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Bodily illusions have been used to investigate one’s sense of self and body ownership. This study explored the effect of the height of the first-person perspective (1PP) on out-of-body experience (OBE) illusion in which participants see their backs through a head-mounted display, receive visuo-tactile stimulation, and gradually feel as if they are sitting behind themselves, experiencing a sensation similar to an OBE. We hypothesized that increasing or decreasing the height of the 1PP would induce the OBE illusion at all heights and that participants’ perceived own heights would adjust according to the 1PP height. We also predicted that the size and distance of external objects would vary according to the perceived height of one’s own body. The results revealed that the OBE illusion occurred at all 1PP heights and was stronger when the 1PP height was lower or higher than usual. Meanwhile, the participants’ perceived own heights, the sizes and distances of external objects did not change. These results suggest that manipulating the 1PP may affect the magnitude of the OBE illusion, but not the perception of the dimensions of the self or external objects. The height of 1PP may be one of the important factors in the bodily illusion.

There are two basic aspects of attentional control. The ability to direct attention toward different objects is typically experienced as a fundamental indicator of attentional freedom. One can control what one attends to and directing attention is a relatively simple task. In contrast, sustaining attention on a chosen object proves to be difficult as mind-wandering seems to be inevitable. Does the problem of sustaining attention, mean that we are fundamentally unfree? We discuss this issue in light of an introspective study of directing and sustaining attention, looking specifically into the question of whether it is possible to experience the source of attention, i.e., the subject enacting freedom through attention. The study involved six persons performing different attention tasks over the course of about a month. Common experiences and contrasting reports are presented. This forms the basis for a discussion of the method of introspection and in particular of how to approach conflicting reports.

Would the neuroscientist who does not feel pain know what he is studying? In this paper, the author analyzes the subjective ontology of conscious mental states and its origin – the subject’s first-person perspective. The ontology of the mental is irreducibly first-person ontology. In the thought experiment with neuroscientist Peter, it will be shown that a comprehensive science of consciousness requires a combined approach, as the phenomena of neuroscience are internally defined. The asymmetry between first-person and third-person perspectives regarding mental states will be strongly emphasized. The third part of the paper will offer a perspectival approach to the hard problem of consciousness. In conclusion, a truly objective science of subjectivity, a genuine science of consciousness, would have to engage scientifically with the subject’s egocentric first-person perspective.

BackgroundAs one of the most common psychological problems, social anxiety disorder (SAD) has lots of negative effects on the physical and mental development of individuals, such as decreasing the quality of interpersonal relationships, and even causing depression, suicidal ideation, etc., as well as leads individuals to generate mental illness stigma. The mental illness stigma that individuals perceive affects not only how they perceive themselves (first-person perspective) but also how they perceive others’ appraisals of them (third-person perspective), which further exacerbates their anxiety symptoms.ObjectiveThe study aims to explore the self-processing characteristics of individuals with social anxiety disorder from the first-person perspective and the third-person perspective.MethodsThis study adopted the self-referential paradigm to conduct the recognition memory test on individuals with social anxiety disorder (30 participants in experiment 1) and individuals without social anxiety disorder (31 participants in experiment 2) in the two experiments.ResultsIn experiment 1, the recognition rate of individuals with social anxiety disorder under the self-appraisals condition was significantly higher than that under the condition of appraisals on mothers; in the three conditions of self-appraisals, appraisals on mothers and mothers’ reflected appraisals, the recognition rate of negative trait adjectives was significantly higher than that of positive trait adjectives. In experiment 2, there was no significant difference in recognition rate of individuals without social anxiety disorder under the three conditions, and the recognition rate of positive trait adjectives was significantly higher than that of negative trait adjectives under the three conditions.ConclusionIndividuals with social anxiety disorder have a negative bias in self-processing and are more likely to focus on self-information, which is different from the self-positive bias of individuals without social anxiety disorder. This study can be beneficial to know the self-cognitive characteristics of individuals with social anxiety disorder, help them get rid of negative cognitive patterns, and remove the mental illness stigma.

