Consciousness in Flesh: An Unapologetic Phenomenological Study 3030868338, 9783030868338

Table of contents :
Abstract
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Figures
Introduction
Bibliography
1: Phenomenology of the Body
1.1 The Phenomenology of the Body According to Merleau-Ponty
1.1.1 Return to the Primary Meeting with the World
1.1.2 Theory of Perception is Theory of the Body
1.1.3 Elimination of the Subject-object Dichotomy
1.1.4 The Bodily Space
1.1.5 The Phenomenological Field
1.1.6 The Lived-body as a Work of Art
1.1.7 The Dual Structure of the Body
1.2 Perceiving the World through Movement
1.2.1 Movement and Perception
1.2.2 Exploring the World
1.2.3 Knowing How
1.2.4 To See the Whole World
1.3 Embodied Cognition
1.3.1 The Body as a Tool and a Technology
1.3.2 The World is Our Best Model
1.3.3 Metaphors
1.3.4 Opening Your Mind
1.4 Concluding Remarks
Bibliography
2: The Subjective Experience During Altered States of Consciousness
2.1 Extended Isolation as a Prisoner of War: How It Feels
2.1.1 The State of Consciousness in Prison
2.1.2 The Sense of the Body in Captivity: Collapse of the Simultaneous Subject-Object Dual Structure
2.1.3 The Sense of Time in Captivity
2.1.3.1 The Sense of Time and the Bodily Dimension
2.1.3.2 The Creation of a New Dimension of Time Detached from the Bodily Dimension
2.1.4 Vacuum
2.1.5 What (and Why) Does the Captive Try to Control?
2.2 The Experience of Meditation
2.2.1 The Sense of Body Ownership
2.2.2 The Relationship Between the Sense of Boundary and Specific Senses
2.2.3 The Sense of Self
2.2.4 Dissolution of the Dual Structure (I)
2.2.5 Disintegration of the Dual Structure II
2.2.6 Inner Talk as a Process of Perception
2.2.7 Meaningless Stimuli
2.2.8 The Bodily Dimension of Thought and the Relationship to the Sense of Self
2.2.9 Feelings
2.2.10 On the Character of Memory
2.3 Conclusions
Bibliography
3: Embodied Consciousness
3.1 The Structure of Consciousness
3.1.1 The Basic (Pre-Noetic) Structure
3.1.1.1 The Embodied Experience of Being-in-the-World
3.1.1.2 Emotions
3.1.1.3 Duration
3.1.1.4 The Emotional-Temporal Field (ETF)
3.1.2 A World of Meaningful Objects
3.1.2.1 Feelings
3.1.2.2 Past-Present-Future (Autobiographical Field)
The Fundamental Structure of the Self-as-Subject (I) and Self-as-Object (ME)
The Self-as-Subject in the Present Moment in Relation to the Self-as-Object on the Timeline
The Emotional Dimension and Its Impact on the Autobiographical Field
3.1.2.3 Introspection
3.1.3 Interim Conclusion
3.2 The Internal Horizon
3.2.1 The Internal Horizon—The Main Argument
3.2.2 The Nature of the Experience and the Dependence on the External Horizon
3.2.3 Altered States of Consciousness
3.2.4 The Stream of Consciousness, the Emotional Dimension, the Corporal Level, and the Sense of Self
3.2.5 The Internal Horizon Disconnected from a Sense of Self—The Absence of the Emotional Dimension
3.2.6 The “Stream” in the “Stream of Consciousness” Is an Illusion
3.2.7 Interim Conclusion
Bibliography
4: Concluding Essay: The Knowing-Body and a World of Meaning
Bibliography
Epilogue
Appendix: Phenomenology as a Method
The Phenomenological Reflection
Phenomenology as a Methodological Approach
The Protocol
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Consciousness in Flesh An unapologetic phenomenological study yo c h a i ata r i a

Consciousness in Flesh “Ataria’s detailed primer on the phenomenology of the body draws on an interdisciplinary mix of classic phenomenologists like Merleau-Ponty and recent work in embodied cognition. He puts this phenomenology to work to develop an insightful understanding of the diverse and yet connected experiences of tortured prisoners of war and long-term meditators. Using these extreme phenomenologies, Ataria deftly guides us through a brilliant analysis of the essential variables of body, emotion, and temporality that shape consciousness.” —Shaun Gallagher, Lillian and Morrie Moss Chair of Excellence in Philosophy, University of Memphis

Yochai Ataria

Consciousness in Flesh An Unapologetic Phenomenological Study

Yochai Ataria Tel-Hai Academic College Upper Galilee, Israel

ISBN 978-3-030-86833-8    ISBN 978-3-030-86834-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86834-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Originally published in Hebrew by The Hebrew University Magnes Press This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Yemima, who day after day, hour after hour, answers hineni, me voici, ‫הינני‬.

Abstract

This book offers an uncompromising and unapologetic phenomenological study of altered states of consciousness in an attempt to understand the structure of human consciousness. Drawing on the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, it sets out to decipher the inextricable link between consciousness, body, and world. This link will be established through the presentation of in-depth phenomenological research conducted with former prisoners of war (POWs) and senior meditators. Focusing on two such disparate groups improves our understanding of the nature of the subjective experience in extreme situations—when our sense of boundary is rigid and we are disconnected both from the body and the world (POWs); and when our sense of boundary is fluid and we feel unified with the world (meditators). Based on empirical-phenomenological research, this book will explain how the body that is from the outset thrown into the intersubjective world shapes the structure of consciousness.

vii

Acknowledgements

This book has been part of me since I took my first course at Haifa University, almost twenty years ago—half of my life. It is hard to even begin to list the people (friends, colleagues, lecturers) to whom I owe a debt of gratitude, and therefore I have decided to limit myself to those who have accompanied me closely throughout the entire period of my studies and the writing of this book. My thanks to Prof. Yemima Ben Menachem, Prof. Shaun Gallagher, Prof. Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Prof. Jacob Raz, and Dr. Stephen Fulder for their dedication and generosity. Thank you for always being willing to listen. I would like to thank the members of the non-profit organization “Erim Balayla” (Awake at Night, which represents former prisoners of war in Israel) and “Tovana” (Insight) who agreed to be interviewed for this study. Many people were involved in editing this book. I am especially grateful to David Shimonovich, Maya Shimoni, Judy Kupferman, and Rebecca Wolpe, who helped me to make the multitude of words that I wrote into a readable book. I am also grateful to the publisher, Palgrave Macmillan, and its dedicated and professional team for their help and support. I would like to thank Tel Hai College for its generous financial support of the work on this book. I began to think about this project when Adi and I were a young couple. While working on it, Assaf, Ori, and Shir were born, and we became a family. The book is full of examples of intimate moments of pure joy from our daily life. These moments are engraved upon me, into my flesh and my words. I am blessed and full of gratitude for the life you have given me.

ix

Contents

1 Phenomenology of the Body  1 1.1 The Phenomenology of the Body According to Merleau-Ponty   2 1.2 Perceiving the World through Movement  14 1.3 Embodied Cognition  24 1.4 Concluding Remarks  35 Bibliography 36 2 The Subjective Experience During Altered States of Consciousness 39 2.1 Extended Isolation as a Prisoner of War: How It Feels  39 2.2 The Experience of Meditation  59 2.3 Conclusions  85 Bibliography 86 3 Embodied Consciousness 89 3.1 The Structure of Consciousness  89 3.2 The Internal Horizon 105 Bibliography113 4 Concluding Essay: The Knowing-Body and a World of Meaning115 Bibliography117

xi

xii Contents

E  pilogue119 Appendix: Phenomenology as a Method127 Bibliography137 Index145

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4 Fig. 3.5 Fig. 3.6 Fig. 3.7 Fig. 3.8 Fig. 3.9 Fig. 3.10 Fig. 3.11 Fig. 3.12 Fig. 3.13 Fig. 3.14

Size difference illusion (The Ebbinghaus illusion or Titchener circles)7 The triangular structure of movement-expectation-sensation 20 Expectation-Movement-Sensation in normal situations and pathologies53 Self-as-subject vs. self-as-Object 69 Sense of duration as a function of the openness of the world 73 The structure of consciousness 90 The present moment 93 Body, emotion and duration 94 The emotional-temporal field (ETF) 95 Mass distorts the space—the EFT 96 Explicit perceptual field 97 From autobiographical self to autobiographical field 100 The autobiographical field 100 I versus ME 101 The reflective structure 103 Introspection as a time-based process 104 Inner horizon versus external horizon 108 The stream of consciousness, the emotional dimension, the corporal level, and the sense of self 110 The stream of consciousness illusion 112

xiii

Introduction

It is 10:30 AM, and I walk into class, feeling stable and in control. My body moves of its own accord. This is the seventh class of the semester, and I am diving deep into Merleau-Ponty’s flesh, trying to explain to the class the following concept: What is meant when we say that there is no world without a being in the world? Not that the world is constituted by consciousness, but rather that consciousness always finds itself already at work in the world (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 456). Over the years I have obtained maximal grip on the material. I discovered that to attain max-grip, it is not enough to read Merleau-Ponty passively. Rather, it is necessary to take an active approach: to write about him, to talk about him, and, most importantly, to learn how to observe the world as he does—in his words, “it is more accurate to say that I see according to it, or with it, than that I see it.” (1964, p. 164) This is a daily and ongoing activity that must be executed in the world itself. Reflection alone is insufficient. One could even say that pure reflection takes us further away from Merleau-Ponty. Teaching Merleau-Ponty is like magic. The examples seemingly appear spontaneously: the way the students hold their pens in one hand and papers in the other, keeping their notebook stable; their posture on the chairs, which is the result of an attempt to find a position in which they can hear me and at the same time take notes. The lighting needs to provide them with an optimal view of the Power Point presentation and at the same time enable them to see the words on the page: For each object, just as for each painting in an art gallery, there is an optimal distance from which it asks to be seen—an orientation through which it presents more of itself—beneath or beyond which we merely have a confused perception due to excess or lack. Hence, we tend toward the maximum of visibility xv

xvi Introduction

and we seek, just as when using a microscope, a better focus point, which is obtained through a certain equilibrium between the interior and the exterior horizons. (Merleau-Ponty 2012, pp. 315–316) We talk about the way they choose their pens—the attempt to achieve maximal grip, the roughness of the plastic, the thickness of the point, the feeling of engraving letters on the page. We all agree that during an exam, this issue becomes especially important: a sweaty palm changes our ability to express ourselves, sometimes preventing us from being understood, even by ourselves. It is a rainy morning, and we try to reconstruct the process of choosing shoes— shoes that will not slip on the asphalt. I have a recurring ankle sprain. On rainy mornings, I take care to wear shoes with a better grip on the foot and the slippery pavement, shoes that can be trusted, shoes that will allow me to forget they even exist; shoes that will give the world a better grip on me. We are all trying, constantly, to achieve maximal grip—every movement and every breath are part of this never-ending project. When it works, we forget that there is anything moderating between us and the world. When it happens, the world grips us, while we forget ourselves within it. Teaching Merleau-Ponty feels like coming home. My body moves as though in a dance; the words speak of their own accord, they become filled with a renewed meaning intended only for my students. Indeed, my students sense that the words are far more than empty chatter. In these moments, I grip the words perfectly; they are flawlessly synchronized and in complete harmony with my physical gestures. The words are a tool via which I probe more and more deeply, refining my ideas—I do this in a shared, intersubjective field. I try to offer the students a way to attain optimal grip on the ideas. This is not a purely reflective process. I do not ask them to think but rather to pinpoint the action that they are executing at this exact moment. I direct them to the primal bodily, the pre-reflective experience: the chill going through the body at a terrifying thought or the sight of a dead animal on the road; the stiffness of the body when we meet a person we dislike; the pleasant warmth in the body when we meet someone we love; the inability to find a comfortable position when we cannot fall asleep; and more. We continue to discuss how we constantly touch ourselves (the hand repeatedly goes to the face), the pleasure of scratching, of friction. The class is over. I go up to my office and turn on the computer. I have an email inviting me to give a talk in Chicago. My student dream has come true. Fifteen years have passed since the day I entered my first class at Haifa University, and now I am a professor, someone who is invited to give talks; others want to hear my opinion. Yet, despite the joy and satisfaction, I notice that my breath has become labored. My body sinks into the chair, my head leans on my arms. I feel my chest. The air gets stuck in my throat. This is not anxiety. Not yet, at least. It is heaviness. The room is too brightly lit, the clothing I wear has lost its softness. The air conditioner is stifling—I turn it off and open a window. Yet it is not enough, and I find myself sitting on the balcony. These feelings tell a different story: I know that I do not have the words, that I will not be able to get a grip on them, I know that the words have stolen the world from me. I know this is an accident waiting to happen.

