approaches, and its therapeutic potential in couple's therapy. It is written from the point of view of a practicing professional in order to illustrate the experiential nature and dynamics of the suggested therapeutic path. Differentiation is a key to mutuality. It offers a solution to the central struggle of any long term intimate relationship: balancing two basic life forces - the drive for individuality and the drive for togetherness (Schnarch, 2009). Focusing is a body-oriented process of self-awareness and emotional healing, in which one learns to pay attention to the body and the ‘Felt Sense’, in order to unfold the implicit, keep it in motion at the precise pace it needs for carrying the next step forward (Gendlin, 1996). Combining Focusing and Differentiation perspectives can cultivate the kind of relationship where a conflict can be constructively and successfully held in the inner world of each partner, while taking into consideration the others' well-being. This creates the possibility for two people to build a mutual emotional field, open to changes, permeable and resilient.

Effect of heightened interoceptive awareness among smokers on misinterpretation of emotional arousal

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Minseung Kim ◽  
Yeon-Ju Park ◽  
Kiho Kim ◽  
Jang-Han Lee
Keyword(s):  
Smoking Status ◽  
The Body ◽  
Interoceptive Awareness ◽  
Emotional Stimuli ◽  
High Arousal ◽  
Amplification Bias ◽  
Video Clips ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Positive Stimuli ◽  
Subjective Arousal

We investigated the differences in the emotional experiences of people who smoke and have damaged interoceptive awareness. Interoception is the sensation of the physiological condition of the body, and it has 2 biases: neglect and amplification of bodily feedback. We recruited 72 participants and divided them into 4 groups according to smoking status and interoceptive bias based on their scores on the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness. All groups assessed their physiological and subjective arousal before and after watching video clips (positive–low arousal, positive–high arousal, negative–low arousal, negative–high arousal, neutral). The results indicated that people with amplification (vs. neglect) bias who smoked showed stronger subjective arousal to neutral stimuli. In contrast, people with amplification (vs. neglect) bias who did not smoke showed stronger subjective arousal to positive stimuli. These findings suggest that people who smoke and have an amplification bias could be more likely to misinterpret neutral emotional stimuli, leading to an increased craving for smoking.

Laboratory work in Science for the Blind

1932 ◽  
Vol 25 (3b) ◽  
pp. 48-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily A. Burke
Keyword(s):  
Department Of Education ◽  
Laboratory Work ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Carnegie Museum ◽  
Museum Exhibits ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
Western Pennsylvania ◽  
The Many ◽  
Science Classes

Many schools, for various reasons, find it necessary to go to considerable expense to accumulate and maintain nature and museum exhibits for the use of their pupils in science and art classes. The Western Pennsylvania School for the Blind, being located only two blacks from the Carnegie Library and Museum in Pittsburgh, is availing itself of the many opportunities offered by this proximity, rather than attempting the accumulation of a collection of its own. The teachers are urged to co-ordinate and supplement their work by actual and consistent use of the Museum exhibits. This has been facilitated by the whole-hearted cooperation of Miss Jane White, Assistant Curator of Education, and Mrs. Emily A. Burke, Docent in the Department of Education at the Museum. We feel that the establishment of library and museum habits in our pupils is also important, and so encourage them to seek these sources of information on their own initiative as well as in assigned classes. The use of Carnegie Museum exhibits by the science classes, under the direction of Mr. Fred A. Hunt, has inspired Mrs. Burke to set forth in the following article the ways and means by which she is rendering to us this valuable but gratuitous service. B. S. Joice, Superintendent, Western Pennsylvania School for the Blind.

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