To design an online real-time transmission tool of irst-person perspective information. This information transmission tool is designed to help medical staff monitor the patient's condition changes and respond quickly, ensuring the patient's life safety. (本研究设计一种第一视角信息在线实时传输工具, 旨在方便医务人员第一时间监测到患者的病情变化趋势并迅速做出反应, 保障患者的生命安全。)

In this paper, we examine the metaphilosophical relevance of the phenomenon of sleep, suggesting that it has the potential to not only enrich the analysis of limit cases but also to test some of the ideas concerning the possibility of naturalizing phenomenology and its limits. Insofar as sleeping allows for both a first personal and a third personal description and challenges the usual primacy of the first-person point of view, exploring sleeping under the prism of its import for the phenomenological method allows to illuminate the relationships between a first personal transcendental phenomenology and a third personal naturalized one. We do this by examining Husserl’s treatment of sleep as a limit-case, and the problem of accounting for deep sleep from a first-personal perspective. Drawing from a Heidegger-inspired account of sleep, we argue that sleep demands for a type of approach that can be fairly described as ontological, and which reveals a new understanding of subjectivity as a dynamic unity of different modes of being. Although this approach challenges a first-personal based approach, it does not, however support the naturalization of phenomenology or undermine the project of a transcendental philosophy of experience.

ObjectiveAs a unique part of human thinking, people can project themselves into the past or the future for mental time travel. This study attempts to expand the temporal self into the domain of the collective self.MethodsWe used an adapted temporal collective self-reference paradigm to probe into the positivity bias of temporal collective self in this study. In Experiment 1, the first-person perspective was adopted for the participants to conduct the temporal collective self-reference processing, and the third-person perspective was adopted for the temporal collective self-reference processing in Experiment 2.ResultsThe findings indicated that no matter from the first-person perspective or the third-person perspective, people show positivity bias in the trait adjectives judgment, response times and recognition rates during the temporal collective self-processing.DiscussionThis study explores mental time travel on the level of collective self, and contributes to deepening the understanding of temporal collective self.

The COVID-19 pandemic has manifold negative consequences for people around the world, of which the psychosocial ones have been rather underrepresented in the public eye. Regarding social distancing measures, there is already some experimental work demonstrating that the use of face masks has detrimental effects on various aspects of social cognition such as emotion reading, face identification, and perceived closeness of persons. However, while these findings provide important clues, they do not shed light on what people experience when interacting in real life in a masked society. Therefore, in critical distance to cognitivist accounts and taking Direct Social Perception (DSP) approaches seriously, we developed a first-person experimental design and conducted a study with thirty-four participants in a dyadic setting with two conditions (without vs. with face mask). Data were analyzed with mixed methods including in-depth qualitative coding at three levels, code relations analyses, and various statistical tests. Results yielded significant differences across conditions at all qualitative levels, comprising, for example, expressive behavior, and, in particular, significant decreases of content-independent, complimentary mental micro-activities. In the context of DSP, we argue in the paper that these activities suggest the constitution of a quasi-sensory modality – conceived as I-Thou sense – that oscillates between strongly and weakly embodied mental activities, as the analyses show. In sum, this study suggests that mask-wearing impairs both functional directions of mental activity in relation to more or less embodied experience and thus intervenes deeply in fundamental processes of social perception and interaction.

The paper considers a polemic thesis that Viveiros de Castro’s Amerindian perspectivism is characterized by the overcoming of the first-person perspective. Multi-natural cosmological deictic figures instead of the first-person perspective. This opposes the latter to the perspective of transcendental philosophy. The thesis of multiple worlds is an interpretation of the indigenous perspective which is determined, among other themes, by its point of view toward the West. It implies that Amerindian perspectivism should be understood as resistance to naturalism, akin to phenomenology’s origin as it is conceived in eco-phenomenology. The ontological turn of anthropology is the most concerted attempt to formulate an anthropological version of Husserl’s reduction that reduces the division of first and third-person perspectives to reveal the indigenous cosmological deictics. The opponents of the ontological turn oppose it to phenomenology.

Unprecedented advancements in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC) have given rise to ethical questions about how to recognize and respect autonomy and a sense of agency of the personhood when those capacities are themselves disordered, as they typically are in patients with DoC. At the intersection of these questions rests the distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness. Indeed, evaluations of consciousness levels and capacity for recovery have a significant impact on decisions regarding whether to discontinue or prolong life-sustaining therapy for DoC patients. However, in the unconsciousness domain, there is the confusing array of terms that are regularly used interchangeably, making it quite challenging to comprehend what unconsciousness is and how it might be empirically grounded. In this opinion paper, we will provide a brief overview of the state of the field of unconsciousness and show how a rapidly evolving electroencephalogram (EEG) neuroimaging technique may offer empirical, theoretical, and practical tools to approach unconsciousness and to improve our ability to distinguish consciousness from unconsciousness and also nonconsciousness with greater precision, particularly in cases that are borderline (as is typical in patients with DoC). Furthermore, we will provide a clear description of three distant notions of (un)consciousness (unconsciousness, nonconsciousness, and subconsciousness) and discuss how they relate to the experiential selfhood which is essential for comprehending the moral significance of what makes life worth living.

