Floridi’s infosphere consisting of informational reality is estimated and delineated by introducing the new notion of Typ-Ken, an undifferentiated amalgam of type and token that can be expressed as either type or token dependent on contingent ontological commitment. First, we elaborate Floridi’s system, level of abstraction (LoA), model, and structure scheme, which is proposed to reconcile ontic with epistemic structural reality, and obtain the duality of type and token inherited in the relationship between LoA and model. While we focus on (...) the ontological commitment that can negotiate and emphasize the discrepancy between type and token, we show that most research focusing on different hierarchical layers (type and token) has converged onto the flattened perspective of type and token to clarify the role of ontological commitment. We propose the idea of Typ-Ken to avoid this flattening. In addition, we elaborate Taddeo and Floridi’s criticism of approaches to the symbol grounding problem and show that their criticism based on the zero semantical commitment condition is specific to the agents affected by the flattening. We then take bird flocks as a metaphor for the living infosphere as if it had one mind. The knowledge recently yielded by image analysis indicates that it is difficult for previous flock models based on agents equipped with the flattening of local (token) and global (type) to show the special feature of a flock of the scale-free proportion (SFP). We show here that agents based on the Typ-Ken can reveal the SFP, which is the essential characteristic of the living infosphere. In other words, Typ-Ken is an expression for informational reality (LoA and model with ontological commitment) that can reveal seamless local and global interactions in the functioning of a flock or infosphere. (shrink)

We challenge Gallagher’s distinction between the sense of ownership (SO) and the sense of agency (SA) as two separable modalities of experience of the minimal self and argue that a careful investigation of the examples provided to promote this distinction in fact reveals that SO and SA are intimately related and modulate each other. We propose a way to differentiate between the various notions of SO and SA that are currently used interchangeably in the debate, and suggest a more gradual (...) reading of the two that allows for various blends of SO and SA. Such an approach not only provides us with a richer phenomenology but also with a more parsimonious view of the minimal self. (shrink)

Manipulating sensory and motor cues can cause an illusionary perception of ownership of a fake body part. Presumably, the illusion can work as long as the false body part’s position and appearance are anatomically plausible. Here, we introduce an illusion that challenges past assumptions on body ownership. We used virtual reality to switch and mirror participants’ views of their hands. When a participant moves their physical hand, they see the incongruent virtual hand moving. The result is an anatomically implausible configuration (...) of the fake hand. Despite the hand switch, participants reported significant body ownership sensations over the virtual hands. In the first between-group experiment, we found that the strength of body ownership over the incongruent hands was similar to that of congruent hands. Whereas, in the second within-group experiment, anatomical incongruency significantly decreased body ownership. Still, participants reported significant body ownership sensations of the switched hands. Curiously, we found that perceived levels of agency mediate the effect of anatomical congruency on body ownership. These findings offer a fresh perspective on the relationship between anatomical plausibility and assumed body ownership. We propose that goal-directed and purposeful actions can override anatomical plausibility constraints and discuss this in the context of the immersive properties of virtual reality. (shrink)

A simple experimental paradigm creates the powerful illusion that one is touching one’s own hand even when the two hands are separated by 15 cm. The participant uses her right hand to administer stimulation to a prosthetic hand while the Examiner provides identical stimulation to the participant’s receptive left hand. Change in felt position of the receptive hand toward the prosthetic hand has previously led to the interpretation that the participant experiences self-touch at the location of the prosthetic hand, and (...) experiences a sense of ownership of the prosthetic hand. Our results argue against this interpretation. We assessed change in felt position of the participant’s receptive hand but we also assessed change in felt position of the participant’s administering hand. Change in felt position of the administering hand was significantly greater than change in felt position of the receptive hand. Implications for theories of ownership are discussed. (shrink)

The rubber hand paradigm is used to create the illusion of self-touch, by having the participant administer stimulation to a prosthetic hand while the Examiner, with an identical stimulus , administers stimulation to the participant’s hand. With synchronous stimulation, participants experience the compelling illusion that they are touching their own hand. In the current study, the robustness of this illusion was assessed using incongruent stimuli. The participant used the index finger of the right hand to administer stimulation to a prosthetic (...) hand while the Examiner used a paintbrush to administer stimulation to the participant’s left hand. The results indicate that this violation of tactile expectations does not diminish the illusion of self-touch. Participants experienced the illusion despite the use of incongruent stimuli, both when vision was precluded and when visual feedback provided clear evidence of the tactile mismatch. (shrink)

