Notes on the video "Being No One: Consciousness, "The Phenomenal Self, and the First Person Perspective†by Thomas Metzinger.
“The Story of Mary†is a thought experiment by Frank Jackson upon which he bases a knowledge argument. It goes like this: Before leaving her achromatic prison Mary knows everything that can be known physically or neuro-scientifically about the conscious color of human beings. When first viewing a colored object she acquires new knowledge. This knowledge is factual knowledge. Ergo Mary, before having her first conscious color experience, did not know all the facts one can know with regard to color experience. Thus, there are non-physical facts –for instance about conscious human color vision–that can only be grasped by phenomenal knowledge. Therefore, physicalism is false.
From this we see the notion of a first person perspective and the notion of a self from which this first person perspective originates. This raises the question: What is a first person perspective? It has three phenomenological target properties:
“Minenessâ€: --a higher-order property of particular forms of phenomenal content.
Examples: I experience my leg as belonging to me; I always experience my thought and my emotions as part of my own consciousness; voluntary acts are initiated by my self.
Example: The rubber hand illusion:
[size=75]Touching a Rubber Hand: Feeling of Body Ownership Is Associated with Activity in Multi-sensory Brain Areas
H. Henrik Ehrsson,1 Nicholas P. Holmes,2 and Richard E. Passingham1,2
1Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology, Institute of Neurology, London WC1N 3BG, United Kingdom, and 2Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3UD, United Kingdom
In the “rubber-hand illusion,” the sight of brushing of a rubber hand at the same time as brushing of the person’s own hidden hand is sufficient to produce a feeling of ownership of the fake hand. We have shown previously that this illusion is associated with activity in the multi-sensory areas, most notably the ventral pre-motor cortex (Ehrsson et al., 2004). However, it remains to be demonstrated that this illusion does not simply reflect the dominant role of vision and that the pre-motor activity does not reflect a visual representation of an object near the hand. To address these issues, we introduce a somatic rubber-hand illusion. The experimenter moved the blindfolded participant’s left index finger so that it touched the fake hand, and simultaneously, he touched the participant’s real right hand, synchronizing the touches as perfectly as possible. After 9.7 s, this stimulation elicited an illusion that one was touching one’s own hand. We scanned brain activity during this illusion and two control conditions, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Activity in the ventral pre-motor cortices, intra-parietal cortices, and the cerebellum was associated with the illusion of touching one’s own hand. Furthermore, the rated strength of the illusion correlated with the degree of pre-motor and cerebellar activity. This finding suggests that the activity in these areas reflects the detection of congruent multi-sensory signals from one’s own body, rather than of visual representations. We propose that this could be the mechanism for the feeling of body ownership. [/size]
Selfhood: --pre-reflexive self-intimacy: the phenomenal target property.
Example: I am someone, I experience myself as being identical through time; the contents of my phenomenological self-consciousness form a coherent whole; before initiating and independently of any intellectual operations I am already directly acquainted with the contents of my self-consciousness.
“Perceptivalnessâ€: --a global, structural property of phenomenal space as a whole. It possesses an immovable center.
Problem: I am this center myself. To be phenomenally aware means to possess an inward perspective, and to take on this perspective in the subjective experience of the world and of one’s own mental states.
Representational analysis of the three target properties introduces a new theoretical entity: The phenomenal self-model (PSM) which forms the representational instantiation-basis of the phenomenal properties to be explained.
What is a self-model? It is an episodically active representational entity, the content of which is formed by the properties of the system itself. It does this through processes of simulation, emulation i.e. self-modeling. The background assumption is that the self model possesses a true neurobiological description, for instance as a complex activation pattern in the human brain.
The phenomenal self-model is that part of the mental self-model, which is currently embedded into the highest order, integrated representational structure, the global model of the world (cf. Yates 1975, Baars, 1988, 1997). The phenomenal content of the self-model supervenes locally. It is a plastic, multi-modal structure, possibly evolving from a partially innate and hard-wired model of the spatial properties of the system (e.g. from a long term body image; O’Shaughnessy 1995; May 28, 2007Amasio 1994, Melzack 1989, 1992, 1997, Kinsbourne 1995, Metzinger 1993).
An active self-model is a sub-personal functional state. It plays a specific causal role, i.e. from am analytical perspective it is a discrete set of causal relations.
Example: Under a classical-cognitive description it is a transient computational module, which is episodically activated by the system in order to regulate its interaction with the environment (cf. Conant & Ashby 1970).
A “teleo-functionalist†background assumption behind the self-model is that the development and the activation of this computational module plays a role for the system. The functional self-model possesses a true evolutionary description, i.e. it was a weapon, which was invented and optimized in the course of a cognitive arms race [cf. Clark 1989, p61; Millikan 1989; Dennett 1987, Lycam 1987].
The functional instantiation-basis of the phenomenal first-person perspective is a specific cognitive achievement: The capacity to open and employ centered representational spaces.
Mineness–All representational states which are embedded into the currently active self-model gain the additional higher-order property of phenomenal mineness [non-conceptual sense of ownership]. If this integrational process is disturbed, different neuropsychological syndromes or altered states of conscious result:
Examples:
Consciously experienced thoughts are not my own thoughts any more: florid schizophrenia.
My leg is not my leg any more: unilateral hemi-neglect.
My arm performs goal-directed actions without my own control: alien hand syndrome.
