The multisensory basis of the self:From body to identity to others

By grounding the self in the body, experimental psychology has taken the body as the starting point for a science of the self. One fundamental dimension of the bodily self is the sense of body ownership that refers to the special perceptual status of one’s own body, the feeling that “my body” belongs to me. The primary aim of this review article is to highlight recent advances in the study of body ownership and our understanding of the underlying neurocognitive processes in three ways. I first consider how the sense of body ownership has been investigated and elucidated in the context of multisensory integration. Beyond exteroception, recent studies have considered how this exteroceptively driven sense of body ownership can be linked to the other side of embodiment, that of the unobservable, yet felt, interoceptive body, suggesting that these two sides of embodiment interact to provide a unifying bodily self. Lastly, the multisensorial understanding of the self has been shown to have implications for our understanding of social relationships, especially in the context of self–other boundaries. Taken together, these three research strands motivate a unified model of the self inspired by current predictive coding models

Increased Expression of Tissue Factor and Receptor for Advanced Glycation End Products in Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells of Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus with Vascular Complications

The aim of the study was to determine the correlation between the expression of tissue factor (TF) and the receptor for advanced glycation end products (RAGEs) and vascular complications in patients with longstanding uncontrolled type 2 diabetes (T2D). TF and RAGE mRNAs as well as TF antigen and activity were investigated in 21 T2D patients with and without vascular complications. mRNA expression was assessed by reverse transcriptase–polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in nonstimulated and advanced glycation end product (AGE) albumin–stimulated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). TF antigen expression was determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and TF activity by a modified prothrombin time assay. Basal RAGE mRNA expression was 0.2 ± 0.06 in patients with complications and 0.05 ± 0.06 patients without complications (P = .004). Stimulation did not cause any further increase in either group. TF mRNA was 0.58 ± 0.29 in patients with complications and 0.21 ± 0.18 in patients without complications (P = .003). Stimulation resulted in a nonsignificant increase in both groups. Basal TF activity (U/106 PBMCs) was 18.4 ± 13.2 in patients with complications and 6.96 ± 5.2 in patients without complications (P = .003). It increased 3-fold in both groups after stimulation (P = .001). TF antigen (pg/106 PBMCs) was 33.7 ± 28.6 in patients with complications, 10.4 ± 7.8 in patients without complications (P = .02). Stimulation tripled TF antigen in both groups of patients (P = .001). The RAGE/TF axis is up-regulated inT2Dpatients with vascular complications as compared to patients without complications. This suggests a role for this axis in the pathogenesis of vascular complications in T2D

I Me Mine: on a Confusion Concerning the Subjective Character of Experience

In recent debates on phenomenal consciousness, a distinction is sometimes made, after Levine (2001) and Kriegel (2009), between the “qualitative character” of an experience, i.e. the specific way it feels to the subject (e.g. blueish or sweetish or pleasant), and its “subjective character”, i.e. the fact that there is anything at all that it feels like to her. I argue that much discussion of subjective character is affected by a conflation between three different notions. I start by disentangling the three notions in question, under the labels of “for-me-ness”, “me-ness” and “mineness”. Next, I argue that these notions are not equivalent; in particular, there is no conceptual implication from for-me-ness to me-ness or mineness. Empirical considerations based on clinical cases additionally suggest that the three notions may also correspond to different properties (although the claim of conceptual non-equivalence does not depend on this further point). The aim is clarificatory, cautionary but also critical: I examine four existing arguments from subjective character that are fuelled by an undifferentiated use of the three notions, and find them to be flawed for this reason

Gestalt structures in multi-person intersubjectivity

In this paper I argue that there are gestalt principles underlying intersubjective interactions and that this means that intersubjective ‘units’, can be recognised as unified gestalt wholes. The nub of the claim is that interactions within a ‘plural subject’ can be perceived by others outside this plural subject. Framed from the first-person perspective: I am able to recognise intersubjective interactions between multiple others who are not me. I argue that the terminology of gestalt structures is helpful in framing and understanding the non-reducible make-up of these relational units. I consequently defend the legitimacy of the claim that we can attend to more than one other person at once, holding multiple others as a single focus of attention insofar as we can attend to multiple others as a gestalt whole. I argue that it is therefore legitimate to talk about attending to, perceiving and addressing multiple others at the same time, in the second-person plural. I argue that this can be identified in the phenomenology of such interactions and in an analysis of the core underlying structures of these interactions

How to return to subjectivity? Natorp, Husserl, and Lacan on the limits of reflection

