Disrupting Vestibular Activity Disrupts Body Ownership

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 581-590 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adria E. N. Hoover ◽  
Laurence R. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Objective Measure ◽  
Vestibular Stimulation ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
Body Ownership ◽  
Healthy Individuals ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Minimum Delay

People are more sensitive at detecting asynchrony between a self-generated movement and visual feedback concerning that movement when the movement is viewed from a first-person perspective. We call this the ‘self-advantage’ and interpret it as an objective measure of self. Here we ask if disruption of the vestibular system in healthy individuals affects the self-advantage. Participants performed finger movements while viewing their hand in a first-person (‘self’) or third-person (‘other’) perspective and indicated which of two periods (one with minimum delay and the other with an added delay of 33–264 ms) was delayed. Their sensitivity to the delay was calculated from the psychometric functions obtained. During the testing, disruptive galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) was applied in five-minute blocks interleaved with five minutes of no stimulation for a total of 40 min. We confirmed the self-advantage under no stimulation (31 ms). In the presence of disruptive GVS this advantage disappeared and there was no longer a difference in performance between perspectives. The threshold delay for the ‘other’ perspective was not affected by the GVS. These results suggest that an intact vestibular signal is required to distinguish ‘self’ from ‘other’ and to maintain a sense of body ownership.

scholarly journals Image schemas, mimetic schemas and children's gestures

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan Zlatev
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
Natural Interaction ◽  
Image Schemas ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Cognitive Linguistic ◽  
Third Person ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
The One

Abstract Mimetic schemas, unlike the popular cognitive linguistic notion of image schemas, have been characterized in earlier work as explicitly representational, bodily structures arising from imitation of culture-specific practical actions (Zlatev 2005, 2007a, 2007b). We performed an analysis of the gestures of three Swedish and three Thai children at the age of 18, 22 and 26 months in episodes of natural interaction with caregivers and siblings in order to analyze the hypothesis that iconic gestures emerge as mimetic schemas. In accordance with this hypothesis, we predicted that the children's first iconic gestures would be (a) intermediately specific, (b) culture-typical, (c) falling in a set of recurrent types, (d) predominantly enacted from a first-person perspective (1pp) rather than performed from a third-person perspective (3pp), with (e) 3pp gestures being more dependent on direct imitation than 1pp gestures and (f) more often co-occurring with speech. All specific predictions but the last were confirmed, and differences were found between the children's iconic gestures on the one side and their deictic and emblematic gestures on the other. Thus, the study both confirms earlier conjectures that mimetic schemas “ground” both gesture and speech and implies the need to qualify these proposals, limiting the link between mimetic schemas and gestures to the iconic category.

scholarly journals Empathy or Ownership? Evidence from Corticospinal Excitability Modulation during Pain Observation

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (11) ◽  
pp. 1760-1771 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulia Bucchioni ◽  
Carlotta Fossataro ◽  
Andrea Cavallo ◽  
Harold Mouras ◽  
Marco Neppi-Modona ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
First Person ◽  
Body Ownership ◽  
Physiological Basis ◽  
Hand Model ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Third Person ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
The One

Recent studies show that motor responses similar to those present in one's own pain (freezing effect) occur as a result of observation of pain in others. This finding has been interpreted as the physiological basis of empathy. Alternatively, it can represent the physiological counterpart of an embodiment phenomenon related to the sense of body ownership. We compared the empathy and the ownership hypotheses by manipulating the perspective of the observed hand model receiving pain so that it could be a first-person perspective, the one in which embodiment occurs, or a third-person perspective, the one in which we usually perceive the others. Motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) by TMS over M1 were recorded from first dorsal interosseous muscle, whereas participants observed video clips showing (a) a needle penetrating or (b) a Q-tip touching a hand model, presented either in first-person or in third-person perspective. We found that a pain-specific inhibition of MEP amplitude (a significantly greater MEP reduction in the “pain” compared with the “touch” conditions) only pertains to the first-person perspective, and it is related to the strength of the self-reported embodiment. We interpreted this corticospinal modulation according to an “affective” conception of body ownership, suggesting that the body I feel as my own is the body I care more about.

