Under Pressure: Processing Representational Decoupling in False-Belief Tasks

Several studies (Onishi and Baillargeon 2005; Surian et al. 2007) demonstrated that children younger than 3years of age, who consistently fail the standard verbal false-belief task, can anticipate others' actions based on their attributed false beliefs. This gave rise to the so-called "Developmental Paradox”. De Bruin and Kästner (2012) recently suggested that the Developmental Paradox is best addressed in terms of the relation between coupled (online) and decoupled (offline) processes and argued that if enactivism is to be a genuine alternative to classic cognitivism, it should be able to bridge the "cognitive gap”, i.e. to provide us with a convincing account of how low-level sensorimotor practices transform into higher-order representational skills. This paper defends, against De Bruin and Kästner, an enactive response to the Developmental Paradox. I argue that 3-year olds' failure to verbally report their false-belief understanding does not arise from stronger decoupling demands. Rather, they fail because the elicited response false-belief trials involve representational decoupling tout court and what is more, under pressure

Hanging in there: Prenatal origins of antigravity homeostasis in humans

All life on Earth must find a way to manage the continuous perturbation of gravity. From birth, and even before, humans exhibit effortful antigravity work to enact bodily, postural and behavioural form despite gravity. Indeed, observable antigravity behaviour is a standard diagnostic indicator of neonatal sensorimotor health. Antigravity behaviour has been investigated extensively in its biomechanical details. Yet its motivational structure has not been a focus of research. What drives the human body to expend energy on this effortful behaviour? It is widely understood that thermic homeostasis in humans is organised around conserving core body temperature at a set-point of 36.5-37.5oC. There is currently no equivalent concept of a general homeostatic set-point driving antigravity effort. In this theoretical paper, we aim to establish such a concept. We make the case that the core developmental set-point for human antigravity homeostasis is neutral buoyancy (gravity and buoyant force are balanced), which is afforded to the foetus by its approximately equi-dense amniotic fluid medium in utero. We argue that postnatally, the general task of human antigravity balance is to emulate the conditions of neutral buoyancy, based upon prenatal experience thereof. Our aim in this paper is to sketch a high-level outline of a novel characterisation of antigravity balance as conservative homeostasis, and lay out some implications and predictions of this model, with the intention of spurring wider research and discussion on this hitherto little explored topic. Keywords: antigravity, posture, homeostasis, prenatal, buoyancy, density, fetus, foetusComment: 19 pages (including references) Zero figure

When the window cracks: transparency and the fractured self in depersonalisation

There has recently been a resurgence of philosophical and scientific interest in the foundations of self-consciousness, with particular focus on its altered, anomalous forms. This paper looks at the altered forms of self-awareness in Depersonalization Disorder (DPD), a condition in which people feel detached from their self, their body and the world (Derealisation). Building upon the phenomenological distinction between reflective and pre-reflective self-consciousness, we argue that DPD may alter the transparency of basic embodied forms of pre-reflective self-consciousness, as well as the capacity to flexibly modulate and switch between the reflective and pre-reflective facets of self-awareness. Empirical evidence will be invoked in support of the idea that impaired processing of bodily signals is characteristic of the condition. We provide first-hand subjective reports describing the experience of self-detachment or fracture between an observing and an observed self. This split is compared with similar self-detachment phenomena reported in certain Buddhist-derived meditative practices. We suggest that these alterations and changes may reveal the underlying and tacit transparency that characterises the embodied and basic pre-reflective forms of self-consciousness, in the same way that a crack in a transparent glass may indicate the presence of an unnoticed window

Back to square one : the bodily roots of conscious experiences in early life

Most theoretical and empirical discussions about the nature of consciousness are typically couched in a way that endorses a tacit adult-centric and vision-based perspective. This paper defends the idea that consciousness science may be put on a fruitful track for its next phase by examining the nature of subjective experiences through a bottom-up developmental lens. We draw attention to the intrinsic link between consciousness, experiences and experiencing subjects, which are first and foremost embodied and situated organisms essentially concerned with self-preservation within a precarious environment. Our paper suggests that in order to understand what consciousness is, one should first tackle the fundamental question: how do embodied experiences arise from square one? We then highlight one key yet overlooked aspect of human consciousness studies, namely that the earliest and closest environment of an embodied experiencing subject is the body of another human experiencing subject. We present evidence speaking in favour of fairly sophisticated forms of early sensorimotor integration of bodily signals and self-generated actions already being established in utero. We conclude that these primitive and fundamentally relational and co-embodied roots of our early experiences may have crucial impact on the way human beings consciously experience the self, body and the world across their lifespan

