Perspectival self-consciousness and ego-dissolution

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (I) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Miguel Angel Sebastian
Keyword(s):  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
First Person ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Altered States ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
Minimal Self ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Minimal Form

It is often claimed that a minimal form of self-awareness is constitutive of our conscious experience. Some have considered that such a claim is plausible for our ordinary experiences but false when considered unrestrictedly on the basis of the empirical evidence from altered states. In this paper I want to reject such a reasoning. This requires, first, a proper understanding of a minimal form of self-awareness – one that makes it plausible that minimal self-awareness is part of our ordinary experiences. I will argue that it should be understood as Perspectival First-Person Awareness (PFP-Awareness): a non-conceptual identification-free self-attribution that defines the first-person perspective for our conscious experience. I will offer a detailed characterization of PFP-Awareness in semantic and epistemological terms. With this tool in hand, I will review the empirical literature on altered states. I will focus on psychedelics, meditation and dreams, as they have been claimed to present the clearest cases in favor of a radical disruption of self-awareness. I will show that the rejection of the idea that minimal self-awareness is constitutive of our experience on the basis of this evidence is unfounded, for two main reasons. First, although there are good grounds to think that some forms of self-awareness that typically accompany our ordinary experiences are compromised, they do not support the claim that PFP-Awareness is absent. Secondly, the reports that could make us think of a radical disruption of self-awareness are most probably due to a confirmation bias – and hence we should mistrust them – derived from the expectations and metaphysical views of their subjects.

Varieties of Self-Awareness

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thor Grünbaum ◽  
Dan Zahavi
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
First Person ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
Minimal Self ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Conscious Thinking ◽  
Self Reference

This chapter argues that explicit (reflective) self-conscious thinking is founded on an implicit (pre-reflective) form of self-awareness built into the very structure of phenomenal consciousness. In broad strokes, the argument is that a theory denying the existence of pre-reflective or minimal self-awareness has difficulties explaining a number of essential features of explicit first-person self-reference, and that this will impede a proper understanding of certain types of psychopathology. The chapter proceeds by discussion of a number of prominent theories of self-knowledge and self-reference relating them to forms of self-consciousness. It is then argued that getting these various relations right is important to a proper understanding of a number of psychopathological phenomena.

scholarly journals Is the “Minimally Conscious State” Patient Minimally Self-Aware?

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constantinos Picolas
Keyword(s):  
Vegetative State ◽  
Minimally Conscious State ◽  
Conscious State ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Minimal Self ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Legal Implications ◽  
Embodied Subjectivity ◽  
Minimally Conscious

Patients in a Minimally Conscious State (MCS) constitute a subgroup of awareness impaired patients who show minimal signs of awareness as opposed to patients in a Vegetative State who do not exhibit any such signs. While the empirical literature is rich in studies investigating either overt or covert signs of awareness in such patients the question of self-awareness has only scarcely been addressed. Even in the occasion where self-awareness is concerned, it is only higher-order or reflective self-awareness that is the target of such investigations. In the first part of this paper, I briefly review the relevant clinical neuroscience literature to demonstrate that the conception of self-awareness at play in such studies is indeed that of reflective self-awareness. In the second part, I present the philosophical notion of pre-reflective (or minimal) self-awareness. This is shown to primarily refer to the implicit awareness of our embodied subjectivity which essentially permeates all our experiences. As discussed, this minimal self-awareness is not specifically addressed when clinically or experimentally assessing patients in MCS. My suggestion is that neuroimaging studies targeting minimal self-awareness as in First-Person Perspective-taking paradigms could be used with MCS patients to shed light on the question of whether those individuals are minimally self-aware even in the case where they lack self-reflective abilities. Empirical evidence of this kind could have important theoretical implications for the discussion about the notion of self-awareness but also potential medical and social/legal implications for awareness impaired patients’ management.

scholarly journals Awareness is in the Eye of the Observer: Preserved Third-Person Awareness of Deficit in Anosognosia for Hemiplegia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sahba Besharati ◽  
Paul Jenkinson ◽  
Michael Kopelman ◽  
Mark Solms ◽  
Valentina Moro ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
First Person ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Right Hemisphere Damage ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
Anosognosia For Hemiplegia