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xvii

I love to lecture—I feel confident, I know that I can feel the audience and dance with it. To some extent, I feel free during lectures. The problem is not the lecture itself—I do not suffer from stage fright. The problem lies elsewhere. I remember all too well how, in 2014, I sat in Shaun Gallagher’s office in Memphis and could not string together two sentences in English. In Hebrew too, I do not speak clearly; I stutter. I started to stutter when I was around 12 years old. To this day, the problem has not been resolved, although it is now barely noticeable. When I read a story to my children and see a word that gives me trouble, my body freezes. The tic in my eye begins, my neck starts to move involuntarily; I shrink, the word grabs me and distorts me, humiliates me, tyrannizes me. It steals my air. As long as my children could not read, I was able to sidestep the word, to invent a new sentence. However, this is becoming increasingly difficult, and recently my oldest child began to ask me why I change the wording on the page. Likewise, when I teach guided reading courses, I sometimes find myself stumbling over words. In this case, I cannot simply invent new sentences. The words I stutter are obstacles that need to be overcome. When I speak in Hebrew, I feel I have an infinite horizon of possibilities: my vocabulary is rich and I can always replace a problematic word with a more accessible one, so that the world remains open, reachable, and available, continually inviting me to operate within it. My body floats, moving lightly, and the horizon is open and inviting—it calls for me to act within it. Yet the moment the stuttering begins, I am in a torture chamber, the ground falls out from beneath my feet. My stutter has not really disappeared, it exists, even if only slightly, and it is one of the greatest obstacles I face in life—a disability that has not yet been defined. The stutter prevents me from being part of the world; I am no longer thrown into a shared space with others but feel strange and alone within a dead world. When one stutters, the entire horizon changes. It is no longer open but becomes full of obstacles. To stutter is to go out for a run in bad weather and find that some demon has replaced your legs with prostheses that do not fit your body. The stuttered word exposes the intolerable gap between the signified and the signifier—the word disconnects completely from reality and floats out there in a timeless space, refusing to hold specific content and to be held, spiraling into itself, breaking down into its elementary phonetic components and becoming what Heidegger (1996, p. 406) defines as present-at-hand: “When something cannot be used—when, for instance, a tool definitely refuses to work—it can be conspicuous only in and for dealings in which something is manipulated”. Indeed, while language usually enables us to reveal the hidden, to expose the absent, when one stutters, the ideas flee one’s grasp. It is impossible to explain them even to oneself; the absent becomes completely inaccessible, it is no longer ready-at-hand. The stutter falls into a void; it is like slipping on a bare cliff face with palms too sweaty to grasp the outcrops. The stutter casts us from total gestalt to primal units that by themselves lack all meaning; we are no longer able to operate in terms of “The Big Picture.” The stutterer is thrown into a fragmented world, a world in which the individual does not belong, an I-can-not kind of world. Indeed, it is like the feeling when one goes back to playing basketball after suffering an injury (I can testify to this): movement itself becomes limited and worrisome. The court has changed—the parquet floor that once gripped the foot, enabling you

xviii Introduction

to change direction swiftly or turn, now seems more like an ice-skating rink. The court feels at once smaller and bigger—smaller because there are entire areas you dare not approach; bigger because certain throws are now outside your range of possibilities. If once you felt there were feints and moves you could perform, today these are no longer within the field of possibilities. The I-Can field has shrunk, becoming an I-Can-Not field. You have not stopped playing, but rather you play differently—you can no longer forget yourself during the game. Instead of being in a doing-kind of mode, you are in a thinking-kind of mode, your body is less a lived-body and more a corporeal body. True, experience sometimes makes up for such limitations, but only to a certain point. The same applies to a stutter. You are still playing, but in another ball court with different rules. I return to the email, responding that I will be glad to come. The lecture is scheduled to take place in another six months, but from the moment I reply to the email, time and space alter. I know that I will have to stand before an audience and stutter, exposed and unprotected, feeling as if I am standing bare, naked, painfully lost. From now on, I am no longer being-in-the-world in a simple manner, not even being toward my own death, but rather toward-this-lecture, toward-an-accident, toward a terrible and terrifying moment that must take place. My stutter makes every place that is not Israel intolerable—the innate knowledge that when someone approaches me, I will stutter at them and begin to fall apart makes the world a threatening and unbearable place. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the stutter changes the shape of the earth. To be more exact, for a person who stutters, the world offers only poor possibilities for action. I remember the first time I arrived in New York: I stood in the line at the airport. I knew that I would soon reach the customs officer, and he would ask me where I was headed. I prepared all the documents so that I would not have to talk. I knew that if I stuttered, my body would convey distress; I might find myself under investigation. To my great good fortune, the officer was Jewish and was happy to speak in Hebrew. Now, in my office, my stomach starts to bother me, my toes feel frozen and inflexible, people around me become threatening. I become irritated and impatient—my mood has changed and the whole world has changed with it. Without doubt, this is no longer the same world. Essentially, at these precise moments, the world ceases to be hidden. Expressing this in a way that is more loyal to the lived-experience in those critical moments, the ability to hide from the world has diminished; to some extent, the world is all over the place, overly present. This is a different kind of grip, it is the grip of an emptiness that sucks you in and paralyzes you, a grip that reduces the margin for action to zero. In these moments, the world ceases to be familiar place—it is no longer your world. Sitting in my office, I know that I will write the lecture and recite it by heart. I will write it in strange and uncanny English, avoiding the word “that” (TTTTHHHH-at), which stumps me, paralyzes me, flattens me, strips me, and invades me. The same way as the world shrinks to one point in our body in a time of pain, the word “that” causes me to shrink into an instrument that can produce only false notes: TTTTHHHH. This word makes me lose control.

 Introduction 

xix

When people give talks at conferences in the field of humanities, it is generally acceptable to read the lecture from their notes. This solves quite a few problems. It is also customary to sit down, so the frozen body can be hidden, buried beneath the table. At this conference, however, I will not be able to sit down, I will have to talk in English for over an hour. As I advance with the Power Point, the audience will see pictures while I see the text (on my own screen). It is hard to see that I am reading from it, but that is what I am doing. Reading aloud is never like speaking freely. My character in English is different from the person I am in Hebrew. I am humorless, lacking tact and elegance. More than anything, when I speak English, my body lacks gestures, because the words and the body do not hold on to each other. This is not poetry; it is not dancing. Rather, it is like sinking into quicksand. When I begin to stutter in English, my body feels like a broken prosthesis; movement ceases to be smooth, flexible, and continuous. At the same time, my grip on the world collapses, as though the world is slipping through my fingers—I have no understanding of space; I am cast outside of time. If language is a tool, I do not have the ability to hold it, not to mention use it. Worse, I do not even appreciate that it is a tool, cannot comprehend what I should do with it and what it is for. When I am finally able to hold the word, it is too heavy, and my body groans when I try to lift it up. I breathe heavily. I am in the middle of my talk now. There is nowhere to hide, the remaining time feels is infinite. I grip the words that appear on the screen in front of me—the words themselves are no longer transparent. They, and they alone, constitute the only object in my field of perception—the horizon is blocked. Every word appears alone, deprived of any context, against a black background. Even I no longer understand the words. Worse, at times, the letters begin to decompose, and I bump into them, so that for instance the word “that” looks like TTTTTTTTTTTThat. This letter, T, when it comes at the start of a word, especially when there’s an H after it, generating a sound foreign to my native language, throws me back to a childhood memory: I am riding a bike uphill, standing up, and suddenly the bicycle chain gets stuck. I fall to the floor together with the bike, sprawled on the asphalt and feeling alone and humiliated. In other cases, I feel that the word falls into a chasm and I need to catch it, and then it feels like the times I tried swimming a full length of the pool without coming up for air; in the last few meters there is a tremendous struggle between the body’s enormous desire to get out of the water and breathe, on the one hand, and knowing that it is possible to continue, on the other. The words that escape me force me to dive into the depths to search for them. When I finally pronounce the word, I am almost always panting. My body is frozen; hence, I have no choice but to write on my screen instructions such as “breathe,” “lift up your head,” and “pause,” and sometimes even “now bang the podium with your right hand.” I have lost my body and have no contact with the world. Therefore, I need orderly commands. I stand in front of the audience, and my legs are like two iron rods stuck deep into the ground. My hands grip the podium—I need to hold on to something sturdy because when I stutter, I lose the grip on my body and the world. I feel like I am constantly falling. * * *

xx Introduction

There is probably a certain correlation between my stutter and some specific neural activity, but of course one cannot reduce the experience I just described to neural activity. My stutter is also not on my tongue or in my mouth. The stutter does not end with the body, and one cannot reduce my stutter, Sartre style, to hell being other people. Likewise, my stutter is not the result of some Freudian oral fixation. To understand the stutterer, one needs to understand the way one is present and acts in the world. Yet this is true not only of a stutter. Rather, it applies to every possible experience. To understand human consciousness, we must dive into the flesh, into the shared intersubjective space. We are not in the world like a spoon in a teacup. We are in the world like a baby in the womb. We cannot be regarded as separate from the world, and the brain cannot be regarded as disconnected from the body that is absorbed into the world: The central phenomenon, which simultaneously grounds my subjectivity and my transcendence toward the other, consists in the fact that I am given to myself. I am given, which is to say I find myself already situated and engaged in a physical and social world; I am given to myself, which is to say that this situation is never concealed from me, it is never around me like some foreign necessity, and I am never actually enclosed in my situation like an object in a box (Merleau-­ Ponty 2012, p. 377). Furthermore, it is not sufficient to investigate particular instances of brain activity, just as it is insufficient to analyze behavior. We must investigate the individual as an agent being thrown into the world, a world that, in turn, is absorbed within our body. That is the aim of this book. Here, I will try to describe the structure of human consciousness as it is projected into the world: Consciousness in Flesh. * * * The book has three chapters. The first chapter introduces the idea that consciousness is embodied. According to this approach, what counts is what we do in the world and, more importantly, how we do it. Indeed, this chapter explores the question of what we mean when we talk about the embodiment of consciousness. In the first section of this chapter, I examine in detail Merleau-­Ponty’s phenomenological approach, in particular the notion that “the theory of the body is already a theory of perception” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 209). The second section extends the discussion, offering a general theory regarding how we perceive the world through the body, focusing mainly on the sensorimotor feedback loops and the concept of knowing how. The final section explores the boundaries of our cognition, presenting the idea that cognitive activity leaks through the lived body into the world. The second chapter moves out into the practical field. It describes an empirical study conducted among two groups: prisoners of war (POWs) and experienced med-

 Introduction 

xxi

itators, both of which can be defined in terms of altered state consciousness (ASC).1 In this qualitative-phenomenological study, participants took part in open-ended interviews that were conducted using the phenomenological approach and emphasized the pre-reflective bodily experience. This method enabled me to examine the subjective experience in depth while highlighting the individuals’ initial bodily encounter with the world in which they are absorbed. Accordingly, it offers a detailed description of the structure of the human experience during ASCs. It is well established that ASCs can reveal a great deal about the structure of consciousness (James 1902). Indeed, based on these in-depth phenomenological interviews, the third chapter advances a more general theory of consciousness. In this chapter, I attempt to present a detailed theory of embodied consciousness. The advantage of this theory is that it is based upon phenomenological research into ASCs. Yet, the proposed structure is not disconnected from the current cognitive discourse. Quite the contrary. This chapter combines insights from careful readings of classic phenomenologists such as Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, together with contemporary leading scholars in the field of phenomenology and cognitive science such as Shaun Gallagher, Dan Zahavi, and Hubert Dreyfus, and my own phenomenological observations based on the interviews.

Bibliography Ataria, Yochai. “Dissociation during Trauma: The Ownership-Agency Tradeoff Model.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14, no. 4 (2015a): 1037–1053. ———. “Trauma from an enactive perspective: the collapse of the knowing-­how structure.” Adaptive Behavior 23, no. 3 (2015b): 143–154. Ataria, Yochai, and Yuval Neria. “Consciousness-Body-Time: How Do People Think Lacking their Body?” Humans Studies 36, no. 2 (2013): 159–178. doi: https://doi. org/10.1007/s10746-­013-­9263-­3. Heidegger, Martin. Being and time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany: New York Press, 1996. James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Collier Books, 1902. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A Landes. London and New York: Routledge, 2012. ———. The primacy of perception. Edited by James Edie. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964.

 These chapters expand on studies published in three papers: “Consciousness-Body-Time: How Do People Think Lacking their Body?” (Ataria and Neria 2013); “Where Do We End and Where Does the World Begin? The Case of Insight Meditation” (Ataria 2015a); “How Does It Feel to Lack a Sense of Boundaries? A Case Study of a Long-Term Mindfulness Meditator” (2015b).

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1 Phenomenology of the Body

We cannot reduce consciousness1 solely to brain activity and we cannot limit consciousness to the head. Consciousness is embedded in the world through the body: we are present in the world in our physical, visceral bodies; first and foremost, we are flesh and blood. Consciousness is not an exception; namely, consciousness is in the midst of the world from the very outset—consciousness and world are part of the same flesh. In this chapter, I will discuss ideas that contradict the classical approach to cognitive sciences, including: (1) The difficulty with the classic cognitive model, known as the sandwich model: input—information processing—output. I will attempt, instead, to delineate more dynamic cognitive models. (2) Objections to the subject-object dichotomy, instead seeking to redefine these relationships with greater flexibility. (3) Objections to the classic representational approach, which includes adopting a centralized computing model in the cognitive sciences in general, and in cognitive neuroscience in particular. Instead, I present cognitive models that treat the world as our best model, without the need for a central processing unit in the brain. (4) Objections to the approach that ignores the body in the framework of the cognitive sciences in general, and in cognitive neuroscience in particular. By contrast, I present cognitive models that are embedded within the body, which, in turn, is totally immersed within the world—cognition in flesh.  I have chosen not to define this concept whatsoever in this book, and this is no coincidence. There is no lack of literature in the field. However, I believe that, at this time, the attempt to define consciousness only generates difficulties, and so I prefer to think it through rather than to define it. 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Ataria, Consciousness in Flesh, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86834-5_1

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In the first section of this chapter, I examine in detail Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach, in particular the notion that “the theory of the body is already a theory of perception” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 209). The second section extends the discussion, offering a general theory regarding how we perceive the world through the body, focusing mainly on the sensorimotor feedback loops and the concept of knowing how. The final section explores the boundaries of our cognition, presenting the idea that cognitive activity leaks through the lived body into the world: First, I will discuss how various technologies reshape the boundaries of the lived body, leading to a change in the I-Can field. Subsequently, I will concentrate on how we build robots without a central system. In the third part of this section, we will explore metaphors, in particular how they emerge from our bodily presence in the world. I will close this section by calling upon readers to keep their minds open—to allow the cognitive system to leak out into the world and the world to penetrate inside.