The effect of the body transfer illusion on the perceived strength of self- and externally-generated “tickle” sensations was investigated. As expected, externally generated movement produced significantly higher ratings of tickliness than those associated with self-generated movements. Surprisingly, the body transfer illusion had no influence on the ratings of tickliness, suggesting that highly surprising, and therefore hard to predict, experiences of body image and first-person perspective do not abolish the attenuation of tickle sensations. In addition, evidence was found that a version (...) of the rubber hand illusion exists within the body transfer illusion. We situate our findings within the larger debate over sensory attenuation: there is an attenuation of prediction errors that depends upon the context in which sensory input is predicted , and sensory attenuation is a necessary consequence of self-generated movement irrespective of context . The results support the notion of active inference. (shrink)

This paper explores some of the differences between the enactive approach in cognitive science and the extended mind thesis. We review the key enactive concepts of autonomy and sense-making . We then focus on the following issues: (1) the debate between internalism and externalism about cognitive processes; (2) the relation between cognition and emotion; (3) the status of the body; and (4) the difference between ‘incorporation’ and mere ‘extension’ in the body-mind-environment relation.

There is an increasing amount of empirical work investigating the sense of agency, i.e. the registration that we are the initiators of our own actions. Many studies try to relate the sense of agency to an internal feed-forward mechanism, called the ‘‘comparator model’’. In this paper, we draw a sharp distinction between a non-conceptual level of feeling of agency and a conceptual level of judgement of agency. By analyzing recent empirical studies, we show that the comparator model is not able (...) to explain either. Rather, we argue for a two-step account: a multifactorial weighting process of different agency indicators accounts for the feeling of agency, which is, in a second step, further processed by conceptual modules to form an attribution judgement. This new framework is then applied to disruptions of agency in schizophrenia, for which the comparator model also fails. Two further extensions are discussed: We show that the comparator model can neither be extended to account for the sense of ownership (which also has to be differentiated into a feeling and a judgement of ownership) nor for the sense of agency for thoughts. Our framework, however, is able to provide a unified account for the sense of agency for both actions and thoughts. (shrink)

Bodily awareness seems to present the body as a topologically connected whole, composed of many parts. In consequence, the source of topological and mereological content of bodily awareness comes into question. In particular, it may be asked whether (a) such content is provided by the bodily sense, i.e., sensory mechanisms which, like proprioception, presents the body “from the inside,” or (b) it is a product of “exteroceptive” elements of bodily awareness, which represents the body “from the outside” in a similar (...) way to that of other physical objects. This paper argues that while passive touch and proprioception are unlikely to present the body as a topological and a mereological whole, such content is likely to be provided by kinesthesis. In consequence, it is plausible that holistic topological and mereological bodily content is present in virtue of certain mechanisms of bodily sense. (shrink)

The “body image” is a putative mental representation of one’s own body, including structural and geometric details, as well as the more familiar visual and affective aspects. Very little research has investigated how we learn the structure of our own body, with most researchers emphasising the canonical visual representation of the body when we look at ourselves in a mirror. Here, we used non-visual self-touch in healthy participants to investigate the possibility that primary sensorimotor experience may influence cognitive representations of (...) one’s own body structure. Participants used the fingers of one hand , to touch the fingers of the other . A conflict between the experience of the active and passive hand was introduced by experimenter interleaving their fingers with the fingers of the participant’s passive hand. This led to the active hand experiencing that it touched more fingers than the passive hand felt it was being touched by. The effects on representation of body structure were assessed using an implicit measure based on Kinsbourne and Warrington’s ‘in-between task’. We found an underestimation of the number of fingers in the central part of the hand specifically linked to the experience of self-touch. This pattern of results corresponds to the experience of the passive hand, but not the active hand. Nevertheless, comparable reorganisation of fingers within the hand representation was found for both active and passive hands. We show that primary sensorimotor experience can modify the representation of body structure. This modification is driven by the passive experience of being touched, rather than by the active experience of touching. We believe this is the first experimental study of effects of self-touch on the mental representation of the body. (shrink)

I offer an account of the experience of acting that demonstrates how agentive aspects of experience associated with the execution of intentions are richly integrated with perceptual aspects associated with parts of action taking place in the publicly observable world. On the view I elucidate, the experience of acting is often both an engagement with the world and a type of intimate acquaintance with it. In conscious action the agent consciously intervenes in the world and consciously experiences the world she (...) is changing. In section one, I discuss extant accounts of the experience of acting, noting deficiencies. In sections two and three, I develop my own account, drawing on Casey O’Callaghan’s work on multi-modal perception. In the conclusion, I discuss ramifications for psychology and philosophy. (shrink)