In recent decades, the research traditions of (first-person) embodied cognition and of (third-person) social cognition have approached the study of self-awareness with relative independence. However, neurological disorders of self-awareness offer a unifying perspective to empirically investigate the contribution of embodiment and social cognition to self-awareness. This study focused on a neuropsychological disorder of bodily self-awareness following right-hemisphere damage, namely anosognosia for hemiplegia (AHP). A previous neuropsychological study has shown AHP patients, relative to neurological controls, to have a specific deficit in third-person, allocentric inferences in a story-based, mentalisation task. However, no study has tested directly whether verbal awareness of motor deficits is influenced by either perspective-taking or centrism, and if these deficits in social cognition are correlated with damage to anatomical areas previously linked to mentalising, including the supramarginal and superior temporal gyri and related limbic white matter connections. Accordingly, two novel experiments were conducted with right-hemisphere stroke patients with (n = 17) and without AHP (n = 17) that targeted either their own (egocentric, experiment 1) or another stooge patient’s (experiment 2) motor abilities from a first-or-third person (allocentric in Experiment 2) perspective. In both experiments, neurological controls showed no significant difference between perspectives, suggesting that perspective-taking deficits are not a general consequence of right-hemisphere damage. More specifically, experiment 1 found AHP patients were more aware of their own motor paralysis when asked from a third compared to a first-person perspective, using both group level and individual level analysis. In experiment 2, AHP patients were less accurate than controls in making allocentric, third-person perspective judgements about the stooge patient, but with only a trend towards significance and with no within-group, difference between perspectives. Deficits in egocentric and allocentric third-person perspective taking were associated with lesions in the middle frontal gyrus, superior temporal and supramarginal gyri, with white matter disconnections more predominate in deficits in allocentricity. This study confirms previous clinical and empirical investigations on the selectivity of first-person motor awareness deficits in anosognosia for hemiplegia and experimentally demonstrates for the first time that verbal egocentric 3PP-taking can positively influence 1PP body awareness.

scholarly journals On the nature and role of Consciousness: is it time to move towards a metaphilosophical and metascientific approach?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
ENRICO FACCO ◽  
Fabio Fracas ◽  
Silvano Tagliagambe ◽  
Patrizio Tressoldi
Keyword(s):  
Anthropic Principle ◽  
First Person ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
The Common ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Common Field

The main aim of this paper is to support a metaphilosophical and metascientific approach to the study of Consciousness.After a brief historical resume of the debate between the mind-brain-body relationship, we discuss how the apparently irreducible contention between a physicalist and an anti-physicalist interpretation of Consciousness can be overcome by a metaphilosophic and metascientific approach in the attempt to overcome ethnocentric cultural filters and constraints yielded by the Weltanschauung and the Zeitgeist one belongs to. IN fact, a metaphilosophical perspective can help to recognize key concepts and meanings common to different philosophies beyond their formal differences and different modes of theorization, where the common field of reflection is aimed to find the problem’s unity in the multiplicity of forms. Likewise, the metascientific approach, such as the anthropic principle adopted in astrophysics, helps overcoming the problems of indecidability of single axiomatic disciplines.A metaphilosophical and metascientific approach seems appropriate in the study of consciousness and subjective phenomena, since the first-person perspective and the meaning of the experience are the condition sine qua non for their proper understanding.

scholarly journals Body, Self and Others: Harding, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on Intersubjectivity

Philosophies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 100
Author(s):  
Brentyn J. Ramm
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Approach ◽  
The Body ◽  
First Person ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Critical Dialogue ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Phenomenology Of The Body ◽  
The World ◽  
The Look ◽  
Body Self

Douglas Harding developed a unique first-person experimental approach for investigating consciousness that is still relatively unknown in academia. In this paper, I present a critical dialogue between Harding, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on the phenomenology of the body and intersubjectivity. Like Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, Harding observes that from the first-person perspective, I cannot see my own head. He points out that visually speaking nothing gets in the way of others. I am radically open to others and the world. Neither does my somatic experience establish a boundary between me and the world. Rather to experience these sensations as part of a bounded, shaped thing (a body), already involves bringing in the perspectives of others. The reader is guided through a series of Harding’s first-person experiments to test these phenomenological claims for themselves. For Sartre, the other’s subjectivity is known through The Look, which makes me into a mere object for them. Merleau-Ponty criticised Sartre for making intersubjective relations primarily ones of conflict. Rather he held that the intentionality of my body is primordially interconnected with that of others’ bodies. We are already situated in a shared social world. For Harding, like Sartre, my consciousness is a form of nothingness; however, in contrast to Sartre, it does not negate the world, but is absolutely united with it. Confrontation is a delusion that comes from imagining that I am behind a face. Rather in lived personal relationships, I become the other. I conclude by arguing that for Harding all self-awareness is a form of other-awareness, and vice versa.

