Abstract
It is not necessarily the case that we ever have experiences of self, but human beings do regularly report instances for which self is experienced as absent. That is, there are times when body parts, mental states, or actions are felt to be alien. Here, I sketch an explanatory framework for explaining these alienation experiences, a framework that also attempts to explain the “mental glue” whereby self is bound to body, mind, or action. The framework is a multidimensional model that integrates personal and sub-personal components, psychological and neural processes. I then proceed to show how this model can be applied to explain the action-related passivity experiences of persons suffering from schizophrenia. I argue that a distinctive phenomenological mark of these experiences is that they are vividly felt, unlike ordinary actions (those taken to belong to self), and I seek to explain these heightened sensory experiences from within the proposed framework. I also propose hypotheses concerning such phenomena as thought insertion and anarchic hand syndrome that are motivated by this framework. Finally, I argue that the proposed model and view of self-experiences is consistent with several aspects of and theories of consciousness, especially theories which indicate that consciousness is more likely to be engaged when we are dealing with novelty or error—e.g., when self seems to have gone missing. I conclude by recommending that if we wish to learn about self, we would be well advised to attend closely to those times when it seems absent.
“The self is an absence…” (Sorensen 2007, p. 450)
“…we can feel the absence of the self…but not the presence of the self.” (Prinz 2012a, p. 148)
An erratum to this chapter can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4585-84-2_9
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Notes
- 1.
There is something potentially misleading about talk of a relationship between self and body parts, mental states, or actions. Talk of belonging or mental glue in such contexts suggests a two-place relation, which is not the case, at least not if one of the relata is taken to be an experience of self (cf. Prinz 2012b, p. 231). Although for expository purposes I do write in such a way that a relationship of this type might seem to be implied, as I explain below, “self” here is taken to be a distinctive type of neural activity, not an experience in and of itself. What Baars et al. (2003) and Baars (2007) metaphorically refer to as the brain’s “observing self” is a useful way to think of this relationship.
- 2.
Throughout this manuscript I use “introspection” in what Shoemaker (1994, p. 258) dubs the “humdrum” sense, referring to information we have access to that is expressed in such remarks as “it itches,” “I’m thirsty,” and so forth.
- 3.
The thalamus projects a large number of axons to all parts of the cortex; the cortex projects an even greater number of axons to the thalamus (Jones 2007).
- 4.
Italics not contained in the original.
- 5.
These experiments attempt to capture, under controlled conditions, certain aspects of what persons experience when they play with an Ouija board.
- 6.
Somewhat similar reactions to pain have been reported for those who have undergone surgical ablation of pathways linking the thalamus with parts of the frontal lobes (Klein 2013a, pp. 91–93).
- 7.
Instances of mental states failing to cluster in tacitly expected ways are plentiful. To cite just one other example, those who suffer from motion blindness have otherwise normal visual experiences of the external world, but their ability to perceive motion is greatly impaired (e.g., Zihl et al. 1983). Typically visual perceptions of color and shape cluster with motion. But in these rare cases, clustering fails.
- 8.
CMS regions include the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and the posterior cingulated cortex. The CMS overlaps with Feinberg’s (2009, pp. 152–155) “integrative self-system” and with the default-mode network (Raichle 2010), which has also been implicated in self-referential processing.
- 9.
I will not develop my reasons in detail, but I submit that part of the confusion in this vicinity is due to a failure to distinguish clearly and consistently between “qualitative” psychological states, like perceptions and sensations, and “non-qualitative” states, like beliefs or desires (cf. Rosenthal 2005, pp. 218–219, 303–305). Bayne et al., when referring to ordinary action, seem to be writing about non-qualitative states. My position is that in ordinary action the qualitative states though are silent. That is, ordinarily, when we act, our actions are not accompanied by distinctive perceptions or sensations. As to whether ordinary actions are accompanied by distinctive non-qualitative states, that is a separate issue.
- 10.
The visual experience that objects in the world are moving, when they are actually stationary, can also be caused by gently pressing the eyeball or by paralyzing the eye with curare (Stephens and Graham 2000, p. 136).
- 11.
Binding comprises both a predictive and a retrospective mechanism; schizophrenia is associated with an impairment to the former (Voss et al. 2010).
- 12.
Perhaps the contents of auditory hallucinations, however, are explainable in such terms (Lane and Northoff 2012). Auditory hallucinations can be the sound of one’s own voice, as in “thought broadcast” (Pawar and Spence 2003), or they could be the voices of someone familiar or someone unknown (David 2004). The model proposed here suggests that the difference among these three types might be due to self-related processing. For a novel hypothesis of auditory verbal hallucinations that touches upon some related issues, see, Northoff and Qin (2011) and Northoff (2013a, p. 349).
- 13.
Italics not contained in original.
- 14.
Marcel does observe that it is possible that stimulation of the thalamus causes both the action and an intention, but patients never reported an “urge to do the action.” This leaves only the possibility that an unconscious intention was triggered by the stimulus, but there is no evidence to support this claim.
- 15.
Italics not contained in the original.
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Acknowledgments
I express my heartfelt gratitude to Ellie Hua Wang and to Tzu-Wei Hung for their constructive comments on previous versions of this manuscript. For much useful discussion, I am also grateful to the many other participants in Academia Sinica’s International Conference on Language and Action, Taipei, Taiwan (September 17–18, 2013). Funding for this research was, in part, provided by National Science Council of Taiwan research grants, 100-2410-H-038-009-MY3 and 102-2420-H-038-001-MY3.
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Lane, T. (2014). When Actions Feel Alien—an Explanatory Model. In: Hung, TW. (eds) Communicative Action. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4585-84-2_4
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