scholarly journals Being a beast machine: The somatic basis of selfhood

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anil Seth ◽  
Manos Tsakiris
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Body Ownership ◽  
Modern Psychology ◽  
Embodied Selfhood ◽  
Over Time

Modern psychology has long focused on the body as the basis of the self. Recently, predictive processing accounts of interoception (perception of the body ‘from within’) have become influential in accounting for experiences of body ownership and emotion. Here, we describe embodied selfhood in terms of ‘instrumental interoceptive inference’ that emphasises allostatic regulation and physiological integrity. We apply this approach to the distinctive phenome- nology of embodied selfhood, accounting for its non-object-like character and subjective stability over time. Our perspective has implications for the develop- ment of selfhood and illuminates longstanding debates about relations between life and mind, implying, contrary to Descartes, that experiences of embodied selfhood arise because of, and not in spite of, our nature as ‘beast machines’.

scholarly journals Being a beast machine: The origins of selfhood in control-oriented interoceptive inference

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anil Seth
Keyword(s):  
Generative Models ◽  
The Body ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Action Perception ◽  
Physiological Regulation ◽  
Sensory Signals ◽  
Andy Clark ◽  
Physiological Homeostasis ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Embodied Selfhood

Throughout his career Andy Clark has shaped how scientists and philosophers think about the role of representation in action, perception, and cognition. In the latest iteration of this debate he has foregrounded the influential perspective of ‘predictive processing’, which sees perception as a process of action-oriented ‘best guessing’ (inference) about the causes of noisy and ambiguous sensory signals, and which involves the brain inducing ‘generative’ models of how hidden causes mediate the effects of actions on sensory signals. Here, I will develop this position in the context of interoception (the sense of the body from within) and physiological regulation. A key idea here, which recalls 20th century cybernetic theory, is that interoceptive inference is targeted towards maintaining physiological homeostasis rather than inducing complete and accurate internal models of an external state-of-affairs. I explore how this perspective helps connect control-oriented interoceptive inference to phenomenological properties of embodied selfhood and subjectivity. The upshot echoes (or perhaps subverts) a classic philosophical trope of the Enlightenment philosopher Julien La Mettrie: to find the origins of our conscious selves in our nature as beast machines.

Cross-referenced body and action for the unified self: empirical, developmental, and clinical perspectives

2021 ◽  
pp. 194-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shu Imaizumi ◽  
Tomohisa Asai ◽  
Michiko Miyazaki
Keyword(s):  
Body Representation ◽  
Body Part ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Phantom Limb ◽  
Body Ownership ◽  
Motor Rehabilitation ◽  
Self Recognition ◽  
The Brain

This chapter discusses how the self emerges in the brain through the body and bodily actions. In terms of minimal selfhood, self-representation has two aspects: sense of body ownership and sense of agency over action. In the rubber hand illusion paradigm, multisensory and sensorimotor signals induce illusory ownership over a fake hand. Studies in healthy adults suggest a cross-referenced relationship between body and action as a mechanism of the self-representation. Specifically, one’s own hand can spontaneously move towards the fake hand due to illusory ownership, suggesting a body-to-action relationship. In contrast, an object which is moving synchronously with one’s hand can entail a sense of body ownership as well as a sense of agency, suggesting an action-to-body relationship. The chapter also discusses developmental and clinical perspectives. Immature self-recognition and body part localization in children suggest a prerequisite of representations of the self and body. Although such representations can deteriorate due to damage to the body and brain, amputees can incorporate phantom limb and prosthesis into their body representation through visuo-motor rehabilitation, regaining senses of ownership and agency over these limbs once again. The chapter proposes generation-loss-regeneration dynamism in self-representation originating from the cross-referenced body and action.

scholarly journals The predictive brain in action: Involuntary actions reduce body prediction errors

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Lanillos ◽  
Sae Franklin ◽  
David W. Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Prediction Error ◽  
Sensory Information ◽  
The Body ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Body Ownership ◽  
Prediction Errors ◽  
Uncertain Information ◽  
Energy Principle ◽  
Virtual Hand ◽  
The Brain

AbstractThe perception of our body in space is flexible and manipulable. The predictive brain hypothesis explains this malleability as a consequence of the interplay between incoming sensory information and our body expectations. However, given the interaction between perception and action, we might also expect that actions would arise due to prediction errors, especially in conflicting situations. Here we describe a computational model, based on the free-energy principle, that forecasts involuntary movements in sensorimotor conflicts. We experimentally confirm those predictions in humans by means of a virtual reality rubber-hand illusion. Participants generated movements (forces) towards the virtual hand, regardless of its location with respect to the real arm, with little to no forces produced when the virtual hand overlaid their physical hand. The congruency of our model predictions and human observations shows that the brain-body is generating actions to reduce the prediction error between the expected arm location and the new visual arm. This observed unconscious mechanism is an empirical validation of the perception-action duality in body adaptation to uncertain situations and evidence of the active component of predictive processing.Author SummaryHumans’ capacity to perceive and control their body in space is central in awareness, adaptation and safe interaction. From low-level body perception to body-ownership, discovering how the brain represents the body and generates actions is of major importance for cognitive science and also for robotics and artificial intelligence. The present study shows that humans move their body to match the expected location according to other (visual) sensory input, which corresponds to reducing the prediction error. This means that the brain adapts to conflicting or uncertain information from the senses by unconsciously acting in the world.