scholarly journals New materialism and postmodern subject models fail to explain human memory and self-awareness: A comment on Tobias-Renstrøm and Køppe (2020)

2020 ◽  
pp. 095935432097375
Author(s):  
Radek Trnka
Keyword(s):  
Human Subject ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Human Memory ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
First Person ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
External Observer ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives

Tobias-Renstrøm and Køppe (2020) show the several conceptual limits that new materialism and postmodern subject models have for psychological theory and research. The present study continues this discussion and argues that the applicability of the ideas of quantum-inspired new materialism depends on the theoretical perspectives that we consider for analysis: be it the first-person perspective referring to the subjective experience of a human subject, or the third-person perspective, in which a human subject is observed by an external observer. While the arguments of new materialism are in accordance with the analysis of the act of observation performed by an external observer, some problems arise when trying to theoretically approach the first-person subjective experience of a human subject. For example, new materialism fails to explain why human minds can maintain the awareness of a subject’s identity throughout their lives and to recall the memories about their past personal experiences.

Self-Awareness and the “I” in the Phenomenological Tradition

2021 ◽  
pp. 267-286
Author(s):  
Sacha Golob
Keyword(s):  
Hierarchical Model ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Phenomenological Tradition ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Features ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
Key Innovations

The Phenomenological tradition is defined by its attempt to rethink the self and self-awareness. This chapter provides an overview of some of the fundamental developments within that tradition running from Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty to later writers such as Henry. I begin by sketching the key features: its relationship to naturalistic and transcendental approaches, the centrality of the first person perspective, and the hierarchical model which is central to Phenomenology’s vision of experience. I next introduce the specifics of Phenomenology’s picture of self-awareness, positioning it between the spectatorial model found in Brentano and a Kantian intellectualism. I then turn to some key innovations: Sartre’s notion of non-positional self-consciousness, Heidegger on the links between the self and the social, and finally Merleau-Ponty’s conception of embodiment.

Being for no-one

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (I) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Chris Letheby
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Mental States ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Altered States ◽  
Minimal Self ◽  
Depersonalization Disorder ◽  
Total Lack ◽  
Fast Acting

Can there be phenomenal consciousness without self-consciousness? Strong intuitions and prominent theories of consciousness say “no”: experience requires minimal self-awareness, or “subjectivity”. This “subjectivity principle” (SP) faces apparent counterexamples in the form of anomalous mental states claimed to lack self-consciousness entirely, such as “inserted thoughts” in schizophrenia and certain mental states in depersonalization disorder (DPD). However, Billon & Kriegel (2015) have defended SP by arguing (inter alia) that while some of these mental states may be totally selfless, those states are not phenomenally conscious and thus do not constitute genuine counterexamples to SP. I argue that this defence cannot work in relation to certain experiences of ego dissolution induced by potent fast-acting serotonergic psychedelics. These mental states jointly instantiate the two features whose co-instantiation by a single mental state SP prohibits: (a) phenomenal consciousness and (b) total lack of self-consciousness. One possible objection is that these mental states may lack “me-ness” and “mineness” but cannot lack “for-me-ness”, a special inner awareness of mental states by the self. In response I propose a dilemma. For-me-ness can be defined either as containing a genuinely experiential component or as not. On the first horn, for-me-ness is clearly absent (I argue) from my counterexamples. On the second horn, for-me-ness has been defined in a way that conflicts with the claims and methods of its proponents, and the claim that phenomenally conscious mental states can totally lack self-consciousness has been conceded. I conclude with some reflections on the intuitive plausibility of SP in light of evidence from altered states.

scholarly journals A Constructive Explanation of Consciousness

2020 ◽  
Vol 07 (02) ◽  
pp. 257-275
Author(s):  
Pei Wang
Keyword(s):  
Self Control ◽  
First Person ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Functional Aspect ◽  
The Third ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Third Person ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
The Third Person

This paper describes the consciousness-related aspects of the AGI system NARS, discusses the implications of this design and compares it with other relevant theories and designs. It is argued that the function of consciousness is self-awareness and self-control, and the phenomenal aspect of consciousness is the first-person perspective of the same process for which the functional aspect is the third-person perspective.

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