Each of us enjoys a special awareness of (some) of her mental states. The adverbial model of first-person awareness claims that to be aware of a mental state is for it to be conscious, where ‘conscious’ describes the kind of state it is, rather than denoting a form of awareness directed at it. Here, I present an argument for construing first-person awareness of intentions adverbially, by showing that this model can meet a serious challenge posed by the simulation hypothesis, which (...) draws on data about schizophrenia. (shrink)

The parietal cortex is divided into two major functional regions: the anterior parietal cortex that includes primary somatosensory cortex, and the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) that includes the rest of the parietal lobe. The PPC contains multiple representations of space. In Dijkerman & de Haan's (D&dH's) model, higher spatial representations are separate from PPC functions. This model should be developed further so that the functions of the somatosensory system are integrated with specific functions within the PPC and higher spatial representations. (...) Through this further specification of the model, one can make better predictions regarding functional interactions between somatosensory and visual systems. (shrink)

We are perceivers, we are thinkers, and we are also agents, bringing about physical events, such as bodily movements and their consequences. What we do tells us, and others, a lot about who we are. On the one hand, who we are determines what we do. On the other hand, acting is also a process of self-discovery and self-shaping. Pivotal to this mutual shaping of self and agency is the sense of agency, or agentive self-awareness, i.e., the sense that one (...) is the agent of an action. (shrink)

Different sort of people are interested in personal identity. Philosophers frequently ask what it takes to remain oneself. Caregivers imagine their patients’ experience. But both philosophers and caregivers think from the armchair: they can only make assumptions about what it would be like to wake up with massive bodily changes. Patients with a locked-in syndrome (LIS) suffer a full body paralysis without cognitive impairment. They can tell us what it is like. Forty-four chronic LIS patients and 20 age-matched healthy medical (...) professionals answered a 15-items questionnaire targeting: (A) global evaluation of identity, (B) body representation and (C) experienced meaning in life. In patients, selfreported identity was correlated with B and C. Patients differed with controls in C. These results suggest that the paralyzed body remains a strong component of patients’ experienced identity, that patients can adjust to objectives changes perceived as meaningful and that caregivers fail in predicting patients’ experience. (shrink)

Different sort of people are interested in personal identity. Philosophers frequently ask what it takes to remain oneself. Caregivers imagine their patients’ experience. But both philosophers and caregivers think from the armchair: they can only make assumptions about what it would be like to wake up with massive bodily changes. Patients with a locked-in syndrome suffer a full body paralysis without cognitive impairment. They can tell us what it is like. Forty-four chronic LIS patients and 20 age-matched healthy medical professionals (...) answered a 15-items questionnaire targeting: global evaluation of identity, body representation and experienced meaning in life. In patients, self-reported identity was correlated with B and C. Patients differed with controls in C. These results suggest that the paralyzed body remains a strong component of patients’ experienced identity, that patients can adjust to objectives changes perceived as meaningful and that caregivers fail in predicting patients’ experience. (shrink)

The sense of agency is a central aspect of human self-consciousness and refers to the experience of oneself as the agent of one’s own actions. Several different cognitive theories on the sense of agency have been proposed implying divergent empirical approaches and results, especially with respect to neural correlates. A multifactorial and multilevel model of the sense of agency may provide the most constructive framework for integrating divergent theories and findings, meeting the complex nature of this intriguing phenomenon.

The recent distinction between sense of agency and sense of body-ownership has attracted considerable empirical and theoretical interest. The respective contributions of central motor signals and peripheral afferent signals to these two varieties of body experience remain unknown. In the present review, we consider the methodological problems encountered in the empirical study of agency and body-ownership, and we then present a series of experiments that study the interplay between motor and sensory information. In particular, we focus on how multisensory signals (...) interact with body representations to generate the sense of body-ownership, and how the sense of agency modulates the sense of body-ownership. Finally, we consider the respective roles of efferent and afferent signals for the experience of one’s own body and actions, in relation to self-recognition and the recognition of other people’s actions. We suggest that the coherent experience of the body depends on the integration of efferent information with afferent information in action contexts. Overall, whereas afferent signals provide the distinctive content of one’s own body experience, efferent signals seem to structure the experience of one’s own body in an integrative and coherent way. (shrink)

The objective of the research presented in this paper was to investigate whether an association existed between the activation of the body schema and reaching adulthood among people in late adolescence. Three activities that are known to enjoy popularity among young people were analysed, namely: dancing, playing computer games that require motor involvement, and playing computer games of an educational and entertaining character. It was assumed that the chosen forms of activity correspond to three levels of activation of the body (...) schema. The following research methods have been applied to this study: the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, the Defence Style Questionnaire, and the Bodily Self Representation Questionnaire. The study has proven that the activation of body schema through dance is significantly related to high self-esteem and the use of mainly mature and neurotic defence mechanisms in threat situations. (shrink)