This article discusses the recent call within contemporary phenomenology to return to subjectivity in response to certain limitations of naturalistic explanations of the mind. The meaning and feasibility of this call is elaborated by connecting it to a classical issue within the phenomenological tradition concerning the possibility of investigating the first-person perspective through reflection. We will discuss how this methodological question is respectively treated and reconfigured in the works of Natorp, Husserl, and Lacan. Finally, we will lay out some possible consequences of such a cross-reading for the conception of subjectivity and the concomitant effort to account for this dimension of first-person experience in response and in addition to its omission within the standard third-person perspective of psychological research

Empathy, engagement, entrainment: the interaction dynamics of aesthetic experience

A recent version of the view that aesthetic experience is based in empathy as inner imitation explains aesthetic experience as the automatic simulation of actions, emotions, and bodily sensations depicted in an artwork by motor neurons in the brain. Criticizing the simulation theory for committing to an erroneous concept of empathy and failing to distinguish regular from aesthetic experiences of art, I advance an alternative, dynamic approach and claim that aesthetic experience is enacted and skillful, based in the recognition of others’ experiences as distinct from one’s own. In combining insights from mainly psychology, phenomenology, and cognitive science, the dynamic approach aims to explain the emergence of aesthetic experience in terms of the reciprocal interaction between viewer and artwork. I argue that aesthetic experience emerges by participatory sense-making and revolves around movement as a means for creating meaning. While entrainment merely plays a preparatory part in this, aesthetic engagement constitutes the phenomenological side of coupling to an artwork and provides the context for exploration, and eventually for moving, seeing, and feeling with art. I submit that aesthetic experience emerges from bodily and emotional engagement with works of art via the complementary processes of the perception–action and motion–emotion loops. The former involves the embodied visual exploration of an artwork in physical space, and progressively structures and organizes visual experience by way of perceptual feedback from body movements made in response to the artwork. The latter concerns the movement qualities and shapes of implicit and explicit bodily responses to an artwork that cue emotion and thereby modulate over-all affect and attitude. The two processes cause the viewer to bodily and emotionally move with and be moved by individual works of art, and consequently to recognize another psychological orientation than her own, which explains how art can cause feelings of insight or awe and disclose aspects of life that are unfamiliar or novel to the viewer

The Effect of Attractiveness on Food Sharing Preferences in Human Mating Markets

The current study explored how physical attractiveness affects food sharing by studying payment preferences for hypothetical romantic dinner dates (a hypothetical mating market). We analyzed payment preferences, self-rated attractiveness, and rated attractiveness for hypothetical dates in 416 participants. We hypothesized that (1) men would be more likely to prefer to pay than would women, (2) attractive individuals of both sexes would be less willing to pay, and (3) preferences to enter an exchange would be influenced by the attractiveness of prospective partners such that (3a) men would prefer to pay for attractive women, and (3b) women would prefer to be paid for by attractive men. All hypotheses were supported by our results. Individuals with higher self-rated attractiveness were more likely to prefer that their date would pay for the meal, and we found clear sex differences in how the attractiveness of potential dates affected payment preferences. Male participants preferred to pay for dates that had higher facial attractiveness, while female participants preferred that attractive men would pay. Individuals show condition dependent financial preferences consistent with the provisioning hypothesis in this mating market that are adaptive to evaluations of their own quality and that of prospective partners

Ego-Splitting and the Transcendental Subject. Kant’s Original Insight and Husserl’s Reappraisal

In this paper, I contend that there are at least two essential traits that commonly define being an I: self-identity and self-consciousness. I argue that they bear quite an odd relation to each other in the sense that self-consciousness seems to jeopardize self-identity. My main concern is to elucidate this issue within the range of the transcendental philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. In the first section, I shall briefly consider Kant’s own rendition of the problem of the Egosplitting. My reading of the Kantian texts reveals that Kant himself was aware of this phenomenon but eventually deems it an unexplainable fact. The second part of the paper tackles the same problematic from the standpoint of Husserlian phenomenology. What Husserl’s extensive analyses on this topic bring to light is that the phenomenon of the Ego-splitting constitutes the bedrock not only of his thought but also of every philosophy that works within the framework of transcendental thinking

The Mind’s Presence to Itself: In Search of Non‐intentional Awareness

According to some philosophers, the mind enjoys a form of presence to itself. That is to say, in addition to being aware of whatever objects it is aware of, it is also (co-presently) aware of itself. This paper explores the proposal that we should think about this kind of experiential-presence in terms of a form of non-intentional awareness. Various candidates for the relevant form of awareness, as constituting supposed non-intentional experiential-presence, are considered and are shown to encounter significant problems. The fact that a plausible account of the non-intentional awareness which experience putatively has of itself cannot be framed with reference to such forms of awareness is grounds for scepticism concerning the cogency of non-intentional experiential presence