Through an exemplary design case study, we look at how mediating bodily disturbances and cultivating perspective transition from first-to second-person perspective amplifies somaesthetic awareness. The paper focuses on the less explored aspect of soma design, which is the mediation of disturbing experiences that disrupt the everyday flow i.e., pain. The design process illustrated a transition between first- and second-person perspectives to cultivate and externalize the experience with pain as a wearable bodily interaction. The externalized pain experience was translated into an interactive wearable, ‘Squeaky/Pain’, that augments the wearer’s somaesthetic awareness via sound, tactile, and kinesthetic sensations. This paper makes two main contributions to soma design: introducing the implications of disturbing experiences for augmenting somaesthetic awareness and exemplifying how inner bodily disturbances can be materialized through the cultivation of first-and second-person perspectives.

Through an exemplary design case study, we look at how mediating bodily disturbances and cultivating perspective transition from first-to second-person perspective amplifies somaesthetic awareness. The paper focuses on the less explored aspect of soma design, which is the mediation of disturbing experiences that disrupt the everyday flow i.e., pain. The design process illustrated a transition between first- and second-person perspectives to cultivate and externalize the experience with pain as a wearable bodily interaction. The externalized pain experience was translated into an interactive wearable, ‘Squeaky/Pain’, that augments the wearer’s somaesthetic awareness via sound, tactile, and kinesthetic sensations. This paper makes two main contributions to soma design: introducing the implications of disturbing experiences for augmenting somaesthetic awareness and exemplifying how inner bodily disturbances can be materialized through the cultivation of first-and second-person perspectives.

Through an exemplary design case study, we look at how mediating bodily disturbances and cultivating perspective transition from first-to second-person perspective amplifies somaesthetic awareness. The paper focuses on the less explored aspect of soma design, which is the mediation of disturbing experiences that disrupt the everyday flow i.e., pain. The design process illustrated a transition between first- and second-person perspectives to cultivate and externalize the experience with pain as a wearable bodily interaction. The externalized pain experience was translated into an interactive wearable, ‘Squeaky/Pain’, that augments the wearer’s somaesthetic awareness via sound, tactile, and kinesthetic sensations. This paper makes two main contributions to soma design: introducing the implications of disturbing experiences for augmenting somaesthetic awareness and exemplifying how inner bodily disturbances can be materialized through the cultivation of first-and second-person perspectives.

Through an exemplary design case study, we look at how mediating bodily disturbances and cultivating perspective transition from first-to second-person perspective amplifies somaesthetic awareness. The paper focuses on the less explored aspect of soma design, which is the mediation of disturbing experiences that disrupt the everyday flow i.e., pain. The design process illustrated a transition between first- and second-person perspectives to cultivate and externalize the experience with pain as a wearable bodily interaction. The externalized pain experience was translated into an interactive wearable, ‘Squeaky/Pain’, that augments the wearer’s somaesthetic awareness via sound, tactile, and kinesthetic sensations. This paper makes two main contributions to soma design: introducing the implications of disturbing experiences for augmenting somaesthetic awareness and exemplifying how inner bodily disturbances can be materialized through the cultivation of first-and second-person perspectives.

Through an exemplary design case study, we look at how mediating bodily disturbances and cultivating perspective transition from first-to second-person perspective amplifies somaesthetic awareness. The paper focuses on the less explored aspect of soma design, which is the mediation of disturbing experiences that disrupt the everyday flow i.e., pain. The design process illustrated a transition between first- and second-person perspectives to cultivate and externalize the experience with pain as a wearable bodily interaction. The externalized pain experience was translated into an interactive wearable, ‘Squeaky/Pain’, that augments the wearer’s somaesthetic awareness via sound, tactile, and kinesthetic sensations. This paper makes two main contributions to soma design: introducing the implications of disturbing experiences for augmenting somaesthetic awareness and exemplifying how inner bodily disturbances can be materialized through the cultivation of first-and second-person perspectives.