I introduce and defend the notion of a cognitive account of the sense of ownership. A cognitive account of the sense of ownership holds that one experiences something as one's own only if one thinks of something as one's own. By contrast, a phenomenal account of the sense of ownership holds that one can experience something as one's own without thinking about anything as one's own. I argue that we have no reason to favour phenomenal accounts over cognitive accounts, that (...) cognitive accounts are plausible given that much of our mental activity has unnoticed effects on our mental life, and that certain illusory experiences of body ownership sometimes described as thought-independent may be best explained as imaginative perceptual experiences. (shrink)

This metatheoretical paper develops a list of new research targets by exploring particularly promising interdisciplinary contact points between empirical dream research and philosophy of mind. The central example is the MPS-problem. It is constituted by the epistemic goal of conceptually isolating and empirically grounding the phenomenal property of “minimal phenomenal selfhood,” which refers to the simplest form of self-consciousness. In order to precisely describe MPS, one must focus on those conditions that are not only causally enabling, but strictly necessary to (...) bring it into existence. This contribution argues that research on bodiless dreams, asomatic out-of-body experiences, and full-body illusions has the potential to make decisive future contributions. Further items on the proposed list of novel research targets include differentiating the concept of a “first-person perspective” on the subcognitive level; investigating relevant phenomenological and neurofunctional commonalities between mind-wandering and dreaming; comparing the functional depth of embodiment across dream and wake states; and demonstrating that the conceptual consequences of cognitive corruption and systematic rationality deficits in the dream state are much more serious for philosophical epistemology (and, perhaps, the methodology of dream research itself) than commonly assumed. The paper closes by specifying a list of potentially innovative research goals that could serve to establish a stronger connection between dream research and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

When subjects view stimulation of a rubber hand while feeling congruent stimulation of their own hand, they may come to feel that the rubber hand is part of their own body. This illusion of body ownership is termed ‘Rubber Hand Illusion’ . We investigated sensitivity of RHI to spatial mismatches between visual and somatic experience. We compared the effects of spatial mismatch between the stimulation of the two hands, and equivalent mismatches between the postures of the two hands. We created (...) the mismatch either by adjusting stimulation or posture of the subject’s hand, or, in a separate group of subjects, by adjusting stimulation or posture of the rubber hand. The matching processes underlying body ownership were asymmetrical. The illusion survived small changes in the subject’s hand posture, but disappeared when the same posture transformations were applied to the rubber hand. Mismatch between the stimulation delivered to the subject’s hand and the rubber hand abolished the illusion. The combination of these two situations is of particular interest. When the subject’s hand posture was slightly different from the rubber hand posture, the RHI remained as long as stimulation of the two hands was congruent in a hand-centred spatial reference frame, even though the altered posture of the subject’s hand meant that stimulation was incongruent in external space. Conversely, the RHI was reduced when the stimulation was incongruent in hand-centred space but congruent in external space. We conclude that the visual–tactile correlation that causes the RHI is computed within a hand-centred frame of reference, which is updated with changes in body posture. Current sensory evidence about what is ‘me’ is interpreted with respect to a prior mental body representation. (shrink)

Dijkerman & de Haan (D&dH) propose a somatosensory perceptual pathway that informs a consciously accessible body image, and an action pathway that provides information to a body schema, which is not consciously accessible. We argue that the body schema may become accessible to consciousness in some circumstances, possibly resulting from cross talk, but that this may be detrimental to skilled movement production.

Artificial stimulation of the peripheral vestibular system has been shown to improve ownership of body parts in neurological patients, suggesting vestibular contributions to bodily self-consciousness. Here, we investigated whether galvanic vestibular stimulation interferes with the mechanisms underlying ownership, touch, and the localization of one’s own hand in healthy participants by using the “rubber hand illusion” paradigm. Our results show that left anodal GVS increases illusory ownership of the fake hand and illusory location of touch. We propose that these changes are (...) due to vestibular interference with spatial and/or temporal mechanisms of visual-tactile integration leading to an enhancement of visual capture. As only left anodal GVS lead to such changes, and based on neurological data on body part ownership, we suggest that this vestibular interference is mediated by the right temporo-parietal junction and the posterior insula. (shrink)

Schilbach et al. contrast second-person and third-person approaches to social neuroscience. We discuss relations between second-person and first-person approaches, arguing that they cannot be studied in isolation. Contingency is central for converging first- and second-person approaches. Studies of embodiment show how contingencies scaffold first-person perspective and how the transition from a third- to a second-person perspective fundamentally involves first-person contributions.