1.1 T  he Phenomenology of the Body According to Merleau-Ponty If the subject is in a situation, or even if the subject is nothing other than a possibility of situations, this is because he only achieves his ipseity by actually being a body and by entering into the world through this body. If I find, while reflecting upon the essence of the body, that it is tied to the essence of the world, this is because my existence as subjectivity is identical with my existence as a body and with the existence of the world, and because, ultimately, the subject that I am, understood concretely, is inseparable from this particular body and from this particular world. The ontological world and body that we uncover at the core of the subject are not the world and the body as ideas; rather, they are the world itself condensed into a comprehensive hold and the body itself as a knowing-­body (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 431).

1.1.1 Return to the Primary Meeting with the World Phenomenology, as Merleau-Ponty wrote at the beginning of his monumental book, Phenomenology of Perception, first published in 1945, is the attempt to probe and to understand the essence of our existence before reflection took control of our lives and shaped how we understand human existence. For Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology is pre-reflective, an attempt to describe human experience, yet not from the viewpoint of judgmental consciousness:

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Pre-reflective self-consciousness is pre-reflective in the sense that (1) it is an awareness we have before we do any reflecting on our experience; (2) it is an implicit and first-order awareness rather than an explicit or higher-order form of self-consciousness… In contrast to pre-reflective self-consciousness, which delivers an implicit sense of self at an experiential or phenomenal level, reflective self-consciousness is an explicit, conceptual, and objectifying awareness that takes a lower-order consciousness as its attentional theme. I am able at any time to attend directly to the cognitive experience itself, turning my experience itself into the object of my consideration. (Gallagher and Zahavi 2008).

Merleau-Ponty’s great discovery is that, in contrast to the world of reflective consciousness, when we return to the primacy of the pre-reflective experience, we discover that the world was always there and that we can think about ourselves only through the world. The world grasps us, and we are completely open to the world. Essentially, these two formulations describe the same phenomenon. According to Husserl (1960, 1965, 1970) and Merleau-Ponty (1964, 2012), scientific research ignores the fact that we always experience the world solely from a certain viewpoint and that this viewpoint shapes how we perceive and understand the world. In other words, scientific research always assumes a certain kind of world, and consequently always begins the investigation from the second floor. Hence, it neglects our primary entanglement with the world. Yet our experience as an organism continually exploring the world precedes any other experience. We tend to ignore this fact or to forget it. As a result, scientific research is extremely naïve: Science manipulates things and gives up living in them. It makes its own limited models of things; operating upon these indices or variables to effect whatever transformations are permitted by their definition, it comes face to face with the real world only at rare intervals. Science is and always has been that admirably active, ingenious, and bold way of thinking whose fundamental bias is to treat everything as though it were an object-in-general—as though it meant nothing to us and yet was predestined for our own use. (Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 159)

Indeed, at least since Descartes, philosophical discourse has always set out from a dualistic stance. Even today—perhaps more than ever before—this shapes scientific discourse. We still observe the world as detached from consciousness, and consciousness as detached from the world; evidently, this approach completely separates body and mind. For Merleau-Ponty, the world is not a mental model but rather something we live through.

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1.1.2 Theory of Perception is Theory of the Body Everything we do and think takes place against the background of our field of perception. The field of perception stems from the primal relationship between the exploring organism and the explored world. Essentially, the exploring subject and the explored world cannot be separated. Rather, they are part of the same dynamic: My body is geared into the world when my perception provides me with the most varied and the most clearly articulated spectacle possible, and when my motor intentions, as they unfold, receive the responses they anticipate from the world. This maximum of clarity in perception and action specifies a perceptual ground, a background for my life, a general milieu for the coexistence of my body and the world. (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 261)

We know ourselves only through our presence in the world; via how we interrogate the world and act within it. Merleau-Ponty does not ignore the fact that the world is physical, yet he refrains from reducing the world to elementary particles—he refrains from a process of reduction ad absurdum to a neuron, a gene, and so on. Instead, he seeks to understand the world as it is for us: the subject exploring the world to which she a priori belongs, a world in which she is present as a single organic, complete, and dynamic unit. We perceive every object solely through our body. The body is not some kind of device that mediates between brain and world. Rather, the body is absorbed in the world, which in turn grasps it and invites it to act—the world is available and ready-to-hand. Indeed, although we feel that we perceive an object directly—due to the dominant nature of the sense of sight—we cannot sidestep the sensing body, the body that is touching and being touched, we are in fact much closer to an octopus than we are to a camera. The sense of sight creates an illusion of strong separateness from the world and of passivity in the process of perception. The reason for this is clear: The eye does not feel itself “seeing,” does not see itself seeing. By contrast, the hand senses itself sensing, it touches itself while exploring the world. Continuing this line of thought, in the case of the eye, it is very difficult to expose the touching-being touched structure, while in the case of the hand, this is obvious, in turn changing our most basic belief system and hence our philosophical approach. Indeed, sight completely dominates philosophy and creates basic distortions that prevent us from developing a philosophy more

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faithful to life itself. Note, however, that the way we think about the eye is the result of a limited and superficial phenomenology, one which flees the world and is motivated by an obsession to catalog and to represent everything, no matter what. Thus, it is not phenomenology at all but rather a belief from the very outset. We do not passively receive information from outside. Rather, we explore the world actively in a certain manner, and only via this process does the world become saturated with meaning; to some extent, the world is exposed as meaningful only through the revelatory act. Every object is perceived against a certain background, always as part of the totality of the field of perception, as part of a process via which different objects are seen as connected to each other—part of the same horizon. That is, every object is perceived through our projection onto the absolute totality of perception. Therefore, it is impossible to relate to an object as disconnected from the perceptual field that shapes it. Yet, at the same time, the perceptual field is shaped by the different objects. The perceptual field is not something “out there” like Newtonian space. We construct it, we shape it, and, at the same time, it shapes and constructs us. One can therefore say that the object we apparently see before us, seemingly directly, is only the furthest tip of the process via which our presence in the world creates a perceptual field that becomes the background. Only against this background are objects “perceived” as loaded with meaning. Thus, when it comes to meaning, background matters the most. To understand how we perceive an object, we must focus on the perceptual field—the intentional structure that enables different objects to emerge. The perceptual field is designed so that a subject, which is not separate and cannot be separated from the world, uncovers different objects. The subject and the object belong to the same phenomenal field, to the same horizon, and to the same intentional arc; they are gathered together, they are part of the same universal flesh. Indeed, as Merleau-Ponty (1968) asks, “Where are we to put the limit between the body and the world, since the world is flesh?” His answer leaves no room for doubt: “The body is a thing among things, it is so in a stronger and deeper sense than they: in the sense that, we said, it is of them.” And so, “if it touches and sees, this is not because it would have the visibles before itself as objects,” but because “they are about it, they even enter into its enclosure, they are within it.” This process is possible only because “the body belongs to the order of the things as the world is universal flesh” (pp. 137–138).

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1.1.3 Elimination of the Subject-object Dichotomy Merleau-Ponty critiques approaches that describe processes of perception in terms of a gap between the perceiving subject and the perceived object. Such approaches assume the existence of two independent systems: a higher-level cognitive system, on the one hand, and a sensory system, on the other. Accordingly, we can explain the process that enables us to perceive the world in the following manner: the sensory system is capable of receiving objective information about the world around us, information that is in turn processed and interpreted via the cognitive system. In this case, cognitive illusions arise due to faulty manipulation of precise information, leading, in turn, to false interpretations (Fig. 1.1). Alternatively, we could posit an opposing explanation of how we perceive: the sensory system is incapable of providing an exact world picture (from a Godlike point of view) for the central cognitive system. Therefore, the cognitive system must collect the distorted fragments of sensory information, using them to construct a new world. It is, however, not the world in-­itself that we experience but rather a representation of the world. If this is indeed the case, there must be a direct link between perception and imagination. Unsurprisingly, according to the top-down cognitive approach, imagination appears to precede perception; it even constitutes a condition for perception. Merleau-Ponty (1964), by contrast, does not consider perception the result of imagination. In fact, he argues the opposite: “Resemblance is the result of perception, not its mainspring” (p. 171). Both approaches (that which favors sensory information and that which favors the cognitive system) emphasize the gap between the sensory system, on one hand, and the cognitive system, on the other. These two systems work independently. Cognitive illusions, according to these approaches, derive from the gap between the information we receive at the sensory level (bottom­up) and cognitive top-down processes. In other words, processes of perception attempt to suit the representation of an object to the object. Hence, cognitive hallucinations are the result of the link between the object in the world and the object as perceived. Note that, according to this approach, cognitive illusions are simply radicalized versions of the normal situation— the system is trying to bridge the gap between representation of the object and the actual object. In opposition, so Merleau-Ponty argues, the sensory system does not belong to a physical-objective world, and the cognitive system does not belong to a mental-subjective world. Therefore, cognitive illusion is not the result of a gap between a physical-sensory world and a mental perceptive system. Rather, the systems work together in a single unified field—the

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Fig. 1.1  Size difference illusion (The Ebbinghaus illusion or Titchener circles) The central circle on the left (B) appears to be larger than the central circle on the right (A). Note, however, that when the subjects were asked to reach and pick them up, the distance between their fingers was identical. This demonstrates how, a priori, cognitive illusions are defined as “errors” only in the context of a research setting that completely forgot the real world. Most of the time, however, what is important for the organism’s survival is not whether the two central circles (A and B) in the illustration are identical in size or not, but rather their relation to the circles around them. We may even go as far as saying that from the perspective of the creature that has to operate in the actual world, trying to decide whether circle A or circle B is larger seems like a complete waste of energy, since in almost 100% of the cases we only need to know the relationship between a certain object and the objects in its surroundings. In any case, when it comes to the actual action, the body is not deceived, it reaches to grasp the circle (A or B) in the correct way. Indeed, the body knows how to operate in the world. This is not computational nor analytical knowledge, but rather the knowing body that simply tries to get a maximum grip with the world. In fact, the most important thing we learn from this (and other) cognitive illusions is what happens when our ability to move is restricted. Without movement, our perception is distorted. (The image from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Mond-­vergleich.svg)

phenomenological field, a universal flesh. In processes of perception, the higher-level cognitive system does not manipulate information that is received passively by the senses. Such an idea stems from a mistaken philosophical approach, which separates too definitively between outside and inside. Thus, every explanation that separates the object as it is in the world from the way it emerges in our consciousness is mistaken and misleading. The world is not external to us, it is within us, and not in the idealistic sense—the world is at the heart of the subject just as the subject is entirely absorbed in the world: “I am thrown into a nature, and nature appears not only outside of me in objects devoid of history, but is also visible at the center of subjectivity”

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(Merleau-­Ponty 2012, p. 361). Essentially, classical approaches to perception separate our consciousness from the world, whereas consciousness is all-in to begin with; namely, it is thrown into the midst of the world. To remain loyal to the lifeworld (German: Lebenswelt), we might suggest that cognitive illusions tell us what happens when humans are unable to act in the world. Indeed, it is impossible to maintain an illusion when our movement has no limits. A cognitive illusion emerges when we cannot transform the absent into the present. However, the essence of perception is exactly that—transforming the hidden into the present, the invisible into the visible. Perception is not a process of constructing a mental representation that should somehow be linked to the world. Rather, it is a process of revealing the world. Thus, perception (or truth for that matter) does not involve comparing mental representations with objects in the world. With this in mind, it is clear why perceiving becomes difficult when our movement is limited.

1.1.4 The Bodily Space We are present in a bodily space. There are things to my right and to my left, in front of me and behind me. We experience and perceive the world from within our body—we are the center, and the world faces us. Indeed, we cannot exist in a space that lacks such a perspective, our own subjective perspective: Space is no longer what it was in the Dioptric, a network of relations between objects such as would be seen by a witness to my vision or by a geometer looking over it and reconstructing it from outside. It is, rather, a space reckoned starting from me as the zero point or degree zero of spatiality. I do not see it according to its exterior envelope; I live in it from the inside; I am immersed in it. After all, the world is all around me, not in front of me. (Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 178)

Our body limits the world into which we are thrown—for example, the fact that the visible spectrum does not include all colors limits how we understand the world around us. In this sense, we have no acquaintance with the world itself but rather with an embodied world. We do not live in an abstract world but in our world. In Merleau-Ponty’s words: The world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject who is nothing but a project of the world; and the subject is inseparable from the world, but from a world that it itself projects. The subject is being-in-the-world and the world

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remains “subjective,” since its texture and its articulations are sketched out by the subject’s movement of transcendence (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 454)

The world, as perceived from my viewpoint, is the only world I know. It is my world, it is prior to any objective world that science attempts to construct. My perceptual schemes shape the world as I perceive it. These schemes are created bottom-up, that is, from our preliminary encounter with the world. They are the outcome of our active exploration of the world, and they can be described in terms of sensorimotor laws, which, in turn, enable us to be tuned to the world. Embedded in our body, the schemes allow us to operate naturally in the world, to forget our body in the process of perceiving the world. Likewise, because they derive from our continued and incessant dialogue with the world, they are constantly updated. A bodily viewpoint includes an emotional layer—we are always in a certain mood: “Mood assails. It comes neither from ‘without’ nor from ‘within,’ but rises from being-in-the-world itself as a mode of that being… Mood has always already disclosed being-in-the-world as a whole and first makes possible directing oneself toward something.” (Heidegger 1996, p. 129). We are doomed to be thrown into the world in a certain emotional state. For example, when we are plunged into depression, this is expressed at the bodily level, and thus also affects how the space around us is shaped. Indeed, space-time, which expresses our emotional state, is not Newtonian (we are not inside some kind of container) but the result of how we are thrown into the world in a certain emotional state. The sense of space, like the sense of time, is the result of the pre-reflective bodily experience of being-in-the-world. It is no accident that a depressed person feels as though the world is closing in on her, as though she is shrinking into a horizonless point of time, falling into a vacuum. This feeling expresses the bodily-emotional state. In a state of depression, the body ceases to be the lived-body, increasingly becoming the body-as-object. In this situation, the body becomes an obstacle; the depressed subject feels less at home in her body; her sense of belonging to the world decreases (Ratcliffe 2015). Phrasing this in Heideggerian terms, the depressed subject feels that the world is no longer ready-to-hand and instead becomes present-at-hand, out of reach, something broken that cannot be fixed. Fundamentally, it is no accident that descriptions of being isolated from the world and from the body complement each other. Returning to Heidegger (1982, p. 297), it could be said that to understand ourselves is to understand the way we are projected onto (and absorbed into) the world:

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World exists—that is, it is—only if Dasein exists, only if there is Dasein. Only if world is there, if Dasein exists as being-in-the-world, is there understanding of being, and only if this understanding exists are intraworldly beings unveiled as extant and handy. World-understanding as Dasein-understanding is self-understanding.