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 Effects of Rotating the Self Out of the Body in the Full Virtual Body Ownership Illusion

Perception ◽  
10.1068/p7618 ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 275-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristopher J Blom ◽  
Jorge Arroyo-Palacios ◽  
Mel Slater
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Body Ownership ◽  
Virtual Body

scholarly journals Development of body know-how during the baby's first year of life

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Jacquey ◽  
jacqueline Fagard ◽  
Rana Esseily ◽  
J. Kevin O'Regan
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Psychomotor Development ◽  
First Year ◽  
Body Ownership ◽  
Know How ◽  
First Year Of Life

This literature review examines how babies’ body know-how develops during the first year of life. It surveys studies describing this development through the exploration of the body and of the physical environment. This early development may help babies acquire a sense of agency and a sense of body ownership. The development of body know-how, as a precursor to more in-depth knowledge of the body and of the self, may play an essential role in children's socio- cognitive and psychomotor development.

Being a Beast Machine

2019 ◽  
pp. 238-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anil K. Seth
Keyword(s):  
Generative Models ◽  
The Body ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Action Perception ◽  
Physiological Regulation ◽  
Sensory Signals ◽  
Andy Clark ◽  
Physiological Homeostasis ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Embodied Selfhood

Throughout his career Andy Clark has shaped how scientists and philosophers think about the role of representation in action, perception, and cognition. In the latest iteration of this debate he has foregrounded the influential perspective of predictive processing, which sees perception as a process of action-oriented “best guessing” (inference) about the causes of noisy and ambiguous sensory signals and which involves the brain-inducing “generative” models of how hidden causes mediate the effects of actions on sensory signals. This chapter develops this position in the context of interoception (the sense of the body from within) and physiological regulation. A key idea here, which recalls twentieth-century cybernetic theory, is that interoceptive inference is targeted towards maintaining physiological homeostasis rather than inducing complete and accurate internal models of an external state of affairs. The chapter explores how this perspective helps connect control-oriented interoceptive inference to phenomenological properties of embodied selfhood and subjectivity. The upshot echoes (or perhaps subverts) a classic philosophical trope of the Enlightenment philosopher Julien de La Mettrie: to find the origins of our conscious selves in our nature as beast machines.

‘A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust’: The World and Self in Thomas Hardy's Poems

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Monika Szuba
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Recurrent Theme ◽  
Body Subject

The essay discusses selected poems from Thomas Hardy's vast body of poetry, focusing on representations of the self and the world. Employing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concepts such as the body-subject, wild being, flesh, and reversibility, the essay offers an analysis of Hardy's poems in the light of phenomenological philosophy. It argues that far from demonstrating ‘cosmic indifference’, Hardy's poetry offers a sympathetic vision of interrelations governing the universe. The attunement with voices of the Earth foregrounded in the poems enables the self's entanglement in the flesh of the world, a chiasmatic intertwining of beings inserted between the leaves of the world. The relation of the self with the world is established through the act of perception, mainly visual and aural, when the body becomes intertwined with the world, thus resulting in a powerful welding. Such moments of vision are brief and elusive, which enhances a sense of transitoriness, and, yet, they are also timeless as the self becomes immersed in the experience. As time is a recurrent theme in Hardy's poetry, this essay discusses it in the context of dwelling, the provisionality of which is demonstrated in the prevalent sense of temporality, marked by seasons and birdsong, which underline the rhythms of the world.

From many to one: Meditation and the plasticity of the predictive mind

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruben Laukkonen ◽  
Heleen A Slagter
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Enhancement ◽  
The Self ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Conceptual Processing ◽  
Current State ◽  
Contemplative Science ◽  
Open Monitoring ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
The Brain

How profoundly can humans change their own minds? In this paper we offer a unifying account of meditation under the predictive processing view of living organisms. We start from relatively simple axioms. First, the brain is an organ that serves to predict based on past experience, both phylogenetic and ontogenetic. Second, meditation serves to bring one closer to the here and now by disengaging from anticipatory processes. We propose that practicing meditation therefore gradually reduces predictive processing, in particular counterfactual cognition—the tendency to construct abstract and temporally deep representations—until all conceptual processing falls away. Our Many- to-One account also places three main styles of meditation (focused attention, open monitoring, and non-dual meditation) on a single continuum, where each technique progressively relinquishes increasingly engrained habits of prediction, including the self. This deconstruction can also make the above processes available to introspection, permitting certain insights into one’s mind. Our review suggests that our framework is consistent with the current state of empirical and (neuro)phenomenological evidence in contemplative science, and is ultimately illuminating about the plasticity of the predictive mind. It also serves to highlight that contemplative science can fruitfully go beyond cognitive enhancement, attention, and emotion regulation, to its more traditional goal of removing past conditioning and creating conditions for potentially profound insights. Experimental rigor, neurophenomenology, and no-report paradigms combined with neuroimaging are needed to further our understanding of how different styles of meditation affect predictive processing and the self, and the plasticity of the predictive mind more generally.

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