Whatever next and close to my self—The transparent senses and the “second skin”: implications for the case of depersonalization

In his paper “Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science,” Andy Clark seminally proposed that the brain's job is to predict whatever information is coming “next” on the basis of prior inputs and experiences. Perception fundamentally subserves survival and self-preservation in biological agents, such as humans. Survival however crucially depends on rapid and accurate information processing of what is happening in the here and now. Hence, the term “next” in Clark's seminal formulation must include not only the temporal dimension (i.e., what is perceived now) but also the spatial dimension (i.e., what is perceived here or next-to-my-body). In this paper, we propose to focus on perceptual experiences that happen “next,” i.e., close-to-my-body. This is because perceptual processing of proximal sensory inputs has a key impact on the organism's survival. Specifically, we focus on tactile experiences mediated by the skin and what we will call the “extended skin” or “second skin,” that is, immediate objects/materials that envelop closely to our skin, namely, clothes. We propose that the skin and tactile experiences are not a mere border separating the self and world. Rather, they simultaneously and inherently distinguish and connect the bodily self to its environment. Hence, these proximal and pervasive tactile experiences can be viewed as a “transparent bridge” intrinsically relating and facilitating exchanges between the self and the physical and social world. We conclude with potential implications of this observation for the case of Depersonalization Disorder, a condition that makes people feel estranged and detached from their self, body, and the world

Zoomed out : digital media use and depersonalization experiences during the COVID-19 lockdown

Depersonalisation is a common dissociative experience characterised by distressing feelings of being detached or ‘estranged’ from one’s self and body and/or the world. The COVID-19 pandemic forcing millions of people to socially distance themselves from others and to change their lifestyle habits. We have conducted an online study of 622 participants worldwide to investigate the relationship between digital media-based activities, distal social interactions and peoples’ sense of self during the lockdown as contrasted with before the pandemic. We found that increased use of digital media-based activities and online social e-meetings correlated with higher feelings of depersonalisation. We also found that the participants reporting higher experiences of depersonalisation, also reported enhanced vividness of negative emotions (as opposed to positive emotions). Finally, participants who reported that lockdown influenced their life to a greater extent had higher occurrences of depersonalisation experiences. Our findings may help to address key questions regarding well-being during a lockdown, in the general population. Our study points to potential risks related to overly sedentary, and hyper-digitalised lifestyle habits that may induce feelings of living in one’s ‘head’ (mind), disconnected from one’s body, self and the world

The detached self: investigating the effect of depersonalisation on self-bias in the visual remapping of touch

There is a growing consensus that our most fundamental sense of self is structured by the ongoing integration of sensory and motor information related to our own body. Depersonalisation (DP) is an intriguing form of altered subjective experience in which people report feelings of unreality and detachment from their sense of self. The current study used the visual remapping of touch (VRT) paradigm to explore self-bias in visual–tactile integration in non-clinical participants reporting high and low levels of depersonalisation experiences. We found that the high-DP group showed an increased overall VRT effect but a no-self-face bias, instead showing a greater VRT effect when observing the face of another person. In addition, across all participants, self-bias was negatively predicted by the occurrence of anomalous body experiences. These results indicate disrupted integration of tactile and visual representations of the bodily self in those experiencing high levels of DP and provide greater understanding of how disruptions in multisensory perception of the self may underlie the phenomenology of depersonalisation

