This paper suggests that during severe and prolonged traumatic experiences such as trauma type II, one may develop disownership toward the entire body. In this situation one’s body becomes a pure object and as such an integral part of the hostile environment. This article applies Merleau-Ponty’s approach to perception in order to improve our understanding of this process.

Dissociation during trauma lacks an adequate definition. Using data obtained from interviews with 36 posttraumatic individuals conducted according to the phenomenological approach, this paper seeks to improve our understanding of this phenomenon. In particular, it suggesting a trade off model depicting the balance between the sense of agency and the sense of ownership : a reciprocal relationship appears to exist between these two, and in order to enable control of the body during trauma the sense of ownership must decrease. When (...) the relationship between the sense of agency and sense of ownership changes disproportionately to the constraints of the traumatic event, the dissociative mechanism becomes dysfunctional. By contrast, when the relations alter in accordance with the surrounding conditions, the dissociative mechanism functions properly. (shrink)

What makes something a part of my body, for moral purposes? Is the body defined naturalistically: by biological relations, or psychological relations, or some combination of the two? This paper approaches this question by considering a borderline case: the status of prostheses. I argue that extant accounts of the body fail to capture prostheses as genuine body parts. Nor, however, do they provide plausible grounds for excluding prostheses, without excluding some paradigm organic parts in the process. I conclude by suggesting (...) that embodiment is moralized all the way down: to be a body part is to be the sort of thing that ought to be protected, in a certain way, by social practices. (shrink)

Extended cognition brings with it a particular phenomenology. It has been argued that when an artifact is integrated into an agent’s cognitive system, it becomes transparent in use to the cognizing subject. In this paper, I challenge some of the assumptions underlying how the transparency of artifacts is described in extended cognition theory. To this end, I offer two arguments. First, I make room for some forms of conscious thought and attention within extended cognitive routines, and I question the close (...) association drawn between attention and effort. Second, I vindicate the importance of paying careful attention to individual differences and the diverse ways in which bodies and technologies can be experienced. I end by offering some hints toward an alternative, and more accurate, account of the phenomenology of extended cognition. (shrink)

Human beings are in the midst of very powerful shifts in our understanding of what it means to be a human. There is a non-trivial chance that sometime in the future humanity will transform itself, leading to an emergence of posthumans with God-like qualities – Homo Deificatio. Such a transformation has great potential for both good and bad. Posthumanism seeks to improve human nature, increase the human life- and health-span, extend its cognitive and physical capacities, and broaden its mastery over (...) the environment. As such, the notion of posthumanism implies a radical breaking off from, and reconceptualisation of, the state of being human. As neuroscientists, we aim to bring a neuroscientific perspective to this debate. Current scientific and technologic developments (related to brain and its augmentation) clearly demonstrate that what was formerly considered to be science fiction is slowly but firmly becoming a scientific reality. (shrink)

Some investigators of the rubber hand illusion (RHI) have suggested that when standard RHI induction procedures are employed, if the rubber hand is experienced by participants as owned, their corresponding biological hands are experienced as disowned. Others have demurred: drawing upon a variety of experimental data and conceptual considerations, they infer that experience of the RHI might include the experience of a supernumerary limb, but that experienced disownership of biological hands does not occur. Indeed, some investigators even categorically deny that (...) any experimental paradigm has been employed or any evidence can be adduced to support the claim that disownership experiences occur during the RHI. It goes without saying that RHI experiences can be elusive, and that there is some evidence to support claims that supernumerary limb experiences can sometimes occur. Here, however, we test the claim that the conscious experience of disownership can occur during the RHI. In order to test this claim, we developed two new online proxies—onset time for the illusion and illusion duration—and combined these with established questionnaires that concern the conscious contents of the RHI, in particular ownership/disownership experiences. Both online proxy data and post hoc questionnaire data converge in supporting the claim that disownership experiences do occur, at least when the left hand is the object of investigation. Our findings that onset time and illusion duration are reliable measures suggest that investigations of the RHI stand to benefit by devoting more attention to data collected while the RHI is being experienced, in particular data concerning temporal dynamics. (shrink)