Exploring the Behavioral, Experiential, and Conceptual Dimensions of the Self

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 180-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich Weger ◽  
Andreas Meyer ◽  
Johannes Wagemann
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
The Core ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Behavioral Expression ◽  
Geometrical Shapes ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
Level Of Experience

Abstract. The self has become a prominent field of research in psychology but despite its eminent first-person character, it is typically studied from a third-person perspective. Such a third-person approach is well suited to enquire into the behavioral expression of the sense of selfhood but it does not capture the core experience – the so-called qualia nature – of the self. In the current article we illuminate the challenges that a predominant third-person approach poses to an understanding of the self. We outline two levels of analysis that can complement and enrich a third-person, behavior-focused view, namely the level of experience and the level of conceptual insight. Both these additional levels are accessible via a first-person mode of enquiry and can reveal a degree of richness about the self that reaches beyond a third-person approach. We here provide a methodological justification for such a qualitative mode of enquiry, as well as a synopsis of findings from our own first-person research which involved introspective reports of the authors’ experiences during meditation on geometrical shapes, words, and short phrases.

Reduction: The Solution to Mind Representation?

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-315
Author(s):  
Yanying Cui ◽  
Yidong Wei
Keyword(s):  
Chemical Elements ◽  
The Other ◽  
Natural Phenomenon ◽  
First Person ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Naturalistic Methodology ◽  
Leading Position ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
The Mind

Abstract Chomsky is an evolutionary figure in linguistics. His greatest contribution lies in transformational generative grammar, which put an end to the leading position structuralism had held in language for more than 30 years. His naturalistic methodology has greatly influenced the research of both linguistics and psychology, and he is also considered to be the first to study language from the cognitive perspective. He insists on a naturalistic methodology; therefore, he was even considered by some to be a physicalist. However, this is not the case. On the contrary, TGG, as a critique of the behaviorist view of language, is intertwined with a critique of physicalism. On the one hand, he thinks the mind, like chemical elements and electrons, can be approached from a third-person perspective; on the other hand, he again admits there exists consciousness, which can be merely approached in terms of a first-person authority, which, therefore, is a fatal challenge to his core theory. Now there remains a new solution to this dilemma, that is, to admit that the mind is a special natural phenomenon with two means of existence: one is involved in physical aspects with the brain, and the other is concerned with something mental, with the former approached by a third-person perspective and the latter better researched via a first-person authority.

Will it be me? Identity, concern and perspective

2013 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Stokes
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Affective Responses ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
Bernard Williams ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Present Tense

Self-reflexive or egocentric concern has been taken to present a serious problem for reductionist and eliminativist metaphysical accounts of personal identity. Philosophers have tended to respond in one of three ways: by continuing the search for a metaphysical account of identity that (prudentially if not morally) justifies egocentric concern; by accepting that egocentric concern can hold between persons who are not numerically identical; or by advocating the abandonment of egocentric concern altogether. All these approaches, however, distinguish between metaphysical ‘facts’ and affective responses to them. Exploring a well-known example from Bernard Williams, I argue that egocentric concern presents itself as irreducibly first-personal and as making its own set of numerical personal identity claims on the phenomenal level. Williams' example also points to the need to complicate the first/third person schema by factoring in a further distinction between present-tense and implicitly atemporal perspectives on the self. Once this move is made, we can see that the identity claims figured in first-person present-tense experience and those arrived at through metaphysical deliberation need to be distinguished. We should resist the temptation to privilege one perspective over the other in all instances, or to collapse them into a unitary account of selfhood.

scholarly journals Lived body and the Other’s gaze: a phenomenological perspective on feeding and eating disorders

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milena Mancini ◽  
Cecilia Maria Esposito
Keyword(s):  
Eating Disorders ◽  
The Other ◽  
Lived Body ◽  
First Person ◽  
Level Of Evidence ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Feeding And Eating Disorders ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Phenomenological Perspective ◽  
Third Person

AbstractAccording to the phenomenological perspective, the lived body disorder is a core feature of feeding and eating disorders (FEDs). Persons with FEDs experience their own body first of all as an object looked by another person, rather than coenaesthetically or from a first-person perspective. In particular, the main features of this disorder are: alienation from the own body and from the own emotions, disgust for it, shame, and an exaggerated preoccupation for the way in which one appears to the others. Phenomenological research has recently highlighted that the gaze of the Other plays an important role. Because persons with FEDs cannot have an experience of their own body from within or coenesthetically, they need to apprehend their own body from outside through the gaze of the Other. This way of apprehending one’s own body when it is looked by another person is called by Sartre the ‘lived body-for-others’. Normally, the constitution of one’s own body, and consequently of one’s own Self and identity depends on the dialectic integration between the first-person apprehension of one’s body (lived body) that it is based on coenaesthesia, and the third-person one, that it is based on the sense of sight (lived-body-for-others). When the dialectic is unbalanced toward the pole of the lived-body-for-others, experienced from without, the symptom occurs. Starting from these clinical observations, the so-called Optical-Coenaesthetic Disproportion model has been developed. In this paper, we describe this model, its philosophical and clinical foundations, and finally its clinical implication and its relationship with other disciplines, i.e., neurosciences. Level of evidence: V.