Essentially, then, the bodily experience at the level of the lived-body and the experience of the world are located at the same primal layer of being-in-­ the-world: We feel our body through the world and the world through our body: these are two sides of the same coin (Ratcliffe 2008, 2015). Put differently, our emotional state at any given moment is expressed in the way we experience the world itself. This idea is not intended to nullify the world of physics. On the contrary, the space surrounding us possesses physical characteristics that constitute a precondition for life on earth; experience cannot be separated from the physical laws on which our existence rests. Every movement we make is shaped by the force of gravity. We are drenched in the features of the world. Perceptual schemes are created through the organism’s encounter with the world, imprisoned in the world of physical laws. It can therefore be said that “the world” determines how consciousness is constructed, because consciousness emerges from the way our body moves and acts in the physical world, that is, according to the physical laws. People who spend a long time in a field without gravity will undergo dramatic physical changes, while the consciousness of future generations, who have never experienced gravity, will be shaped by physical laws that differ to those of their parents. After a long period, almost certainly, they will be very different from us—and perhaps we will no longer be able to speak the same language and use the same metaphors. Indeed, changes in our environment re-shape us and transform us into something else.

1.1.5 The Phenomenological Field Merleau-Ponty seeks to return to the tangible experience that precedes the artificial separation between consciousness and the world. The first step in this direction is defining the phenomenological field. The phenomenological field cannot be described in terms of a Newtonian-objective field with no viewpoint; likewise it would be a mistake to define the phenomenological field solely in terms of objects independent of the consciousness. The phenomenological field is a-dualist: There is (almost) no separation between subject and object. The perceiving subject and the perceived world are two inseparable sides of the same coin. This is a field made of flesh with

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greatly blurred limits. This space can be described as a sort of womb: “The world is made of the same stuff as the body” (Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 163). Therefore, the body cannot be regarded in an a-spatial matter: “Our body is not primarily in space, but is rather of space” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 149). The phenomenological perceptive field is a bodily field, the result of a continuing dialogue between the body and its environment, which shape each other reciprocally without any clear boundary or sharp division. Within this field, objects appear. These objects, however, are not (and cannot be) independent of the body; instead, they are part of the perceptual field. At the same time, these objects define the horizon, the intentional arc, and the field of perception: “Things are an annex or prologation of itself; they are incrusted into its flesh” (Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 163). In the process of perceiving an object, we dive into it and it invades us. In such a relationship, the focus is the reciprocal grip and not either one of the sides. In this sense, it is more accurate to think of perception as akin to sexual relations with a beloved partner: it is no longer clear where we end and the other begins, or vice versa. The process of perception always takes place in a particular phenomenological field shaped by various kinds of objects that, in turn, define the specific object perceived here-and-now. These objects stand in the background and shape the perceptual horizon; the intentional arc. As such, they enable the subject to dive into the perceived object, and, no less importantly, to open­up to it. Every object is a mirror to the other objects—every object is reflected in the objects surrounding it and they are reflected in it in return. Thus, for example, every item on my desk is part of the same niche and echoes all the other items. Take, for instance, the cup of tea that I perceive and experience right now while working at my computer: it is something that warms me and gives me both energy and comfort. At the same time, this cup of tea is perceived as something that I must take care not to spill on the keyboard. This is a cup of tea in a very precise context. This cup is very different from the same cup in the sink, because in the sink I have no fear of this kind. Rather, there I think of it in relation to the plates and the other cups: which should I rinse off first in order to organize the dish rack efficiently? This process, in which I act in a certain way vis-a-vis different objects in different situations, opens me up to the world in a specific way, enabling actions of a certain type and preventing me from executing other kinds of action. At least to some extent, the situation defines the I-can field, that is, the sense of availableness.

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1.1.6 The Lived-body as a Work of Art The body is a simple material entity, and yet it is not a simple object like any other object: “The body cannot be compared to the physical object, but rather to the work of art” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 152). Therefore, we will never be able to perceive our body as we perceive another object or explore our body as we explore another object. I perceive the world from the viewpoint of my body—from within the body: “But I am not in front of my body, I am in my body, or rather I am my body” (ibid., p. 151). Although it seems as if we experience the world directly and the body is not present in the experience, our experience is nevertheless completely bodily. Accordingly, our existential structure is entirely bodily. Even if we completely identify with processes taking place within our head (a direct result of our total identification with the sense of sight), and feel disconnected from the body, we are none other than our bodies and nothing over and beyond the body. Interestingly, Merleau-Ponty returns to Descartes and emphasizes: As Descartes once said profoundly, the soul is not merely in the body like a pilot in his ship; it is wholly intermingled with the body… For us the body is much more than an instrument or a means; it is our expression in the world, the visible form of our intentions (Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 5).

With this in mind, it is quite clear that when Merleau-Ponty says I am the body he is not talking about the body-as-object but about the lived-body acting in an environment, shaping it and shaped by it. This body, which is I (yet not Me), is a docking point in the world. Not only am I present in the world through my body, but I am present, always and necessarily, from the viewpoint it forces upon me, that is, from within it. The entire world faces in a certain direction—the body. Indeed, in the process of perception, the viewpoint on the world is from inside. Essentially, it is impossible to perceive an object from nowhere, and therefore the angle of perception always deprives us of some parts. In essence, it is exactly this limitation that transforms us into an active agent—one that explores the world in a certain style, transforming the absent into the present in each and every action. For Merleau-Ponty, the processes via which the invisible becomes visible are a work of art performed not (only) by our body but through our body.

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1.1.7 The Dual Structure of the Body To be present in the world through our body means manipulating the environment through the body, usually without conscious attention. For example, holding an apple and turning it in my palm to identify soft areas that are about to rot. The object, which always appears in a certain context, sucks us into it, opens us up, calls us to act on it, with it, and through it. The body is an object in a world of objects. If this were not the case, as Merleau-Ponty (2012) claims, we would not be able to act in the world. Yet “my body” (and of course this Cartesian turn of phrase is erroneous, for this dualism exists only in language) is not an object like other objects. Indeed, the body is not an object that I can explore from the outside like any other object. True, that would in principle be possible with the aid of manipulations such as several mirrors; however, I cannot move around my body in order to see it from all sides: I can, of course, see my eyes in a three-faced mirror, but these are the eyes of someone who is observing, and I can barely catch a glimpse of my living gaze when a mirror on the street unexpectedly reflects my own image back at me. My body, as seen in the mirror, continues to follow my intentions as if they were its shadow, and if observation involves varying the point of view by holding the object fixed, then my body escapes observation and presents itself as a simulacrum of my tactile body, since it mimics the tactile body’s initiatives rather than responding to them through a free unfolding of perspectives (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 96).

My body never stands opposite me, as every other object in the perceptual field does. Indeed, to examine the body fully another body would be needed— a viewpoint that is completely external to my body: “When it comes to my body, I never observe it itself. I would need a second body to be able to do so, which would itself be unobservable” (ibid., p. 93). Furthermore, our body is not only an object, but simultaneously an object and a subject. This structure is fundamental and inherent to human existence: “A human body exists when, between the seeing and the seen, between touching and the touched, between one eye and the other, between hand and hand, a blending of some sort takes place, the spark is lit between sensing and sensible” (Merleau-Ponty 1964, pp. 162–163). As we can see, for Merleau-Ponty, this double structure is the metaphysical structure of man. Thus, for example, the mirror exposes the most basic existential structure of my being as at once subject and object:

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Like all other technical objects, such as signs and tools, the mirror arises upon the open circuit [that goes] from seeing body to visible body. Every technique is a “technique of the body.” A technique outlines and amplifies the metaphysical structure of our flesh. The mirror appears because I am seeing-visible [voyant-­ visible], because there is a reflexivity of the sensible; the mirror translates and reproduces that reflexivity (ibid., p. 168).

1.2 Perceiving the World through Movement 1.2.1 Movement and Perception According to the orthodox cognitive approach, movement and perception are disconnected from each other. On the one hand there is input (perception) and on the other output (movement), with cognitive processes mediating between them. Hurley (2001) defines this as the “sandwich” model, proposing a more dynamic approach: Cognitive processes do not lie between input and output but are created out of a dynamic feedback with (and through) the world, to be more accurate, cognitive processes emerge from, and are rooted in, our encounter with the world at the sensorimotor level. Note that, in this framework, the world itself plays an active role in cognitive processes. The orthodox model prefers perception over movement and in general “top-bottom” processes: passive input from the environment, launching a cognitive process that enables us to “perceive” the world in the form of a certain representation within our brain. According to the orthodox model, movement results from mental activity and has no strong influence on the received input, since the output (movement) and input systems are in principle independent. Moreover, in the orthodox model, perception and movement are almost unrelated, whereas in the dynamic-horizontal model we treat ourselves as an organism that explores the world through movement, and there is no sharp separation between movement and perception: Perception is not input, and movement is not output. According to this approach, we should cease thinking in terms of a causal arrow advancing in one direction: from inside-out or from outside-in. Instead, we should think in terms of dynamic processes in which perception and movement are in constant and ongoing interaction with no clear direction (from the inside-out or from outside-­in), without preference for one or another type of information. Similarly, we should cease thinking in vertical terms (bottom up vs. top-down), with a central system at the top that manages the organism. By contrast, we should think about our presence in the world in dynamic-horizontal terms: the

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different systems in the organism work in parallel and not in series, in a dynamic rather than a top-down manner. According to the dynamic model, interaction does not take place from inside-out and from outside-in but rather in a constant process of feedback at different levels—from the way in which we preserve physical stability and balance, through the way we extend our hand to reach out for the cup of tea, and to the way we put together puzzles, play tennis, or write. Despite different levels of complexity, these actions share something in common: we are constantly interacting with the environment, continuously exploring our environment, which, in turn, guides our actions; the availability of our surroundings calls for a certain action. In this process, we are open to the world that both grips us and sucks us into it. The feedback teaches us what the world actually is, and, no less importantly, who we are: an exploring organism with certain abilities and limitations acting within a certain environment that enables certain actions and impedes others. Gibson (1986) stresses that our ability to explore the world cannot be separated from our ability to explore ourselves. Indeed, according to Merleau-Ponty (2012), “I am not concealed from myself because I have a world” (p. 311). In terms of the perceptual system, we may then suggest that to learn something about the world is to learn something about ourselves, and to learn something about ourselves is to learn something about the world.

