Self-consciousness is a product of evolution. Few people today disagree with the evolutionary history of humans. But the nature of self-consciousness is still to be explained, and the story of evolution has rarely been used as a framework for studies on consciousness during the 20th century. This last point may be due to the fact that modern study of consciousness came up at a time where dominant philosophical movements were not in favor of evolutionist theories (Cunningham 1996). Research on consciousness (...) based on Phenomenology or on Analytic Philosophy has been mostly taking the characteristics of humans as starting points. Relatively little has been done with bottom-up approaches, using performances of animals as a simpler starting point to understand the generation of consciousness through evolution. But this status may be changing, thanks to new tools coming from recent discoveries in neurology. The discovery of mirror neurons about ten years ago (Gallese et al. 1996, Rizzolatti et al. 1996) has allowed the built up of new conceptual tools for the understanding of intersubjectivity within humans and non human primates (Gallese 2001, Hurley 2005). Studies in these fields are still in progress, with discussions on the level of applicability of this natural intersubjectivity to non human primates (Decety and Chaminade 2003). We think that these subject/conspecific mental relations made possible by mirror neurons can open new paths for the understanding of the nature of self-consciousness via an evolutionist bottom-up approach. We propose here a scenario for the build up of self-consciousness through evolution by a specific analysis of two steps of evolution: first step from simple living elements to non human primates comparable to chimpanzees, and second step from these non human primates to humans. We identify these two steps as representing the evolution from basic animal awareness to body self-awareness, and from body self-awareness to self-consciousness. (we consider that today non human primates are comparable to what were pre-human primates). We position body self-awareness as corresponding to the performance of mirror self recognition as identified with chimpanzees and orangutans (Gallup). We propose to detail and understand the content of this body self-awareness through a specific evolutionist build up process using the performances of mirror neurons and group life. We address the evolutionary step from body self-awareness to self-consciousness by complementing the recently proposed approach where self-consciousness is presented as a by-product of body self-awareness amplification via a positive feedback loop resulting of anxiety limitation (Menant 2004). The scenario introduced here for the build up of self-consciousness through evolution leaves open the question about the nature of phenomenal-consciousness (Block 2002). We plan to address this question later on with the help of the scenario made available here. (shrink)

Information and meaning exist around us and within ourselves, and the same information can correspond to different meanings. This is true for humans and animals, and is becoming true for robots. We propose here an overview of this subject by using a systemic tool related to meaning generation that has already been published (C. Menant, Entropy 2003). The Meaning Generator System (MGS) is a system submitted to a constraint that generates a meaningful information when it receives an incident information that (...) has a relation with the constraint. The content of the meaningful information is explicited, and its function is to trigger an action that will be used to satisfy the constraint of the system. The MGS has been introduced in the case of basic life submitted to a "stay alive" constraint. We propose here to see how the usage of the MGS can be extended to more complex living systems, to humans and to robots by introducing new types of constraints, and integrating the MGS into higher level systems. The application of the MGS to humans is partly based on a scenario relative to the evolution of body self-awareness toward self-consciousness that has already been presented (C. Menant, Biosemiotics 2003, and TSC 2004). The application of the MGS to robots is based on the definition of the MGS applied to robots functionality, taking into account the origins of the constraints. We conclude with a summary of this overview and with themes that can be linked to this systemic approach on meaning generation. (shrink)

Imitation and mirroring processes are necessary but not sufficient conditions for children to develop human sociality. Human sociality entails more than the equivalence and connectedness of perceptual experiences. It corresponds to the sense of a shared world made of shared values. It originates from complex ‘open’ systems of reciprocation and negotiation, not just imitation and mirroring processes that are by definition ‘closed’ systems. From this premise, we argue that if imitation and mirror processes are important foundations for sociality, human inter-subjectivity (...) develops primarily in reciprocation, not just imitation. Imitation provides a basic sense of social connectedness and mutual acknowledgment of existing with others that are ‘like me.’ However, it does not allow for the co-construction of meanings with others. For human sociality to develop, imitation and mirroring processes need to be supplemented by an open system of reciprocation. Developmental research shows that from the second month, mirroring, imitative, and other contagious emotional responses are by-passed. Imitation gives way to first signs of reciprocation (primary intersubjectivity), joint attention to objects (secondary intersubjectivity), the emergence of values that are jointly represented and negotiated with others (tertiary intersubjectivity), and eventually the development of an ethical stance accompanying theories of mind by 4 years of age. We review this development and propose that if mirroring processes enable individuals to bridge their subjective experiences, human inter-subjectivity proper develops from reciprocal social exchanges that lead to value negotiation and mutual recognition, both cardinal trademarks of human sociality. (shrink)