As Virtual Reality (VR) technology has improved in hardware, accessibility of development and availability of applications, its interest has increased. However, the problem of Cybersickness (CS) still remains, causing uncomfortable symptoms in users. Therefore, this research seeks to identify and understand new CS mitigation strategies that can contribute to developer guidelines. Three hypotheses for strategies were devised and tested in an experiment. This involved a physical travel interface for flying through a Virtual Environment (VE) as a Control (CT) condition. On top of this, three manipulation conditions referred to as Gaze-tracking Vignette (GV), First-person Perspective with members representation (FP) and Fans and Vibration (FV) were applied. The experiment was between subjects, with 37 participants randomly allocated across conditions. According to the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) scores, significant evidence was found that GV and FP made CS worse. Evidence was also found that FV did not have an effect on CS. However, from the physiological data recorded, an overall lowering of heart rate for FV indicated that it might have some effect on the experience, but cannot be strongly linked with CS. Additionally, comments from some participants identified that they experienced symptoms consistent with CS. Amongst these, dizziness was the most common, with a few having issues with the usability of the travel interface. Despite some CS symptoms, most participants reported little negative impact of CS on the overall experience and feelings of immersion.

Mental time travel is one of the most remarkable achievements of mankind. On the one hand, people perceive past self, present self, and future self as a continuous unity; on the other hand, people have the ability to distinguish among the three types of temporal selves because there are different representations of them. In this study, we used an adapted temporal self-reference paradigm to explore the processing mechanism of different temporal selves. Temporal self-reference was performed from the first-person perspective in Experiment 1 and from the third-person perspective in Experiment 2. The results indicated that people showed a more positive bias toward future self compared with past self and present self no matter in the first-person perspective or third-person perspective. There was no difference in recognition rate among past self, present self, and future self. Compared with the first-person perspective, present self-processing in the third-person perspective was more abstract and generalized, which may reflect that the third-person perspective has the same distancing function as time. This study can deepen understandings on temporal self-appraisals from different perspectives.

Abstract Background Opioid agonist maintenance treatment (OAMT) is a first-line treatment for heroin dependence, but its effectiveness has been assessed primarily through clinical outcomes with a limited attention to patient perspectives. Despite the increased use of patient reported outcome measures their patient-centeredness is highly questionable. This is the protocol of a systematic review of qualitative research on how OAMT users construct the meaning of their quality of life and well-being and a scoping review of instruments that measure these domains. Methods We will conduct a systematic review of qualitative research exploring the views of quality of life of patients on OAMT (registration number CRD42018086490). According pre-specified eligibility criteria, we will include studies from a comprehensive search of bibliographical databases from their inception. We will extract data from included studies and assess their risk of bias with the CASP appraisal criteria, and will implement a thematic analysis to generate a set of interpretative analytical themes ascertaining their confidence using the CERQual approach. We will implement similar methods to conduct a scoping review to assess to what extent the existing measures of these domains were focused on user’s views, assessing their validity using the COSMIN methodology, and summarizing their characteristics and level of patient centeredness. Conclusion The findings from the reviews will contribute to obtain a genuine understanding of the perspective from users on OAMT regarding their perception of well-being and quality of life and will likely lead to greater patient centeredness when assessing such variables, which in turn may contribute to a more patient-centered care.

In the present work I inspect several answers to the question raised by Descartes: What Am I? I suggest that, although the proposal that I am identical tomy human organism or to some part of it (the thesis embraced by materialists) isthought to be the most plausible in nowadays scientific viewpoint, it faces a problemthat seems intractable, namely: the problem of accounting the identity-dependencebetween mental states and their subjects. Finally, I contend that the genuine bearers of mental states are, in the broad sense of the term, unitary subjects of experience, rather than persons.

This article aims to introduce a new solution to the Logical Problem of the Trinity. This solution is provided by utilising a number of theses within the field of contemporary metaphysics in order to establish a conceptual basis for a novel account and model of the doctrine of the Trinity termed Monarchical Aspectivalism, which will provide the means for proposing an alternative reading of the Athanasian Creed that is free from any consistency problems.