1.2.2 Exploring the World We are our body. Among other things, this means that we are limited to our bodily perspective. Consequently, objects cannot be fully perceived from a godlike viewpoint and hence things are never fully exposed to us. Indeed, objects in our surroundings always remain somewhat concealed. Things are present but invisible, or better put, invisible yet present. We exist between the visible and the invisible (yet to become visible); losing a grip on specific aspects in order to obtain a grip on others. Our experience is shaped by the dialogue between the present and the absent; things are always present to some extent yet to some degree they are also absent. We are asked to find an apple hidden in one of many sealed bags. Probably, even without using the sense of sight, sense of smell, and the sense of taste, most of us will succeed in detecting the apple, even if the other bags contain round objects similar to an apple. We explore the world around us in the same way that we explore the object in the bag. Let us consider, for example, how we look for a certain pen in a pencil case without seeing it, or how we search in

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total darkness, during a power cut, for candles in a drawer. To do so, we must know-how to relate motor activity to sensory input; we must know-how to relate sensory action and motor input in terms of “if-then.” In this process, we get a grip on the object. Generally, in order to identify objects in the world, we need to activate certain laws of motion that connect movement to sensation. Let us further pinpoint this notion: when the bag is in our hands, it is easy to identify the spherical shape within it; we touch the object, hold it, and sense that it has no corners. Take a moment to think about this experience— the sense that the perceived object has no corners. The active process of perception is twofold: When we are looking for unique characteristics that will allow us to identify the object, we are at the same time exploring salient characteristics that are “missing.” Accordingly, when we collect information about its roundness, we simultaneously pick up information about what it lacks: corners, straight lines, and so on. Thus, the process of exploring what is constitutes a dual process in which we simultaneously explore and assure ourselves of what is absent—confirmation and refutation operate together in the framework of movement-sensation-expectation (Fig. 1.2). When we grasp an object, whether with hand or eye, to ensure that it remains in our grasp or in focus, we must be able to adjust. Thus, for instance, our hand (and accordingly our entire body) prepares differently to catch a tennis ball or a cube of the same size (and weight for that matter). The hand that is ready to catch the object, the hand that makes adjustments to achieve optimal grip, is also that which holds the answer. Indeed, consider the difference between “rolling” a ball and a cube between our fingers—how much information we extract, collect, and in fact manufacture by means of touch, just from the character of the hand movement, the fingers, and the space between the fingers; how much information we collect and manufacture from the connection between motor activity and sensory input; and vice versa; how far the sensory input shapes the characteristics of our movement. Essentially, however, the answer to how we identify the apple in the bag is not in the hand alone but rather in the interaction with the object—interaction that naturally includes the eye, of which the hand is the direct extension (and not as a panopticon), and eventually the entire body. Indeed, the relevant information emerges from the encounter with the object itself, as well as from the very movement of our bodies in a way that is independent of the object.2 As Merleau-Ponty notes:  This formulation is problematic because even movement that is independent of a concrete object operates in relation to some imagined object, that is, in the framework of a certain system of expectations that assumes the presence of some particular object. 2

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I have the world as an unfinished individual through my body as a power for this world; I have the position of objects through the position of my body, or inversely I have the position of my body through the position of objects, not through a logical implication, nor in the manner in which we determine an unknown size through its objective relations with given sizes, but rather through a real implication and because my body is a movement toward the world and because the world is my body’s support (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 366)

The movement itself helps collect meaningful information about the world. This is achieved not only through changes in sensory input but also through the new information it enables us to “collect” about our bodies. Every movement enables us to pick up proprietary information (the sensory information arriving from receptors in the body that report on its condition and the location of the body in space) and kinesthetic information (the sense of physical posture and movement of body and limbs) with regard to our location, the manner in which we are positioned in space, and more. Characteristics of movement itself reveal a great deal about the world with which we are saturated: when we move in space, laws of motion come into play and teach us what we must do to hold the object. Yet these sentences are misleading. We do not collect or pick up information about the proprioceptive system because we are not separate from it, we ourselves are the proprioceptive system,3 we are the movements we make. There is no “I” that learns something about a body (which, in turn, is separated from this “I”). There is the body that is open to the world and constantly tries to maximize its possibilities of collecting more and more information about the world—trying to get a grip on things. We perceive the world through our body, and every encounter with the world is a bodily encounter. This is a process of movement, and of expectation that is refuted or confirmed through feedback from the world and from our body. To pin down this notion, let us return to our real life. When I place my hand on the dresser in total darkness, seeking a flashlight among all the things scattered on top of it, I move my hand on the surface, feel around, explore, and attempt to “illuminate” the surface using the sense of touch. Every object I come across immediately undergoes a process of quick investigation: books are characterized by sharp corners, and hence I swiftly pass them over. Pens are indeed rounded, but their size  This does not suggest that it possible to reduce a human being to one system or another.

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is qualitatively different from that of the flashlight I am looking for. Indeed, as was noted above, we always operate in a dual fashion when collecting information: confirming while refuting, refuting while confirming. These processes take place in parallel but are in a close dialogue. And even if the flashlight were pen-like, nonetheless the pen and the flashlight have different characteristics: weight, center of gravity, texture of the material, etc. In this process, I can locate the flashlight, and, while I hold it, the exploration process continues. I sense that the object is round, I sense the coolness of metal, and, in a process of feedback, information regarding the character of the object that I am holding emerges. Afterwards I sense the flashlight at a higher level of resolution to locate softer areas. The hand keeps exploring yet in a different context. We are no longer looking for the flashlight but rather the on-off switch. The situation has changed, calling for a different style of action: we are now exploring the flashlight for the relative stickiness of the rubber, the warmth, the softness. Once this is done, I get a grip on the flashlight. Until now it was unready-to-hand, yet in the exploration process it becomes ready-to-hand, and, as a result, my home—which was unready-to-hand during the power outage—becomes ready-to-hand. This is also the way we select a tomato: we grasp it, try to locate its flaws. We explore the tomato, focusing our resolution on everything related to sensations of pressure (softness versus rigidity) in order to make the best possible choice. We are exploring the tomato in the context of caring. It is Thursday now. On Friday we eat at my wife’s parents, and they love softer and redder tomatoes sliced widthwise; on Saturday morning, my parents visit us. They like hard green tomatoes cut into eighths, requiring a different type of tomato (and also a different type of knife and so on). My children love to help me cut salad on Saturday night, so the tomatoes cannot be too soft because they use a blunter knife and will not be able to cut a soft tomato. They too need smaller tomatoes, which they can hold in one hand and which will suit the smaller knives they use. These considerations are all in the groping hand, in the manner of movement, in the style, in the system of expectations, but again, these are not top-down processes. Instead, we are open to the needs of our environment, thus creating a map of possibilities that guides us. We go to the supermarket on a certain day, at a certain time, and the variety is limited, as is the time we can invest in choosing tomatoes. We always operate in a certain situation that enables, limits, and invites us to act in it in a certain fashion. The world itself calls me to action: the shape of the flashlight enables certain movements and negates others, the rigidity of the tomato limits the

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pressure I will exert on it. For example, before I even begin to feel it, its color defines the range of action. It is clear that in the case of a greenish tomato, I will expect a stiffer touch than a red one: “The eye is an instrument that moves itself, a means which invents its own ends; it is that which has been moved by some impact of the world, which it then restores to the visible through the offices of an agile hand.” (Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 165)

1.2.3 Knowing How Our ability to explore the world relates to our skill at engaging in an intimate dialogue with the environment: we can connect motor activity and sensory input. Essentially, motor activity and sensory input appear together and cannot be separated. Every type of exploration involves a different link between the character of the motor activity and the sensory input, as illustrated by the following example: A missile that is launched at a plane follows the plane using a camera. Several basic sensorimotor laws facilitate this: When the plane viewed in the camera appears bigger, the missile “knows” that it is approaching the target. If the object grows and the missile travels at a fixed speed, the missile “knows” that the plane is decelerating. When the plane is at the top left corner of the screen, the missile “knows” that it must turn left and upward to return it to the center of the screen. The missile does not have a central system. Rather, it operates according to a collection of laws relating movement to sensing. This is also the way infrared homing systems, which rely on the Doppler effect, and others operate. All these systems work together, crosschecking data and drawing a picture according to which the missile “knows” its location relative to the plane and what it must do to hit the plane. This knowledge can be described in terms of “if-then.” We operate in the same way. For instance, when my right hand moves right, it expects that it will either bump into something or nothing. Think, for example, about how we go down an unknown staircase when the light suddenly goes out. In such cases, our entire body is in a state of readiness— exploring the world and collecting information in an effort to anticipate whether a step awaits us. Merleau-Ponty (2012, p. 106) phrases the idea in the following manner: “From its very beginnings, the grasping movement is magically complete; it only gets under way by anticipating its goal, since the ban on grasping is enough to inhibit the movement.”

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Sensations

Movements

Expectations

Fig. 1.2  The triangular structure of movement-expectation-sensation Sensation generates (non-conscious) expectation, leading to (and shaping) movement due to (a certain) expectation of a sensation, that is expressed in continuous movement saturated with expectations, which for their part are constantly changing and updating according to the sensations that generate new expectations and so on, in an endless cycle

Before continuing, it is important to note that expectations are not a kind of cognitive system divorced from movements and sensations. Instead, it is an inseparable part of the triangular structure of movement-expectation-­ sensation in which none of the elements takes priority. Essentially, this is not a hierarchical structure wherein the cognitive system has the last word but rather a horizontal and dynamic structure. We explore the world just as the missile follows the plane, using “if-then” type information (if we move in a certain direction, a certain sensory input should appear). How do we know the wall opposite us is red, and not yellow, for example? The movement of the eye over, or better put with, the surface, and the input resulting from the sampling and scanning movement, are responsible for the experience of the wall is red: “The gaze obtains more or less from things according to the manner in which it interrogates them, in which it glances over them or rests upon them” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 154). At the level of the sense of sight, one can consider an entire system of laws that changes the appearance of the object as it moves between light and shadow, and when it is exposed to different light levels. This system of laws generates the experience of red. We can think of this process in the framework of a system of laws concerning the movement of an object in space relative to different types of lighting and the received sensory input. The movement itself and the sensory input are one package, always operating together. Moreover, movement itself, in relation to the received sensory input, enables us to determine which sense is active. When we turn the head to the right, that which was in the center “moves” left. Look at one point in front of you now. Close your right eye and turn your head to the left until the point is outside your range of sight. When this happens, blink your right eye, and you

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will see that the point appears and disappears from the peripheral visual field of the right eye and the right eye only. Think how much information can be obtained via this process: We learn that blinking causes a visual experience and that the character of the information is visual and not aural. The fact that blinking causes a momentary loss of vision enables the system to know that this is visual input and to treat it as such. Another example: When we bring our head close to an object, it “grows.” Yet this process does not occur when we bring our hand close to an object. Let us return to the example of moving our head left and blinking our right eye: We understand that due to the leftward head movement, the object will appear only in the vision field of right eye. Now we move the right eye without moving the head left and right, and when we focus on the object at the periphery of the eye, we feel a certain pain. This is additional information about the link between movement (or lack thereof ) and sensory input. Forcing ourselves to focus on the object at the periphery (and the extreme right of the right eye), we discover that our head is slowly drawn to the right until the object is once again at the center of our gaze. This is a good example of how the character of the input “controls” movement, how the world grips us and draws us into it. Indeed, here we see the direct link (feedback loops) between movement and sensory input. The processes described here take place beneath the threshold of the conscious mind; this is implicit knowledge that enables us to understand what we see—a collection of “if-then” laws connecting motor activities to sensory inputs. When we have a set of laws at hand, we can say that “we know how.” According to O’Regan and Noë (O’Regan and Noë 2001a, b; Noë 2004), perceiving does not mean carrying out a system of laws connecting motor activity to sensory input but rather being tuned into this system of laws, that is, being able to control it unconsciously. Inability to control such a system is equivalent to inability to perceive. In other words, inability to manage the laws relating movement to sensory input means that one is blind. Essentially, one is not born with the ability to link between sense and movement; this requires learning. To be more specific, we need to learn (unconscious) control of the sensorimotor system of laws. Indeed, Merleau-Ponty (2012, pp. 154–155) further stresses that we need to learn how to see: “Learning to see colors is the acquisition of a certain style of vision, a new use of one’s own body; it is to enrich and to reorganize the body schema.” Not knowing-how means living in a world that is closed, undeciphered, chaotic, a world that in Heideggerian (1996) terms, as discussed above, can be defined as present-at-hand. The knowledge that enables us to control the system is practical knowledge stored in our bodies—when we do not know how to operate in the world, we are cast out of it. The world, in these conditions,

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ceases to be accessible, it is closed to us. Perception means knowing-how to act in the world in order to understand it. If we do not know what to do and how to do it—we are blind to the world.

1.2.4 To See the Whole World With a few exceptions, we feel that we see the whole world. This experience is both quite basic and quite mistaken. Essentially, this belief is one of the central reasons that many of us accept the approach of representations in the brain, according to which we have a complete representation of everything we see before us. However, this feeling (as though we see the whole world) is merely an illusion. Noë believes (2002) that the source of the mistake is our failure to understand what it means to see. For instance, when we think about the experience of blindness, we think to ourselves that a blind person “sees blackness.” However, a blind person does not see blackness—she does not see: “I can close my eyes and plug my ears, but I cannot stop seeing, even if only the blackness before my eyes, or hearing, even if only the silence” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 416). There is a huge difference between seeing blackness and being blind or between hearing silence and being deaf. Lacking the most basic understanding of the experience of vision, we accept it as obvious that the information received on the retina is almost irrelevant and seeing means representing the world in the brain. The source of this phenomenological failure is the difficulty to sense the eye at the moment it operates in the world, just like the hand that explores its environment in order to enable us to see the world, or, more accurately, to get a grip on it. Generally, to begin to understand the meaning of sight, one needs to understand that it operates in tactile fields: The very fact that genuine vision is prepared for through a transition phase and through a sort of touching with the eyes could not be understood if there were no quasi-spatial tactile fields into which the first visual perceptions could be inserted. Vision could never communicate directly with touch, as it does for the normal adult, if touch, even when artificially isolated, were not organized in such a manner as to make coexistences possible. Far from excluding the idea of a “tactile space,” the facts prove to the contrary that there is a space so strictly tactile that its articulations are not at first, nor will they ever be, in a relation of synonymy with the articulations of visual space (ibid., p. 232).