Erick J. Ramirez, Miles Elliott and Per‑Erik Milam (2021) have recently claimed that using Virtual Reality (VR) as an educational nudge to promote empathy is unethical. These authors argue that the influence exerted on the participant through virtual simulation is based on the deception of making them believe that they are someone else when this is impossible. This makes the use of VR for empathy enhancement a manipulative strategy in itself. In this article, we show that Ramirez et al.’s ethical (...) rejection of empathy enhancement through VR is based on confusion. First, we show that this misunderstanding stems from the conception of empathy-enhancing simulations solely as failed attempts at “being someone else,” along with ignoring the crucial difference between the psychological perspective-taking processes of imagine-other and imagine-self. Then, having overcome that misconception, we argue that the ethical misgivings about the use of VR to promote empathy should disappear and that these projects have greater potential for behavioural change than purely sympathy-focused interventions. (shrink)

Heidegger famously said that the best treatment of the emotions in western history was Book 2 of Aristotle's RHETORIC. Heidegger then did an analysis of this material prior to the publication of Being and TIme (1927). This engages engages with Heidegger's treatment of Aristotle's treatment of the emotions in relation to Heidegger's design distinction of affectivity (Befindlichkeit), understanding, and discourse (Rede).

This paper contrasts two relatively independent forms of human development: waking up, the process and practices of psychospiritual awakening , and growing up, the process of moving from lesser narcissistic and ethnocentric self-identities towards mature postconventional self-identities with greater degrees of inclusion, perspective-taking, caring, and compassion. Each is a unique type of growth, contemplative and transformative, with different ways of engaging and differing goals and results. The former is about transcending or deconstructing the ego and the latter about building, strengthening, (...) and diversifying the ego. Whereas the Buddhist tradition and contemplative practices aim at awakening and transcending samsara (worldly conditions) by cultivating compassion and taming the mind, the Western tradition cultivates greater degrees of care and compassion by developing a mature ego within samsara that is both social-justice and eco-justice informed. The project of transcending the ego should not be confused with growing and maturing the ego. Self-transcendence and self-development must inform each other, and both are necessary for realizing our full human potential. (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)

The present paper analyzes the regularities referred to via the concept 'self.' This is important, for cognitive science traditionally models the self as a cognitive mediator between perceptual inputs and behavioral outputs. This leads to the assertion that the self causes action. Recent findings in social psychology indicate this is not the case and, as a consequence, certain cognitive scientists model the self as being epiphenomenal. In contrast, the present paper proposes an alternative approach (i.e., the event-control approach) that is (...) based on recently discovered regularities between perception and action. Specifically, these regularities indicate that perception and action planning utilize common neural resources. This leads to a coupling of perception, planning, and action in which the first two constitute aspects of a single system (i.e., the distal-event system) that is able to pre-specify and detect distal events. This distal-event system is then coupled with action (i.e., effector-control systems) in a constraining, as opposed to 'causal' manner. This model has implications for how we conceptualize the manner in which one infers the intentions of another, anticipates the intentions of another, and possibly even experiences another. In conclusion, it is argued that it may be possible to map the concept 'self' onto the regularities referred to in the event-control model, not in order to reify 'the self' as a causal mechanism, but to demonstrate its status as a useful concept that refers to regularities that are part of the natural order. (shrink)

Our twenty-first century is a time of turbulence. Some of that turbulence is derived from not fully understanding what makes us moral. This article reassesses human morality in order to identify what nurtures and what distorts our moral nature. Such a reassessment potentially offers hope for a way through the escalating violence in our world that currently threatens to destroy us. This article focuses on three voices: the voice of anthropological philosopher René Girard, whose mimetic theory calls us to wake (...) up about our role in creating violence; the voice of medieval scholastic John Duns Scotus, whose moral theory is enjoying a renaissance in our contemporary world; and the voice of neuroscience with its .. (shrink)