Drawing on the tradition of the Danish–German school of critical psychology, this empirical study discusses seven unaccompanied asylum-seeking adolescents’ experiences of the process of applying for asylum in Denmark. By privileging the first-person perspectives of the adolescents, the authors explore the conduct of their everyday lives at the asylum centre and at school. The project’s findings emphasise the societal, political, social and spatial conditions that contribute to the lack of meaningfulness the adolescents experienced regarding their engagement in schooling. In conclusion, the authors reflect on the potential in privileging the first-person perspective in social pedagogical work.

Depression has been widely studied by researchers from different fields, but its causes, and mechanism of action are still not clear. A difficulty emerges from the shifting from objective diagnosis or analysis to exploration of subjective feelings and experiences that influence the individuals' expression, communication and coping in facing depression. The integration of the experiential dimension of the first-person in studies on depression–and related methodological recommendations–are needed to improve the validity and generalizability of research findings. It will allow the development of timely and effective actions of care. Starting from providing a summary of the literature on theoretical assumptions and considerations for the study of the mind, with particular attention to the experiential dimension of patients with depression (aim #1 and #2), this contribution is aimed to provide practical suggestions for the design of research able to incorporate first- and third-person accounts (aim #3). It is also aimed to review qualified phenomenological methods for the acquisition and interpretation of experiential data in patients with depression (aim #4). Recognizing the first-person perspective in the study of depression is a major step toward a better understanding and treatment of this disorder. Theoretical constructs and technique suggestions that result from this review offer a valid starting point for the inclusion of the experiential dimension to common third-person research in the study of the mind.

Walking is a fundamental physical activity in humans. Various virtual walking systems have been developed using treadmill or leg-support devices. Using optic flow, foot vibrations simulating footsteps, and a walking avatar, we propose a virtual walking system that does not require limb action for seated users. We aim to investigate whether a full-body or hands-and-feet-only walking avatar with either the first-person (experiment 1) or third-person (experiment 2) perspective can convey the sensation of walking in a virtual environment through optic flows and foot vibrations. The viewing direction of the virtual camera and the head of the full-body avatar were linked to the actual user's head motion. We discovered that the full-body avatar with the first-person perspective enhanced the sensations of walking, leg action, and telepresence, either through synchronous or asynchronous foot vibrations. Although the hands-and-feet-only avatar with the first-person perspective enhanced the walking sensation and telepresence, compared with the no-avatar condition, its effect was less prominent than that of the full-body avatar. However, the full-body avatar with the third-person perspective did not enhance the sensations of walking and leg action; rather, it impaired the sensations of self-motion and telepresence. Synchronous or rhythmic foot vibrations enhanced the sensations of self-motion, waking, leg action, and telepresence, irrespective of the avatar condition. These results suggest that the full-body or hands-and-feet avatar is effective for creating virtual walking experiences from the first-person perspective, but not the third-person perspective, and that the foot vibrations simulating footsteps are effective, regardless of the avatar condition.

Abstract Introduction Personally meaningful past episodes, defined as episodic memories (EM), are subjectively re‐experienced from the natural perspective and location of one's own body, as described by bodily self‐consciousness (BSC). Neurobiological mechanisms of memory consolidation suggest how initially irrelevant episodes may be remembered, if related information makes them gain importance later in time, leading for instance, to a retroactive memory strengthening in humans. Methods Using an immersive virtual reality system, we were able to directly manipulate the presence or absence of one's body, which seems to prevent a loss of initially irrelevant, self‐unrelated past events. Results and Conclusion Our findings provide an evidence that personally meaningful memories of our past are not fixed, but may be strengthened by later events, and that body‐related integration is important for the successful recall of episodic memories.

Researchers in the field of empirical phenomenology often base their understanding on the theories of philosophical phenomenology, particularly favouring Husserl in their discussions and explaining obtained results in terms of pre-reflective and reflective experience. In this article we first outline various authors’ intuitions on the phenomenological tradition, before going on to examine certain assumptions of the empirical phenomenological tradition. In the second part we present preliminary results of our empirical phenomenological research in the attempt to point to the enormous phenomenological richness of pre-reflective awareness. To an extent we attempt to contribute to the understanding of the techniques of modern empirical phenomenological research by discussing the presuppositions of its relevant authors.

Phenomenology and empirical research are not naturally compatible and devising an empirical technique aiming at researching experience is a challenge. This article presents second-person in-depth phenomenological inquiry - a technique that tries to meet this challenge by allowing the transformation of a participant greatly interested in the investigation of their own subjective experience, into a co-researcher. It then provides an example of this technique being used in a study on enaction of beliefs, more closely showing the cooperative research process of researcher and co-researcher and its result: a grounded theory. The article ends with a discussion on the techniques strengths and weaknesses.