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Yet, despite the great illusion of seeing the whole world at once, we have no complete representation of the picture before us in the brain. In fact, the eye is constantly working to grasp its environment because the eye cannot avoid tracking an object moving in front of it. Moving objects in our field of vision attract our attention in an uncontrollable manner (think about what happens when a fly passes before our eyes—whether you want to or not, you will find yourself following it), and the moment this happens, we know what to do, that is, which sensorimotor laws we need to use in order to follow the moving object. From the moment we sense the moving object, our dance with it begins. In this sense, the world grasps us no less than we grasp it. To understand the origin of the experience of “seeing the whole world,” we can compare it to the manner in which we “remember.” Usually, we feel that all our autobiographical memories are accessible, but of course we are not aware of all of them all the time. We unconsciously understand what we need to do to bring a certain memory to the surface or to dredge it up. O’Regan claims (1992) that just as we feel that all our autobiographical memories are accessible at all times, so too we feel that we constantly see that which is before us, even though it is clear in both cases that this is not so. The world should be regarded as a sort of “external memory.” We simply know what to do, unconsciously, to effect a transformation from hidden to revealed, available, and accessible. We know how to operate in the world in order to collect the missing details. The way we explore the world allows us to reveal what is hidden, making perception the process via which the concealed becomes unconcealed. The constant and ongoing movement generates varying sensory inputs, and this, in turn, is responsible for the experience that “we see the entire world.” This experience emerges from our ability to turn the non-present into present. Right now, while reading these words, you can move your eyes and make peripheral information become central, you can look everywhere and collect details about the world around you. You know how to act in order to obtain the missing information, to uncover the hidden parts (think for a second about the experience of reading Wikipedia entries: we start with one topic and via various links move to other topics, eventually we receiving a fuller picture of the topic that we set out to study). When we examine ourselves and ask whether we see X, all we need to do is to act in a certain manner. This knowledge, the ability to transform something from hidden to revealed, is at the basis of the experience that the whole world is before us. If this is on our map of possibilities, then from our viewpoint it exists; it is right in front of us.

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In the case of the sense of touch, it appears easy to grasp how command of the sensorimotor laws enables us to perceive the world. This is, however, not the case with vision. Yet, essentially, the sense of vision operates in a fashion far more akin to the other senses than we tend to think: “The eye was like a giant hand that samples the outside world” (O’Regan 2011, p. 23). The difference between them is perhaps the extremely automatic way this system operates, making us unable to sense ourselves sensing, that is, to see ourselves seeing. The result of this automatic character is our difficulty in (and perhaps even the impossibility of ) following what the eye does as it samples and scans the world. The action is so quick that the experience of “sensing” we described before, in the attempt to identify an object in a bag, barely emerges (it remains beneath the threshold of consciousness). Yet the sense of sight also operates in an exploratory manner—sampling and scanning the object, feeling it in an effort to understand what this is about.

1.3 Embodied Cognition 1.3.1 The Body as a Tool and a Technology It is morning. My son, Assaf, our puppy, Buzz, and I walk about half a kilometer to the kindergarten. I pick up a stick and throw it. With a puppy’s enthusiasm, Buzz runs, catches the stick in his mouth, and, when he returns to us, he puts the stick at our feet and licks Assaf ’s face. Buzz cannot lick Assaf with the stick in his mouth, this is his physical limitation. To pick things up, the dog uses his mouth, and he uses his limbs for movement. By contrast, I, a human being stand on two legs. Doing so frees my two hands to do whatever is needed. In one hand I hold Assaf ’s hand, and in my other hand the stick I threw to Buzz. I raise the stick in order to check how high Buzz can jump. I am constantly exploring the world around me, ceaselessly testing my limits and the limits of the creatures around me. I use the words “to talk,” “to write” too easily; these skills should not be taken for granted. Talking requires a unique bodily structure: the oral cavity, the jaw, the tongue, the throat, and all the other organs must function in perfect coordination to produce speech in a comprehensible language intended to fulfill aims, just like any other tool. As Merleau-Ponty (2012) puts it: “As for the sense of the word, I learn it just as I learn the use of a tool—by seeing it employed in the context of a certain situation” (p. 425). On our morning walk to kindergarten, we visit my parents’ home for a moment. My mother holds a tablet, she takes a picture of us and sends it to

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my sister, who is 11,000 km away. The tablet, smartphone, and other smart devices redefine our boundaries. Technology is part of what we are, it is part of the cognitive system. It defines our development, shaping and expanding our boundaries and empowering the gap between our body as object and our body as we experience it—the lived-body (Leib). Our corporeal body, the body-as-object (Körper), always (or at least that is how we feel) ends with a clear boundary. However, the lived-body melts into space and has no clear boundaries. According to Ihde (2009), to say that technology is embodied is to say that it changes our sense of boundaries, reshapes our I-can field, all while remaining in the background. In other words, technology becomes embodied when it integrates into the lived-body. A person holding a smartphone in his hand is familiar with the addiction to the device (calendar, navigation apps, and more). The I-phone is such a successful instrument that Chalmers, in the introduction to Clark’s book, Supersizing the Mind (2008), claims that the device is actually part of who he is. To use Merleau-Ponty’s (1964) words: “Our organs are no longer instruments; on the contrary, our instruments are detachable organs” (p. 178). This is an important transition: from an instrument to a part of who I am, from a fork to a prosthesis. Indeed, cognitive processes that in the past took place “inside” now undeniably occur in the smartphone (Clark and Chalmers 1998). Note, however, that the smartphone is not only a passive external instrument; it is an active and learning technology that has become part of one’s identity; this is among the factors that make it so addictive. This device frees up cognitive resources for us (and creates new burdens, sometimes even greater). The central idea underlying apps is an attempt to reduce cognitive load, to generate maximal information about the world with minimal effort. To understand this statement, we need to take the user experience to extremes. For instance, in the case of Google Glass (or any other smart glasses), the border between cognitive processes that take place “inside” and cognitive processes occurring “outside” becomes completely artificial. Smart glasses enable us, for example, to navigate in real time through the streets of a foreign city and, as we do so, they remind us of an appointment we have made and how to get to the meeting in the framework of time and budgetary constraints. When we meet someone and cannot immediately place her, smart glasses will help us remember her name. They will change the lives of those who suffer from difficulty in facial identification, and they may enable the blind to conduct themselves in the world in a completely independent fashion. Smart glasses cannot be defined as a passive system—just as the eye is not passive. Indeed, we must think of our eyes as active: “They [our eyes] are computers of the world” (Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 165).

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The advanced technology in which we are totally immersed is active. This is a learning system that will continue to improve through a variety of apps proposed by the audience itself, bottom-up, based on actual needs. The technology of the glasses enables a certain bottom-up growth, and it is fairly clear that, in a few years, it will be hard to manage in some parts of the world without them, or without something similar that might perhaps be installed into the eye itself. The glasses will be part of our lived bodies in the deepest sense, but—critically to my argument—they will still be defined as a “tool” that enables us to do something in the world. In this sense they resemble Heidegger’s hammer, which is defined by what it enables us to do in the world—hammer a nail and finally build a house that will protect us: “The thing at hand which we call a hammer has to do with hammering, the hammering has to do with fastening something, fastening something has to do with protection against bad weather” (Heidegger 1996, p. 78). However, even though the glasses are a tool, we will not perceive “them” but with them, similarly to the case of a blind man’s cane: The blind man’s cane has ceased to be an object for him, it is no longer perceived for itself; rather, the cane’s furthest point is transformed into a sensitive zone, it increases the scope and the radius of the act of touching and has become analogous to a gaze (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 144).

I return home from the kindergarten. Now, as I sit in front of the computer screen, I notice that while writing these words my ideas—by means of the keyboard—appear on the monitor with amazing convenience. To be precise, I do not actually have ideas in my head before I write, I just write and then my ideas are revealed to me, at first almost as if they were foreign to me. In this process, I do not feel my fingers; there is a direct link between my thought and the screen before me. I wonder if I could have written these ideas in the same formulation if I were not touch-typing, if my fingers were not as quick as my thought. As I write these sentences, I remember my level of frustration when I switched keyboards and the Ctrl key on the bottom left of the new keyboard was more sensitive to pressure (not to mention the time I was in hotel in Paris struggling with a completely different keyboard). I consider this and understand that typists think at the pace of their typing. Their thought is shaped by the speed of their typing. This explains why my father’s writing is so different now. When he wrote with a pen, his thoughts flowed and his style was clear, whereas writing on a computer has created a large gap between the pace at which he was used to thinking and the pace at which he types. His style has changed, the sentences he writes are neither clear nor sharp, and

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when I read documents he has typed, I do not recognize my father’s style in them. In a few more months, when the pace of his thought will adjust itself to the pace of his typing, this will fall into place. However, even then it will only be partial, because the keyboard will never be part of his lived-body as the pen was part of his lived-body. Indeed, according to Merleau-Ponty (2012), “the subject who learns to type literally incorporates the space of the keyboard into his bodily space” (p. 146). Considering this, we might suggest that my father’s bodily-pen-space and bodily-keyboard-space is different in kind. My son has returned from kindergarten. I look at him as he rides his bicycle. For him, everything suddenly moves faster. To avoid falling, he must think and act at the pace at which the wheels turn. Similarly, when he learns to swim, he needs to think and act according to the limitations of his lung volume. We live according to the limitations of our body, according to its abilities. Technology enables us to redefine our limits, and it is successful only when it becomes part of us—part of the lived-body, part of the body-as-­ subject, part of the body that knows, that is transparent (this is the process of “embodiment”). Only when technology becomes transparent can we perceive the world through it; in this state, technology becomes an inseparable part of the very experience of our body. For this to happen, technology must make actions that we would otherwise perform with difficulty simple and efficient. Technology opens up a new world of possibilities. In so doing, it reshapes the I-can field, completely changing our limits. It alters the manner in which we think about the world and understand it, and, consequently, it redefines our very existence.

1.3.2 The World is Our Best Model According to the common approach accepted by most scholars of cognitive neurosciences, a central system is needed to control the body in its encounter with the world. At the beginning of the 1980s, after the failure of robot manufacturing using “top-down” techniques—first creating the central system, then “dressing” it in a body—an important breakthrough took place, and various labs began to employ a “bottom-up” technique. Robots without a central system and without a complex system of representations (for instance, a vacuum-cleaning robot) operate far more successfully than robots that are based on a central managing system. The best-known project is the Cog robot built at MIT laboratories under the leadership of Rodney Brooks.

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Some researchers in the field of artificial intelligence believe that there is no need for a central processing unit in computers in general, and in intelligent manufacturing in particular. Brooks (1990), a pioneer in the field, claims that “the world is its own best model—always exactly up to date and complete in every detail” (p. 5). The world always enables feedback and shapes the way we work, guides us while coping with problems and solving them “online.” The world is here “for us.” Hence, the best way to solve problems in the world is to act in the world itself—there is no need for a central system representing the world in all its complexity. In a similar manner to people and other organisms, robots that are constructed bottom-up are rooted in the physical world. Such robots have varying grades of freedom: each grade is autonomous at least some degree and knows how to communicate with the grade above and below it, but not the other grades: The finger, for example, does not need to know that it is part of an entire robot. It knows it is part of the hand and that it is composed of several joints. These robots are designed to deal with challenges in the world itself; each grade of robot is built to cope with problems in its environment independently and autonomously, at least to a certain extent (Clark 1997). For example, a robot with six legs (Genghis, inspired by six-legged arthropods) succeeded in walking without any central control system. Surprisingly, when one leg was removed it found a way to walk on the remaining five legs, without a central control system and with no prior design. By means of the feedback process, the robot succeeded in coping with a problem that its designers did not take into consideration. According to this approach, it is not necessary to program the robot to cope with all possible problems. Rather, it learns to deal with the problems through its interaction with the world. The dialogue with the world, the need to hold onto the world, teaches the robot to deal with various complex problems. There is no central system that can operate in such a way because a new problem will always arise: indeed, as we know, the world is full of surprises. Essentially, if there is no need for a central system to tackle new and unexpected problems (which the robot was not designed to deal), then what purpose does it serve? In other words, is it even necessary? Indeed, it appears that we sometimes cling to the idea of a central system without any real justification: People tend to look for the cause, the reason, the driving force, the deciding factor. When people observe patterns and structures in the world (for example, the flocking patterns of birds or the foraging patterns of ants), they often assume centralized causes where none exist. And when people try to create patterns or

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structure in the world (for example, new organizations or new machines), they often impose centralized control when none is needed (Resnick 1994, p. 120).

A central system is also not always practical: in some cases, at least, the amount of time that passes until it decides how to deal with problems that require immediate attention is considerably longer than in robots without a central system (Brooks 1991). In addition, systems with a central management system require significant energy resources, while robots without a central system are more economical in terms of energy consumption—a significant issue from an evolutionary viewpoint (Clark 2008). A bottom-up approach does not involve input-black box-output separation. It does not operate according to the sandwich model: there is no separation between movement, perception, and cognitive activity. Indeed, there is no need for a cognitive system that receives input, calculates, and decides how to act; instead, movement, perception, and decisions constitute one holistic unit. The robot’s organs operate independently and cope dynamically with the challenges and difficulties that emerge during its activity: Decision making is local, at the level of each organ, which acts autonomously. The robot is not operated by a central computing system. Rather, the environment itself guides it to action (Clark 1997). The bottom-up idea is highly significant in the context of embodied consciousness. Indeed, if consciousness is the direct result of an organism’s activity in the world, and if most of the activity takes place in the organism’s encounter with the world, without any need for a central control system, this undermines the idea of a central brain controlling everything that happens to the organism. This does not contradict the fact that everything (or at least a considerable part of it) which happens in the body is expressed in certain neural activity. Indeed, this argument does not suggest that the brain is unimportant. Rather, it proposes that in many cases we can operate in the world without management by a central (top-down) system. Moreover, if there is no need for a central system, this has significant ramifications for the idea of representations. Indeed, it is not clear why such complex representations of the world are necessary if the organism is in direct contact with it: “My body has its world, or understands its world without having to go through ‘representations,’ or without being subordinated to a ‘symbolic’ or ‘objectifying function.’” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 141). Even if one clings to the idea of representations, it is necessary to redefine the meaning of this term and the role it plays. In any case, it appears that these representations are not a “duplicated world” but rather a dismantled, piecemeal system that uses the world itself to achieve max grip on the world.