First-Person Experiments in Thinking

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renatus Ziegler ◽  
Ulrich Weger
Keyword(s):  
Physiological Parameters ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Psychological Phenomena ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Thinking Process ◽  
Mental Contents

Abstract. In psychology, thinking is typically studied in terms of a range of behavioral or physiological parameters, focusing, for instance, on the mental contents or the neuronal correlates of the thinking process proper. In the current article, by contrast, we seek to complement this approach with an exploration into the experiential or inner dimensions of thinking. These are subtle and elusive and hence easily escape a mode of inquiry that focuses on externally measurable outcomes. We illustrate how a sufficiently trained introspective approach can become a radar for facets of thinking that have found hardly any recognition in the literature so far. We consider this an important complement to third-person research because these introspective observations not only allow for new insights into the nature of thinking proper but also cast other psychological phenomena in a new light, for instance, attention and the self. We outline and discuss our findings and also present a roadmap for the reader interested in studying these phenomena in detail.

scholarly journals When the World Breaks Down: A 3-Stage Existential Model of Nihilism in Schizophrenia

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Philipp Klar ◽  
Georg Northoff
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Existential Crisis ◽  
Third Stage ◽  
The World ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Pathological Development ◽  
Sense Of Reality ◽  
Intentional Structure

The existential crisis of nihilism in schizophrenia has been reported since the early days of psychiatry. Taking first-person accounts concerning nihilistic experiences of both the self and the world as vantage point, we aim to develop a dynamic existential model of the pathological development of existential nihilism. Since the phenomenology of such a crisis is intrinsically subjective, we especially take the immediate and pre-reflective first-person perspective’s (FPP) experience (instead of objectified symptoms and diagnoses) of schizophrenia into consideration. The hereby developed existential model consists of 3 conceptualized stages that are nested into each other, which defines what we mean by existential. At the same time, the model intrinsically converges with the phenomenological concept of the self-world structure notable inside our existential framework. Regarding the 3 individual stages, we suggest that the onset or first stage of nihilistic pathogenesis is reflected by phenomenological solipsism, that is, a general disruption of the FPP experience. Paradigmatically, this initial disruption contains the well-known crisis of common sense in schizophrenia. The following second stage of epistemological solipsism negatively affects all possible perspectives of experience, that is, the first-, second-, and third-person perspectives of subjectivity. Therefore, within the second stage, solipsism expands from a disruption of immediate and pre-reflective experience (first stage) to a disruption of reflective experience and principal knowledge (second stage), as mirrored in abnormal epistemological limitations of principal knowledge. Finally, the experience of the annihilation of healthy self-consciousness into the ultimate collapse of the individual’s existence defines the third stage. The schizophrenic individual consequently loses her/his vital experience since the intentional structure of consciousness including any sense of reality breaks down. Such a descriptive-interpretative existential model of nihilism in schizophrenia may ultimately serve as input for future psychopathological investigations of nihilism in general, including, for instance, its manifestation in depression.

scholarly journals Human Enhancements and Voting: Towards a Declaration of Rights and Responsibilities of Beings

Philosophies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
S. J. Blodgett-Ford
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Governance Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
To Come ◽  
Additional Option

The phenomenon and ethics of “voting” will be explored in the context of human enhancements. “Voting” will be examined for enhanced humans with moderate and extreme enhancements. Existing patterns of discrimination in voting around the globe could continue substantially “as is” for those with moderate enhancements. For extreme enhancements, voting rights could be challenged if the very humanity of the enhanced was in doubt. Humans who were not enhanced could also be disenfranchised if certain enhancements become prevalent. Voting will be examined using a theory of engagement articulated by Professor Sophie Loidolt that emphasizes the importance of legitimization and justification by “facing the appeal of the other” to determine what is “right” from a phenomenological first-person perspective. Seeking inspiration from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948, voting rights and responsibilities will be re-framed from a foundational working hypothesis that all enhanced and non-enhanced humans should have a right to vote directly. Representative voting will be considered as an admittedly imperfect alternative or additional option. The framework in which voting occurs, as well as the processes, temporal cadence, and role of voting, requires the participation from as diverse a group of humans as possible. Voting rights delivered by fiat to enhanced or non-enhanced humans who were excluded from participation in the design and ratification of the governance structure is not legitimate. Applying and extending Loidolt’s framework, we must recognize the urgency that demands the impossible, with openness to that universality in progress (or universality to come) that keeps being constituted from the outside.

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