We summarize our recently introduced Projective Consciousness Model (PCM) (Rudrauf et al., 2017) and relate it to outstanding conceptual issues in the theory of consciousness. The PCM combines a projective geometrical model of the perspectival phenomenological structure of the field of consciousness with a variational Free Energy minimization model of active inference, yielding an account of the cybernetic function of consciousness, viz., the modulation of the field’s cognitive and affective dynamics for the effective control of embodied agents. The geometrical and active inference components are linked via the concept of projective transformation, which is crucial to understanding how conscious organisms integrate perception, emotion, memory, reasoning, and perspectival imagination in order to control behavior, enhance resilience, and optimize preference satisfaction. The PCM makes substantive empirical predictions and fits well into a (neuro)computationalist framework. It also helps us to account for aspects of subjective character that are sometimes ignored or conflated: pre-reflective self-consciousness, the first-person point of view, the sense of minenness or ownership, and social self-consciousness. We argue that the PCM, though still in development, offers us the most complete theory to date of what Thomas Metzinger has called “phenomenal selfhood.”

In a recent study (Chen et al., 2018), we conducted a series of experiments that induced the “four-hand illusion”: using a head-mounted display (HMD), the participant adopted the experimenter's first-person perspective (1PP) as if it was his/her own 1PP. The participant saw four hands via the HMD: the experimenter's two hands from the adopted 1PP and the subject's own two hands from the adopted third-person perspective (3PP). In the active four-hand condition, the participant tapped his/her index fingers, imitated by the experimenter. Once all four hands acted synchronously and received synchronous tactile stimulations at the same time, many participants felt as if they owned two more hands. In this paper, we argue that there is a philosophical implication of this novel illusion. According to Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962) and Legrand (2010), one can experience one's own body or body-part either as-object or as-subject but cannot experience it as both simultaneously, i.e., these two experiences are mutually exclusive. Call this view the Experiential Exclusion Thesis. We contend that a key component of the four-hand illusion—the subjective experience of the 1PP-hands that involved both “kinesthetic sense of movement” and “visual sense of movement” (the movement that the participant sees via the HMD)—provides an important counter-example against this thesis. We argue that it is possible for a healthy subject to experience the same body-part both as-subject and as-object simultaneously. Our goal is not to annihilate the distinction between body-as-object and body-as-subject, but to show that it is not as rigid as suggested by the phenomenologists.

There is an ongoing debate how one can integrate the subjective (first-person) dimension of experiences more thoroughly into neuropsychological research. In cognitive experimental memory research, for instance, cognitive psychology begins by separating the act of recollection from the context where recollections occur, so as to make memory research suitable for study in the experimental conditions of the laboratory. It is the claim of this article that the challenge for memory research consists not merely in the (possible) loss of meaning entailed by transforming embedded recollected experiences into operationalized cognitive functions. Rather, from the outset, the first-person experiential basis of the entire research procedure is often insufficiently elaborated and hence risks neglecting or misrepresenting significant dimensions of the phenomena it studies. I demonstrate this with regard to habits understood as procedural memories. Research based on the paradigm of embodied cognition and phenomenology has shown that procedural memory-based skills and habits are not necessarily confined to sub-personal (unconscious) processing mechanisms. This paradigm states that some cognitive processes involve not only the brain but also the pre-reflectively experienced lived-body. The key idea is that we have experiential access to bodily processes that are not yet conceptualized or reflexively mediated. In the final part of my paper, I delineate how such experiences can be integrated into the neuropsychological study of habits via the method of ‘front-loaded phenomenology.’

The aim of this article is to show that human persons belong, ontologically, in social ontology. After setting out my views on ontology, I turn to persons and argue that they have first-person perspectives in two stages (rudimentary and robust) essentially. Then I argue that the robust stage of the first-person persective is social, in that it requires a language, and languages require linguistic communities. Then I extend the argument to cover the rudimentary stage of the first-person perspective as well. I conclude by enumerating ways in which human persons differ from nonhuman animals.