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To understand in greater depth how we rely on the world to solve problems, we should think of how we put together jigsaw puzzles: when we choose a piece, we do not turn it round in our “Mind.” We place it in the relevant area and begin to “play with it,” turning it around until it fits into place, just as we park between two cars when we do not have a lot of room to maneuver. By means of feedback, we succeed in solving actual problems in the real world. The world is an inseparable (and active) part of the cognitive system. This is an integrated strategy in which we use the world itself as a model for our cognitive activity, without any need for a central system that models the world and duplicates it in the form of representation. To pin down this notion, let us think for a moment about a baseball player who catches a flying ball: The information processing perspective requires the player to formulate an estimate of various initial conditions of the ball’s flight—the force of the impact, the angle of the trajectory, that kind of thing—then to create and analyse an internal model of the path along which the ball will likely move, then to use that model to guide and adjust motor movements continuously in time in order to intercept the ball. That is all well and good if we functioned as computers do, but… [we can give]… a simpler account: to catch the ball, the player simply needs to keep moving in a way that keeps the ball in a constant visual relationship with respect to home plate and the surrounding scenery (technically, in a “linear optical trajectory”). This might sound complicated, but it is actually incredibly simple, and completely free of computations, representations and algorithms (Epstein 2016).

This example offers an alternative to the representative approach in terms of cost-benefit analysis: an approach that relies on the world itself. Continuing this line of thought, Dennett (1996) claims that the most important source of our excess intelligence is our custom of projecting as many of our conscious aims as possible onto the environment. We “extract” our brains to the world around us, building a variety of external means that can store, process, and represent the meaning anew. In a system of this sort, there is no clear distinction between movement, perception, and thought. It is impossible to separate them, and it is impossible to describe the cognitive system as a process of information processing (the sandwich model) that takes place between movement and perception, between input and output. It thus seems that quite a simple system of laws can create complex systems that solve apparently hard problems. Note however, that these “laws” are in fact none other than a collection of “tricks,” that is, a particular heuristic

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system of laws that emerged in the framework of evolutionary development, the organism’s adaptation to its environment. Their purpose is to solve difficult problems locally, without “disturbing” the central system. Clark (1997) claims that, from an evolutionary perspective, there is nothing to prevent problem solving taking place not only at the level of the organism itself but also between groups of organisms. And this can happen while the world itself participates in these processes, while maximizing utility with minimum cost to the organism. Interestingly scholars who advocate the central system approach, such as Neisser (1967), find it difficult to understand how we can manage ourselves within the world. Indeed, if we assume the existence of a central computing system, the world itself becomes an extremely strange thing. At this stage it seems that the real question is why do we need a system that represents the world and manages infinite processes of calculation when the world is right in front of us, waiting for us to act within it? If, a-priori, we evolved in this very specific world in a manner that enables us to operate in it naturally and with minimal energy, why do we need such a complicated system of representation in our heads? Returning to the issue of robots, today, despite impressive technological developments in the field, it is unclear how a robot that would function like a person can be manufactured based on a strong central system. In particular, it is unclear how this process would take place while the body would be represented in that same central system as a type of object (that is, from outside, and not from inside as a living body). Consider the difference between our ability to drive a car while sitting inside and feeling it as a part of us in contrast to our ability to control a car remotely. When we feel the body from inside, as a lived body, there is no need to represent the world; we simply operate within it. A robot based on a strong central system, by contrast, would not control its body from within but as we control an external object that does not become part of the lived body. Even if this is possible, and clearly it would require extremely complicated calculation processes, it appears that the result would be a marvelously complicated calculating system that differs greatly from humans. There is nothing wrong with this, of course. However, if we seek to understand how we, humans, operate in the world, it is unclear how such a robot can help in this endeavor. This robot can help us understand how to build a robot but not how we operate in the world that grips us. If the bicycle we are riding falls to the right, our body knows what to do to right ourselves. Yet, if we were to ask what to do in such a situation, most people will have no idea. Indeed, our body knows far more than our higher cognitive system about functioning in the world. In fact, when the higher

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cognitive system intervenes, we are usually unable to function in the actual world. In those cases, we sense our body more as an object, indicating that the situation is less than optimal—we lose our grip on the world. In everyday life, by contrast, we feel the body-as-subject living in the world, with a grip on it. This enables us to exist in a constant dialogue with our surroundings and to feel at home in this world. In such circumstances, there is no need for the involvement of the high level cognitive system. A robot based on a strong central system will need to find alternate ways to operate in new and complicated situations for which it was not programmed and which it has not learned. At this point, computerized robots are incapable of observing a new environment, understanding and evaluating the situation, and deciding what should be done, or making a plan and implementing it (Harel 2000). Currently, it is hard to imagine robots based on a strong central system that would succeed in meeting these challenges—I refer to the simplest everyday tasks, not to so-called complex processes of risk assessment in purchasing stocks, for example. One of the reasons for this is that a great many everyday actions diverge from expected rules, for example, use of language. In the words of Wittgenstein (1965): “Remember that in general we don’t use language according to strict rules—it hasn’t been taught to us by means of strict rules, either. We, in our discussions on the other hand, constantly compare language with a calculus preceding to exact rules” (p. 25) Within the bodily field of perception, the body is the zero point; it is the background. It affords meaning. The body knows how to discern what is more or less important, to distinguish between the background and the object on which one should focus. A robot based on a strong central system will need to find a top-down way to generate such distinctions. This task becomes almost impossible, because life presents us with situations that demand improvisation. How can a robot improvise when it does not carry thousands of years of evolution in its body? A robot lacks the simple bodily understanding that will enable it do the right thing at the right time without knowing why—just like that.

1.3.3 Metaphors Metaphors play an important role in understanding the world, and they have a decisive impact on higher cognitive processes. Therefore, how we understand metaphors is critical in understanding the higher cognitive system. If metaphors are indeed rooted in bodily experience, they force us to redefine “cognition.”

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Lakoff and Johnson (1999) believe that we think with the aid of metaphors and categories that stem from how our body is present in a world governed by physical laws. Accordingly, what is considered complex higher cognitive activity, for instance language use, cannot take place separately from the lived body that operates in the world. Indeed, as we shall now see, the cognitive system conducts itself with the aid of bodily metaphors. Let us bring this idea down to earth. We often try to understand complex matters such as time, God, faith, infinity, and so on. This is a complicated process, leading us to manufacture simpler ways to understand relatively complex ideas: Because so many of the concepts that are important to us are either abstract or not clearly delineated in our experience (the emotions, ideas, time, etc.), we need to get a grasp on them by means of other concepts that we understand in clearer terms (spatial orientations, objects, etc.). This need leads to metaphorical definition in our conceptual system. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, p. 115)

Intuitively, it appears that metaphors relating to time and space derive from our bodily-worldly structure. For instance, we define directions such as “forward,” “backward,” “right,” and “left” from within the body. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) present the following thought experiment: “Imagine a spherical being living outside any gravitational field, with no knowledge or imagination of any other kind of experience. What could ‘up’ possibly mean to such a being?” (p. 57). Our sense of direction, a primary and important cognitive process, is the result of a body present in the world. Moreover, if we consider the structure of our culture, words such as high, lofty, good, worthy are all identified with an upward direction that is opposed to the force of gravity. In this regard, the best-known example presented by Lakoff and Johnson (1999) describes relationships between people using metaphors that relate to movement in space, to a journey: Look how far we’ve come. It’s been a long, bumpy road. We can’t turn back now. We’re at a crossroads. We’re heading in different directions. We may have to go our separate ways. The relationship is not going anywhere. We’re spinning our wheels. The marriage is out of gas. Our relationship is off the track. The marriage is on the rocks. We’re trying to keep the relationship afloat. We may have to bail out of this relationship (p. 64)

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The use of these metaphors is not random; complex love relationships become bodily experiences during a journey. We think of one conceptual world—relationships—using another that is simpler, more familiar, and more bodily. In this process, love is transformed into a bodily journey in the world. These examples appear to indicate that metaphors are rooted in the bodily experience of being-in-the-world. Indeed, it is not only difficult but also unnecessary to separate the cognitive system from our bodily presence in the world: Logically and vitally, the different systems that develop in an organism act in an evolutionary manner to survive in the world, and therefore they derive from continuing and constant dialogue with its environment. It is thus difficult to see why language, the cognitive system, and logical thought would not develop from interaction with the world. Indeed, from the outset, the cognitive system is embodied and embedded in the world.4

1.3.4 Opening Your Mind The orthodox approach tries to explain how a system can develop separately from the world, that is, independently of the physical world into which we are geared. The more one probes such questions, the less likely the functional approach appears. This applies in particular to the focus on brain activity alone, because it omits the world from its equation. However, the cognitive system is the result of our interaction with the world, maximizing the means at hand, namely, the world itself. Crucially, then, cognitive activity is not just a system of representations and symbols inside the brain, it is not limited to an exchange of symbols, and is not imprisoned in the brain (Searle 1984). The complicated activity we carry out is not the result of a complex system of representations. Rather, it is born from the need to carry out complicated activities in the world in order to solve various here-and-now problems (Wilson and Foglia 2011). Brooks (1991) goes even farther, claiming that representations are not necessary to act in an intelligent manner. Continuing this line of thought, Dennett (1996) claims abandoning the delicate identification of the mind with the brain, allowing it to spread to other organs of the body, makes it harder to think about the  This is also true if language did not develop due to evolutionary pressure to communicate with our environment (Berwick and Chomsky 2016). 4

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cognitive system as imprisoned in the brain and disconnected from the body and the world: The compensations are enormous. The fact that our control systems, unlike those of ships and other artifacts, are so noninsulated permits our bodies themselves (as distinct from the nervous systems they contain) to harbor much of the wisdom that “we” exploit in the course of daily decision making. (p. 78).

The cognitive system cannot be detached from the world, it must use it, just as a chameleon uses it: changing its color not consciously or following a “decision” but in accordance with the environment. The chameleon’s skin, part of the cognitive system, processes information and stores it. It knows something very important about its environment and merges with it, without any need to represent this information in the brain.5

1.4 Concluding Remarks We are, first and foremost, flesh and blood creatures operating in a world that is woven into our flesh. Essentially, this world is not just any world but rather a bodily-world. Indeed, we are part of it from the very outset, like a baby in its mother’s womb. We grasp the world that grasps us. Consciousness is always and already in the world. This chapter demonstrated that we are always thrown into certain situations within certain contexts. We constantly act inside a framework of constraints, manipulating the world to attain maximum grip. Maximum grip is not the result of cognitive actions in a closed system (brain) that are projected onto a certain body in the world. Rather, our cognitive activity is the result of a continuing dance between our lived-body and the world. This chapter has argued that to understand how we are present in the world and act in it, we must stop thinking about the body as a calculating machine  New findings, recently published (Teyssier et al. 2015), cast a completely new light on the chameleon’s color change. They argue that this is how the chameleon communicates—via bodily language—with other chameleons in the surroundings. For this reason, at times the colors do not in fact camouflage the animal but rather glow and shine. These findings do not contradict the possibility that this is also a camouflage system (at least in some cases). Indeed, other animals, such as the octopus, change their color for purposes of camouflage, meaning that this claim is still valid. Moreover, if this indeed constitutes language (a means of communication), it upgrades the whole idea of “bodily language” and does not weaken the principle of cognition as incarnated in the body—rather, the opposite is true. (Either way, I warmly recommend watching the film “Nature’s Mood Rings: How Chameleons Really Change Color | Deep Look” available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=49&v=Kp9W-_W8rCM) 5

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and the world as units of information. Rather, we must return to the lived body that is present and active in the world: Scientific thinking, a thinking which looks on from above, and thinks of the object-in-general, must return to the “there is” which underlies it; to the site, the soil of the sensible and opened world such as it is in our life and for our body— not that possible body which we may legitimately think of as an information machine but that actual body I call mine, this sentinel standing quietly at the command of my words and my acts. (Merleau-Ponty 1964, pp. 160–161)

Bibliography Berwick, Robert C, and Noam Chomsky. Why only us. Cambridge, MA: MIT press, 2016. Brooks, Rodney. “Elephants don’t play chess.” Robotics and Autonomous Systems 6.1–2 (1990): 3–15. ———. “Intelligence without representation.” Artificial Intelligence 47.1–3 (1991): 139–159. Clark, Andy. Being there: putting brain, body, and world together again. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1997. ———. Supersizing the mind. Oxford: Oxford University press, 2008. Clark, Andy, and David Chalmers. “The Extended Mind.” Analysis “58 (1998): 7–19. Dennett, Daniel. Kinds of Minds. New York: Basic Books, 1996. Epstein, Robert. “The empty brain.” Aeon (May 18 (2016): 2016.), 2016: https://aeon. co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer. Gallagher, Shaun, and Dan Zahavi. The phenomenological mind: an introduction to philosophy of mind and cognitive science. London: Routledge, 2008. Gibson, James. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Hillsdale, New Jersy: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1986. Harel, David. Computers Ltd: What They Really Can’t Do. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Heidegger, Martin. Being and time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany: New York Press, 1996. ———. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1982. Hurley, Susan. “Perception And Action: Alternative Views.” Synthese 129, no. 1 (2001): 3–40. Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian meditations: an introduction to phenomenology. Translated by Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960. ———. Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy. Translated by Quentin Lauer. New York: Harper and Row, 1965.