In this chapter we will discuss the concepts of “presence” (Inner Presence) and “social presence” (Co-presence) within a cognitive and ecological perspective. Specifically, we claim that the concepts of “presence” and “social presence” are the possible links between self, action, communication and culture. In the first section we will provide a capsule view of Heidegger’s work by examining the two main features of the Heideggerian concept of “being”: spatiality and “being with”. We argue that different visions from social and cognitive (...) sciences – Situated Cognition, Embodied Cognition, Enactive Approach, Situated Simulation, Covert Imitation - and discoveries from neuroscience – Mirror and Canonical Neurons - have many contact points with this view. In particular, these data suggest that our conceptual system dynamically produces contextualized representations (simulations) that support grounded action in different situations. This is allowed by a common coding – the motor code – shared by perception, action and concepts. This common coding also allows the subject for natively recognizing actions done by other selves within the phenomenological contents. In this picture we argue that the role of presence and social presence is to allow the process of self-identification through the separation between “self” and “other,” and between “internal” and “external”. Finally, implications of this position for communication and media studies are discussed by way of conclusion. (shrink)

This paper suggests that autistic people relate to themselves via a third-person perspective, an objective and explicit mode of access, while neurotypical people tend to access the different dimensions of their self through a first-person perspective. This approach sheds light on autistic traits involving interactions with others, usage of narratives, sensitivity and interoception, and emotional consciousness. Autistic people seem to access these dimensions through comparatively indirect and effortful processes, while neurotypical development enables a more intuitive sense of self.

Robots are increasingly envisaged as our future cohabitants. However, while considerable progress has been made in recent years in terms of their technological realization, the ability of robots to inter-act with humans in an intuitive and social way is still quite limited. An important challenge for social robotics is to determine how to design robots that can perceive the user’s needs, feelings, and intentions, and adapt to users over a broad range of cognitive abilities. It is conceivable that if robots (...) were able to adequately demonstrate this, humans would eventually accept them as social companions. We argue that the best way to achieve this is using a systematic experimental approach based on behavioral and physiological neuroscience methods such as motion/eye tracking, electroencephalography (EEG), or functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) embedded in interactive human-robot paradigms. This approach requires understanding how humans interact with each other, how they perform tasks together and how they develop feelings of social connection over time, and using these insights to formulate design principles that make social robots attuned to the workings of the human brain. In this review, we put forward the argument that the likelihood of artificial agents being perceived as social companions can be increased by designing them in a way that they are perceived as intentional agents that activate areas in the human brain involved in social-cognitive processing. We first review literature related to social-cognitive mechanisms involved in human-human interactions, and high-light the importance of perceiving others as intentional agents to activate these brain areas. We then discuss how attribution of intentionality can positively affect human-robot interaction by (a) fostering feelings of social connection, empathy and prosociality, and by (b) enhancing performance on joint human-robot tasks. Lastly, we describe circumstances under which attribution of intentionality to robot agents might be disadvantageous, and discuss challenges associated with designing social robots that are inspired by neuroscientific principles. (shrink)

Humans and other animals are able not only to coordinate their actions with their current sensorimotor state, but also to imagine, plan and act in view of the future, and to realize distal goals. In this paper we discuss whether or not their future-oriented conducts imply (future-oriented) representations. We illustrate the role played by anticipatory mechanisms in natural and artificial agents, and we propose a notion of representation that is grounded in the agent’s predictive capabilities. Therefore, we argue that the (...) ability that characterizes and defines a true cognitive mind, as opposed to a merely adaptive system, is that of building representations of the non-existent, of what is not currently (yet) true or perceivable, of what is desired. A real mental activity begins when the organism is able to endogenously (i.e. not as the consequence of current perceptual stimuli) produce an internal representation of the world in order to select and guide its conduct goal-directed: the mind serves to coordinate with the future. (shrink)

Prior research suggests that the action system is responsible for creating an immediate sense of self by determining whether certain sensations and perceptions are the result of one's own actions. In addition, it is assumed that declarative, episodic, or autobiographical memories create a temporally extended sense of self or some form of identity. In the present article, we review recent evidence suggesting that action (procedural) knowledge also forms part of a person's identity, an action identity, so to speak. Experiments that (...) addressed self-recognition of past actions, prediction, and coordination provide ample evidence for this assumption. The phenomena observed in these experiments can be explained by the assumption that observing an action results in the activation of action representations, the more so, when the action observed corresponds to the way in which the observer would produce it. (shrink)