Current design of virtual reality (VR) applications relies essentially on the transposition of users’ viewpoint in first-person perspective (1PP). Within this context, our research aims to compare the impact and the potentialities enabled via the integration of the third-person perspective (3PP) in immersive virtual environments (IVE). Our empirical study is conducted in order to assess the sense of presence, the sense of embodiment, and performance of users confronted with a series of tasks presenting a case of potential use for the video game industry. Our results do not reveal significant differences concerning the sense of spatial presence with either point of view. Nonetheless, they provide evidence confirming the relevance of using the first-person perspective to induce a sense of embodiment toward a virtual body, especially in terms of self-location and ownership. However, no significant differences were observed concerning the sense of agency. Concerning users’ performance, our results demonstrate that the first-person perspective enables more accurate interactions, while the third-person perspective provides better space awareness.

In this paper, I challenge two Cartesian assumptions. The first assumption to be challenged is that there is an independent solitary self (material or immaterial) that is a proper part of a person (i.e., a human being). I challenge this assumption by setting out a materialistic alternative to Descartes – one that, on the one hand, abandons solitariness, yet on the other hand, retains the significance of the first-person perspective so prominent in Descartes’ account. On my view, persons have first-person perspectives essentially, and first-person perspectives provide persistence conditions for persons. However, persons have no inner selves or inner agents; they have no parts that are selves at all. The second assumption that I challenge is one that equates what is real with what is in some strict sense mind-independent. The assumption, so widespread today, is that what has ontological status can exist in a world without mentality. On this assumption, nothing mental or intentional belongs in the basic ontology of the world. I’ll try to show that this assumption is traceable to Descartes’ view of minds and bodies, and that it is wrong.

The article briefly describes the relatively young field of cognitive science dedicated to the research of lived human experience – the so-called phenomenological inquiry (or first-person research). It enumerates the reasons for the renewed interest in the study of experience and outlines the field’s relation to the rest of cognitive science. With the help of an example (phenomenology of thinking), the article attempts to illustrate the importance of systematic study of experience and addresses some open questions emerging from such an enterprise.

A set of prominent designers embarked on a research journey to explore aesthetics in movement-based design. Here we unpack one of the design sensitivities unique to our practice: a strong first person perspective—where the movements, somatics and aesthetic sensibilities of the designer, design researcher and user are at the forefront. We present an annotated portfolio of design exemplars and a brief introduction to some of the design methods and theory we use, together substantiating and explaining the first-person perspective. At the same time, we show how this felt dimension, despite its subjective nature, is what provides rigor and structure to our design research. Our aim is to assist researchers in soma-based design and designers wanting to consider the multiple facets when designing for the aesthetics of movement. The applications span a large field of designs, including slow introspective, contemplative interactions, arts, dance, health applications, games, work applications and many others.

In this article the author presents a theory of personal identity (PI) that appeals both to Lynne Baker's approach and to Antonio Damasio's neurophilosophical theory. He discusses Damasio's theory of self relevant to the problem of PI (from his work The Feeling of What Happens) and Baker's description of first-person phenomena. Her distinction between making and attributing first-person reference and critical remarks related to her conception that have appeared are also pointed out. Finally, taking into account ontogenetic development of a human being, the author sketches a theory of PI according to which PI is determined by a so-called self with a first-person perspective. He uses here Ingarden's notion of a core/coreless object.

The aim of this article is to show that human persons belong, ontologically, in social ontology. After setting out my views on ontology, I turn to persons and argue that they have first-person perspectives in two stages (rudimentary and robust) essentially. Then I argue that the robust stage of the first-person persective is social, in that it requires a language, and languages require linguistic communities. Then I extend the argument to cover the rudimentary stage of the first-person perspective as well. I conclude by enumerating ways in which human persons differ from nonhuman animals.

Analysis may offer valuable methods for bridging the gap between first-person and third-person accounts of the mind. Using both systematic observational approaches and unstructured narrative interactions, psychoanalysts help patients articulate their experience and bring unconscious mental contents into awareness. Similar to seasoned meditators or phenomenologists, individuals who have undergone analysis are experts in discerning and describing their subjective experience, making them ideal neurophenomenology participants. Moreover, analytic techniques may provide a means of guiding untrained experimental participants to greater awareness of their mental continuum, as well as gathering subjective reports about fundamental yet elusive aspects of experience including selfhood, temporality, and inter-subjectivity. Mining psychoanlysis for its methodological innovations would offer a fresh turn for neuropsychoanalysis and cognitive science as a whole – showcasing the integrity of analysis alongside the irreducibility of human experience.