Physicalism and qualia

Réduit à sa plus simple expression, ce travail de recherche met face à face deux acteurs s’affrontant dans un duel philosophique : le physicalisme et l’argument de la connaissance de Franck Jackson. La question clé autour de laquelle s’agencera notre discussion ici est (1) Est-il vrai que « Tout est physique » ? Le coeur de la thèse que nous défendons peut être résumé ainsi : (T) Le clivage post-platonicien (tacite) entre les formes objectivées et les formes subjectivées de la pensée, provoque des fossés explicatifs (explicites), qui sont franchis (très souvent) via des sauts conceptuels (mystérieux), intercalés entre les étapes d’une argumentation. Il sera argumenté ici que la distribution actuelle des débats sur l’axe états physiques (objectifs) / états qualitatifs (subjectifs) subit une pression souterraine post-platonicienne. Conséquemment, une bonne partie de l’énergie des penseurs actuels est dépensée à la recherche du « bon saut » ou « crochet » conceptuel permettant d’attacher les rives du mental à celui du physique. Nous soutiendrons que le coeur du problème ne consiste pas à résoudre le différend entre les physicalistes et les avocats des qualia, mais plutôt à trouver la réponse à la question : pourquoi en sommes-nous arrivés là, i.e., à ce clivage sur l’axe phénoménal/physique ?“Everything is physical” physicalists claim. “Everything except qualia” reply the defenders of the Knowledge Argument. This thesis argues that both parties to this debate are committed to a traditional picture according to which one can tacitly adopt the standpoint of an off-stage narrator, capable of distinguishing ab initio between the different items in this conceptual scenario. The main claim here is that every time we artificially introduce a sharp conceptual distinction separating these two items or levels (mental and physical), we must automatically make a sophisticated conceptual leap in order to link the first-person qualitative perspective with the external physical world. Thus the physicalism/qualia dispute is only a by-product of an extended theoretical conception of the mind/world link which entails two distinct kinds of problems: (i) structural problems (to define and determine conceptually dual items like thought/matter, reason/senses, subject/object, etc.). Such problems require us to question “how are these items supposed to work together?” and this leads us to the second group of problems: (ii) mediation problems. The first group of problems inevitably leads to explanatory gaps; the second ends up needing to appeal to conceptual leaps in order to ensure the necessary link between two separate items. This exerts a powerful influence over the cast of our thoughts: seen from this angle, all philosophical enterprise comes down to the question of where to place the three following parameters: the world as it is, the conceptual picture which aims to represent the world as it is and the theorist-painter gifted with the ability to capture the world picture as it is. We also face the problem of finding the right mediators to assure coherence among the members of this trio, and the problem of setting the valid criteria guaranteeing the theorist-painter that what is captured on his conceptual canvas does indeed correspond to the world as it is, i.e. that he is not laboring under the delusions of an evil genie. In this thesis I argue against this way of putting things

Physicalisme et qualia (limites de la rationalité scientifique au XXe siècle)

Réduit à sa plus simple expression, ce travail de recherche met face à face deux acteurs s affrontant dans un duel philosophique : le physicalisme et l argument de la connaissance de Franck Jackson. La question clé autour de laquelle s agencera notre discussion ici est (1) Est-il vrai que Tout est physique ? Le coeur de la thèse que nous défendons peut être résumé ainsi : (T) Le clivage post-platonicien (tacite) entre les formes objectivées et les formes subjectivées de la pensée, provoque des fossés explicatifs (explicites), qui sont franchis (très souvent) via des sauts conceptuels (mystérieux), intercalés entre les étapes d une argumentation. Il sera argumenté ici que la distribution actuelle des débats sur l axe états physiques (objectifs) / états qualitatifs (subjectifs) subit une pression souterraine post-platonicienne. Conséquemment, une bonne partie de l énergie des penseurs actuels est dépensée à la recherche du bon saut ou crochet conceptuel permettant d attacher les rives du mental à celui du physique. Nous soutiendrons que le coeur du problème ne consiste pas à résoudre le différend entre les physicalistes et les avocats des qualia, mais plutôt à trouver la réponse à la question : pourquoi en sommes-nous arrivés là, i.e., à ce clivage sur l axe phénoménal/physique ?Everything is physical physicalists claim. Everything except qualia reply the defenders of the Knowledge Argument. This thesis argues that both parties to this debate are committed to a traditional picture according to which one can tacitly adopt the standpoint of an off-stage narrator, capable of distinguishing ab initio between the different items in this conceptual scenario. The main claim here is that every time we artificially introduce a sharp conceptual distinction separating these two items or levels (mental and physical), we must automatically make a sophisticated conceptual leap in order to link the first-person qualitative perspective with the external physical world. Thus the physicalism/qualia dispute is only a by-product of an extended theoretical conception of the mind/world link which entails two distinct kinds of problems: (i) structural problems (to define and determine conceptually dual items like thought/matter, reason/senses, subject/object, etc.). Such problems require us to question how are these items supposed to work together? and this leads us to the second group of problems: (ii) mediation problems. The first group of problems inevitably leads to explanatory gaps; the second ends up needing to appeal to conceptual leaps in order to ensure the necessary link between two separate items. This exerts a powerful influence over the cast of our thoughts: seen from this angle, all philosophical enterprise comes down to the question of where to place the three following parameters: the world as it is, the conceptual picture which aims to represent the world as it is and the theorist-painter gifted with the ability to capture the world picture as it is. We also face the problem of finding the right mediators to assure coherence among the members of this trio, and the problem of setting the valid criteria guaranteeing the theorist-painter that what is captured on his conceptual canvas does indeed correspond to the world as it is, i.e. that he is not laboring under the delusions of an evil genie. In this thesis I argue against this way of putting things.DIJON-BU Droit Lettres (212312101) / SudocSudocFranceF