The notion of intersubjectivity has achieved a primary status in contemporary psychoanalytic debate, stimulating new theoretical proposals as well as controversies. This paper presents an overview of the main contributions on inter-subjectivity in the field of neurosciences. In humans as well as—probably—in other species, the ability for emotional resonance is guaranteed early in development. Based on this capacity, a primary sense of connectedness is established that can be defined inter-subjective in that it entails sharing affective states and intentions with caregivers. (...) We propose to define such a form of inter-subjectivity ascontingent, since the infant’s early abilities for resonance do not imply the more generalized capacity to permanently conceive of the relationship outside the realm of current interactions and the infant-caregiver’s mutual correspondence of internal states. This form of connection, hence, results in a self-referential, bodily, and affectively codified, context- and time dependent, like-me experience of interactions. The gradual maturation of brain structures and processes as well as interactive experiences allow proper intersubjectivity exchanges, grounded on new intentional and representational capacities, to evolve. In this more mature form of intersubjectivity, the individual is allowed to conceive of her own psychic space both as distinct and as possibly connected with the other’s contents and experience, even in the absence of current behavioral indicators of such correspondence. This multi-layered model of intersubjectivity, which is embraced by current neuroscience research, seems to allow for new interpretations of psychoanalytic models of human relatedness based upon classic clinical observations. (shrink)

The “default system” of the brain has been described as a set of regions which are ‘activated’ during rest and ‘deactivated’ during cognitively effortful tasks. To investigate the reliability of task-related deactivations, we performed a meta-analysis across 12 fMRI studies. Our results replicate previous findings by implicating medial frontal and parietal brain regions as part of the “default system”.However, the cognitive correlates of these deactivations remain unclear. In light of the importance of social cognitive abilities for human beings and their (...) propensity to engage in such activities, we relate our results to findings from neuroimaging studies of social cognition. This demonstrates a remarkable overlap between the brain regions typically involved in social cognitive processes and the “default system”.We, henceforth, suggest that the physiological ‘baseline’ of the brain is intimately linked to a psychological ‘baseline’: human beings have a predisposition for social cognition as the default mode of cognizing which is implemented in the robust pattern of intrinsic brain activity known as the “default system”. (shrink)

In 1975, Colwyn Trevarthen first presented his groundbreaking explorations into the early origins of human intersubjectivity. His influential model dictates that, during intimate and playful spontaneous face-to-face protoconversations, the emotions of both the 2–3-month-old infant and mother are nonverbally communicated, perceived, mutually regulated, and intersubjectively shared. This primordial basic interpersonal interaction is expressed in synchronized rhythmic-turn-taking transactions that promote the intercoordination and awareness of positive brain states in both. In this work, I offer an interpersonal neurobiological model of Trevarthen’s intersubjective (...) protoconversations as rapid, reciprocal, bidirectional visual-facial, auditory-prosodic, and tactile-gestural right brain-to-right brain implicit nonverbal communications between the psychobiologically attuned mother and the developing infant. These co-constructed positive emotional interactions facilitate the experience-dependent maturation of the infant’s right brain, which is in an early critical period of growth. I then address the central role of interpersonal synchrony in intersubjectivity, expressed in a mutual alignment or coupling between the minds and bodies of the mother and infant in face-to-face protoconversations, as well as how these right brain-to-right brain emotional transmissions generate bioenergetic positively charged interbrain synchrony within the dyad. Following this, I offer recent brain laterality research on the essential functions of the right temporoparietal junction, a central node of the social brain, in face-to-face nonverbal communications. In the next section, I describe the ongoing development of the protoconversation over the 1st year and beyond, and the co-creation of a fundamental energy-dependent, growth-promoting social emotional matrix that facilitates the emergence of the highly adaptive human functions of mutual play and mutual love. In the final section, I discuss the clinical applications of this interpersonal neurobiological model of intersubjectivity, which has a long history in the psychotherapy literature. Toward that end, I offer very recent paradigm-shifting hyperscanning research that simultaneously measures both the patient and therapist during a psychotherapeutic interaction. Using the Trevarthen’s two-person intersubjective model, this research demonstrates changes in both brains of the therapeutic dyad and the critical role of nonverbal communications in an emotionally-focused psychotherapy session. These studies specifically document interbrain synchronization between the right temporoparietal junction of the patient and the right temporoparietal junction of the clinician, a right brain-to-right brain nonverbal communication system in the co-constructed therapeutic alliance. Lastly, I discuss the relationship between the affect communicating functions of the intersubjective motivational system and the affect regulating functions of the attachment motivational system. (shrink)