Self-consciousness is the remarkable human experience of being a subject: the ‘I’. Self-consciousness is typically bound to a body, and particularly to the spatial dimensions of the body, as well as to its location and displacement in the gravitational field. Because the vestibular system codes head position in three-dimensional space, vestibular cortex is likely to contribute to spatial aspects of bodily self-consciousness. We review here recent data showing vestibular effects on first-person perspective (the feeling from where ‘I’ experience the world) and self-location (the feeling where ‘I’ am located in space). We compare these findings to data showing vestibular effects on mental spatial transformation, self-motion perception, and body representation that show that vestibular signals contribute to various spatial representations of the body with respect to the external world. Finally, we discuss four posterior brain regions that process vestibular and other multisensory signals to encode spatial aspects of bodily self-consciousness: temporoparietal junction (TPJ), parietoinsular vestibular cortex (PIVC), medial superior temporal region (MST), and ventral intraparietal region (VIP). We propose that vestibular processing in these cortical regions is important for linking multisensory signals from within personal space with those from extrapersonal space, and for spatial aspects of bodily self-consciousness.

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.

Theoretical and empirical accounts suggest that impairments in self-other discrimination processes are likely to promote the expression of hallucinations. However, our understanding of such processes during adolescence is still at an early stage. The present study thus aims 1) to delineate the neural correlates sustaining mental simulation of actions involving self-performed actions (first-person perspective; 1PP) and other-performed actions (third-person perspective; 3PP) during adolescence 2) to identify atypical activation patterns during 1PP/3PP mental simulation of actions in hallucination-prone adolescents 3) to examine whether differential risk for schizophrenia (clinical vs genetic) is also associated with differential impairments in the 1PP/3PP mental simulation of actions during adolescence. Twenty-two typically developing controls (Control group; 6 females), twelve hallucination-prone adolescents (AH group; 7 females) and thirteen adolescents with 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome (22q11.2DS group; 4 females) were included in the study. During the fMRI task, subjects were presented with a cue (self-other priming cues) indicating to perform the task using either a first person perspective (you-1PP) or a third person perspective (friend-3PP) and then they were asked to mentally simulate actions based on the type of cue. Our results indicated that atypical patterns of cerebral activation, particularly in the key areas of self-other distinction, were found in both groups at risk for auditory hallucinations (AH and 22q11.2DS). More precisely, adolescents in the AH and 22q11.2DS groups presented decreased activations in the parieto-occipital region BA19 during 3PP. This study characterizes the neural correlates of mental imagery for actions during adolescence, and suggests that a differential risk for hallucination-proneness (clinical vs. genetic) is associated to similar patterns of atypical activations in key areas sustaining self-other discrimination processes.

Parents, teachers, and people who themselves experience sensory and movement differences have consistently reported disturbances of sensation and movement associated with autism. Our review of the literature has revealed both historical and recent references to and research about sensory and movement difference characteristics and symptoms for individuals with autism. What is notably infrequent in this literature, however, is research that highlights the perspective of the individual with autism. If we wish to truly understand the experience of sensory and movement differences for individuals with autism, we must explore their experiences and perspectives. This study presents a qualitative analysis of more than 40 hours in-depth inquiry into the lives of five individuals with the autism label. Data were sorted into six categories: perception, action, posture, emotion, communication, and cognition. The insights into sensory and movement differences and autism offered by these individuals was illuminating. We found that the data strongly supported the presence of disruption of organization and regulation of sensory and movement differences in the lived experience of these participants with autism. The present data suggests that in autism this disruption of organization and regulation is amplified in terms of quantity, quality, intensity, and may affect everyday life. These data contribute to a more expansive view of autism that incorporates the possibility that autism is a disorder that affects motor planning, behavior, communication, the sensory motor system, and the dynamic interaction of all of these.

Recent advances in experimental science have made it possible to investigate the perceptual processes involved in generating a sense of owning an entire body. This is achieved by full-body ownership illusions which make use of specific patterns of visual and somatic stimuli integration. Here we investigate the fundamental question of the reference frames used in the process of attributing an entire body to the self. We quantified the strength of the body-swap illusion in conditions where the participants were observing this artificial body from the perspective of the first or third person. Consistent results from subjective reports and physiological recordings show that the first person visual perspective is critical for the induction of this full-body ownership illusion. This demonstrates that the multisensory integration processes producing the sense of corporeal self operates in an ego-centric reference frame.