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———. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Translated by David Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970. Ihde, Don. Postphenomenology and Technoscience. New York: Suny Press, 2009. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. ———. Philosophy In The Flesh: the Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. Basic Books: New York, 1999. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A Landes. London and New York: Routledge, 2012. ———. The primacy of perception. Edited by James Edie. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. ———. The visible and the invisible. Edited by Claude Lefort. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968. Neisser, Ulric. Cognitive psychology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1967. Noë, Alva. Action in Perception. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2004. ———. “On what we see.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 83, no. 1 (2002): 57–80. O’Regan, Kevin J. Why Red Doesn’t Sound Like a Bell: Explaining the Feel of Consciousness. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011. ———. “Solving the “Real” Mysteries of Visual. Perception: The World as an Outside Memory.” Canadian Journal of Psychology 46 (1992): 461–88. O’Regan, Kevin J, and Alva Noë. “A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24, no. 5 (2001a): 939–1031. ———. “What it is like to see: A sensorimotor theory of perceptual experience.” Synthese 129, no. 1 (2001b): 79–103. Ratcliffe, Matthew. Experiences of Depression. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. ———. Feelings of being: phenomenology, psychiatry and the sense of reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Resnick, Mitchel. Turtles, Termites, and Traffic James: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1994. Searle, John. Minds, Brains and Science. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1984. Teyssier, J, S V Saenko, D Van Der Marel, and M C Milinkovitch. “Photonic crystals cause active colour change in chameleons.” Nature communications 6, no. 6368 (2015). Wilson, Robert, and Lucia Foglia. “Embodied Cognition.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward Zalta. 2011. . Wittgenstein, Ludwig. The Blue and Brown Books. Translated by ‫דבי אילון‬. New York: Harper and Row, 1965.

2 The Subjective Experience During Altered States of Consciousness

This chapter presents two studies that were carried out in accordance with the phenomenological approach (see Appendix): the first involved interviews with 15 former prisoners of war (POWs) who were imprisoned in Egypt and Syria after the Yom Kippur War (1973), while in the second I interviewed 27 senior meditators with an average of 10,000 hours of accumulated practice each. The aim of both these studies was to expose the pre-reflective experience during altered states of consciousness (ASCs).

2.1 E  xtended Isolation as a Prisoner of War: How It Feels 2.1.1 The State of Consciousness in Prison ASCs can occur spontaneously or as the result of specific activities, such as meditation, hypnosis, psychedelic drugs, and dance. ASCs can also be caused by a variety of external factors, among them stress, near death experiences, panic, trauma, lack of oxygen, fear of death, hunger, isolation, lack of light, inability to move, and a significant lack of sleep (Tart 1969). The various characteristics of ASCs include high or low levels of alertness relative to a “normal state”; an intense focus or a complete lack of focus; delusions or seeing reality with exceptional clarity; a penetrating reflective vision or a sense of unity and completeness; sharpening and unification of the senses (synaesthesia); or passive feelings. ASCs are also characterized by a loss of grip

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on reality and descent into delusions and illusions (Ludwig 1966). In some states of consciousness, one feels detached from the body. Herman (1992) emphasizes that the ability to change our state of consciousness during trauma can serve as a strong defensive mechanism and hence is necessary for survival. Accordingly, this mechanism is often activated in captivity. The captive attempts to detach himself1 from the situation he has been thrown into, and indeed it appears that sleep—if possible—is the best alternative. Truly, even in everyday life we often feel that sleep is an escape from reality. Thus, unsurprisingly, many freed captives concur that sleep is the best refuge: “I think that these escapes to sleep were positive; it was a way not to be there. I don’t understand how I could sleep, but I believe I slept.” (D.) Although some of the captives reported lack of sleep—“You can’t sleep in prison, I barely knew what sleep was” (M.)—others reported getting many hours of sleep: “I slept for many hours—I got up to 12–15 hours of sleep a day.” (N.) Yet regardless, the captives agree that sleep is the best way to pass time in captivity: “You try to sleep as much as possible. To pass time.” (G.). Note, however, that unlike everyday life, sleep can also be dangerous for the captive. In solitary confinement, lacking stimuli and any knowledge of events in the outside world, the captive is locked within his inner world, and thus the transition between sleep and waking is unclear. More precisely, it seems that the boundary blurs between a world that lacks a sense of time2 (the world of sleep) and a world in which the central dimension is coping with how to pass time (in solitary confinement); in some cases, this boundary ceases to exist entirely. For the captive, this liminal state is critical because under these conditions the captive loses his ability to determine whether he is dreaming or delusional, whether he is asleep and dreaming this reality or awake and submerged in a delusion. The captive loses the ability to differentiate between thoughts and delusions, between waking and dreams: “I remember there was a great mix-up. In a dream you’re detached. In these cases you’re…. I don’t know if my thoughts were rational, I remember there were some parts with some delusions, dreams mixed up with waking.” (G.) This phenomenon is strongly associated both with the captive’s physical state and the external  This study concerns only male captives and hence uses the pronoun HE.  There is a substantial debate concerning how the sense of time should be defined. For the purposes of this book, it will be defined as a sense of duration, nowness, or succession: a sense that A comes before B and is also the cause of B and, in addition, that there is continuity between A and B. More precisely, at least for the purposes of this book, the sense of time will be defined as encompassing the following four aspects/ characteristics: (1) The passage of time; (2) The rate of time’s flow: slower or faster; (3) Order of time: before and after; and (4) The arrow of time: directionality, time moving forward. The sense of time cannot be reduced to (or solely defined as) one of these four but rather results from the combination of these interdependent elements. 1 2

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conditions: “When you lie in solitary all the time, it’s not really clear to you when you’re asleep and dreaming and when you’re awake and delusional. It kind of gets mixed up, especially when it’s a bit dark.” (G.) When the body suffers and is in pain, the confusion becomes even more intense: “So that it’s not really clear to you when you’re asleep and when you’re tired and in pain and delusional.” (G.) Based on the theoretical part (Chap. 1) and the above testimonies, we may argue that our body anchors our thoughts in reality. Hence, it is clear why the bodily experience lies at the very heart of the captive’s efforts to preserve his sanity, which is one of the most pressing problems in captivity: In order to survive, the captive must be able to detach himself from his body and at the same time continue to be thrust into the world through it. Indeed, an inner world protected from the impossible reality a condition for survival in captivity. Yet, in the absence of a body, he finds it difficult to differentiate between reality and dreams. The captive is, on the one hand, submerged in a state in which he is detached from his body, enabling him to preserve his inner world. Yet, on the other hand, if detachment from the body lasts too long, other problems ensue. The captive is mostly in a liminal state between dreaming and waking. In our daily lives, our physical experiences during a dream and in waking hours differ fundamentally. During dreams, the body is not part of the experience, yet while awake, the body is part of the experience of being-in-the-world. However, during solitary confinement, the captive struggles with his body (that is, the world): it is at once the source of his suffering and it allows him to hold onto reality and to remain balanced and sane. Indeed, to preserve his sanity, the captive needs the sense of boundary and separateness that the body generates. G.’s testimony reveals that in captivity he could not differentiate between sleep and waking, or between delusion and dream and reality. G. feels that there is a strong link between tangible experience and the fixed rituals of our routine and banal lives: “When you’re very detached from the realistic experience, and you don’t have all the symbols—the moving train, the shining sun—you start to go deeper and deeper into a dream, even when you are not asleep” (G.). According to G., being part of the world means being able to predict the future based on the past. It is very difficult to live in a world in which we cannot make predictions in the most basic sense, a world in which our predictions are refuted on a constant basis. We always prefer to live in a world in which our predictions are frequently confirmed. This applies even at the cost of distorting reality. In order to be present in the world and to know that we are awake, we need to be able to predict the near future with some measure of accuracy.

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Interestingly, according to Fuchs (2007), a continuing failure to predict the future at the sensorimotor level can lead to in schizophrenic episodes. The sense of realism, therefore, is the result of predictions that come true in the external world; predictions that connect movement and sensation, generating sensorimotor circuits that resonate with themselves and confirm themselves over and again (feedback loops). This conception is consistent with the idea that perception is shaped by the most basic and primal bodily schemas, which are the direct result of the manner of our existence as human beings with a particular body in a very specific world. The space into which we are thrown is a practical and ready-to-hand field of action in which we know, with high probability, that our sensorimotor predictions (if-then laws) will be realized. This shapes how we perceive the world around us (Fig. 2.1). Our schemas constantly require confirmation from the world—this arrives in the form of feedback at the level of the sensorimotor circuits. When these feedback loops weaken, or, conversely, when feedback completely refutes the existing schemas, the very structure that enables us to perceive the world as stable, continuous, and meaningful collapses. Under these conditions, the world becomes inaccessible and even closed to us—nothing is in our reach, nothing is available. This is the experience of losing trust in the world: the captive ceases to believe in the world because the world ceases to behave as expected. The loss of trust in the world is thus the result of a world that completely deviates from our previous schemas. If the schemas do not adapt themselves to the new situation, we are unable to hold onto the world, to make sense of it, and to operate within it. Therefore, we are thrown out of it. In other words, when the system of expectations (if-then) fails, and the perceptual schemas do not withstand the test of reality, the system of (if-then) sensorimotor laws, which enables us to feel we are acting in a familiar and predictable world, collapses. Consequently, our pragmatic knowledge (knowing how), that is, the practical knowledge of how to act in the world, likewise collapses, and we lose the ability to feel at-home within the world. This process occurs in captivity, explaining why “all reality in captivity is connected to dreams.” (Y.) In captivity, as in dreams—in which bodily resonance and a system of if-then laws to limit thought are absent—the lack of a bodily dimension means that perceptual schemas are far less clear and expectations are accordingly not limited to physical here-and-now capabilities, as in a dream. This results in the lack of consistent laws that is so characteristic of dreams. During ASCs, as in captivity, the categories that shape our perception fall apart; the ability to make sense of what happens around us and to us is harmed. Hence, to continue functioning, we must generate new perceptual schemas. However, at least in the short term, this is not possible from a

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cognitive viewpoint. Indeed, similarly to a person who puts on inverting glasses, the perceptual schemas need some time to adapt fully. The results of these cognitive difficulties include a distorted perception of reality, which in turn leads to impairments in the encoding process, and, in the long-term, can result in distorted memory.3 Processes such as these occur during trauma, when the sensorimotor circuits fail. This failure stands at the very core of the trauma victim’s inability to understand what is happening. As a result, the trauma victim has severe difficulty in processing experiences and generating coherent memory.4 For example, in normal circumstances, the arrow of time and causal system (in the sense that A is both the cause of B and precedes it) are both self-evident; surprises are rare. By contrast, when the captive cannot anchor his thought in reality, he has no way of knowing whether he is dreaming or awake. Instead, he exists in a reality that lacks a causal system, not necessarily in the strong sense, but also, as has already been said, at the sensorimotor level. In this state, the captive loses any ability to get a grip on the world, attesting to a failure to make sense of the situation. As such, the captive is cast out of any context, and thus his ability to achieve maximal grip is significantly damaged.5 When perceptual schemas are damaged, the captive finds it difficult to differentiate himself from the world. In cognitive terms, this state can also be described in terms of changes in the sense of body ownership. When the captive does not know-how to act and what to expect, his ability to generate a (if-then) system of laws collapses. One possible outcome is substantial difficulty in differentiating between oneself and the world. Following damage to the sensorimotor system, along with significant weakening of the sense of body ownership, the captive loses the ability to distinguish clearly between waking and sleep, and therefore also: “This place of sleep-not-sleep is very significant in captivity.” (A.) M. describes it in the following manner: “It’s impossible to tell the difference between a delusion and a dream. In general, I don’t remember that I dreamed, just thoughts all the time, I don’t know, maybe it was dreams. Awake or asleep.” (M.) This feeling, which we have all experienced at some point, as if we are in a dream from which we cannot awaken, is the captive’s reality: “I dreamed daydreams while I was awake.” (A.) The biggest difference between dream and reality concerns the sense of the body that anchors us in reality and grounds us in the world. In captivity, in  For an extensive discussion see: (Ataria 2014b, 2016b).  Of course, this is a sensitive point from a methodological point of view. I have discussed this extensively elsewhere (Ataria 2014a, 2015c, 2018, 2021).The protocol I present in the appendix should enable us to deal with this problem to some extent. 5  For further discussion see: (Ataria 2015b; Arieli and Ataria 2018). 3 4

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particular, an important place is accorded to dealing with the body. The captive’s dialogue with reality takes place through his body. Acute damage at the level of the sense of body ownership can lead, in the long run, to damage at the level of the minimal self. The minimal self, which is defined as “a consciousness of oneself as an immediate subject of experience” and as “the pre-reflexive point of origin for action, experience and thought” (Gallagher 2000, p. 15), is also sometimes referred to as ipseity (Latin: ipse—self, itself ), a sense of mineness. To be present in the world through our body is to perceive the world from a perspective that is forced upon us from within our body—an egocentric-body first-person perspective (1PP) that generates a sense of mineness. This quality of mineness or ipseity is the core element in the structure of subjectivity: “If the subject is in a situation, or even if the subject is nothing other than a possibility of situations, this is because he only achieves his ipseity by actually being a body and by entering into the world through this body” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 431). Essentially, “unstable ipseity and lack of common sense create a vacuum at the very core of one’s subjectivity” (Parnas and Handest 2003, p. 126). Under severe conditions, such as ongoing torture and extended solitary confinement, when the captive’s defensive mechanism no longer functions, the sense of minimal self collapses; the captive loses the ability to experience the world from the first person perspective. There is a clear distinction between a state in which the minimal self detaches from the body but is not damaged and a state in which the minimal self is actually damaged,6 which can occur when sensorimotor circuits are significantly damaged and the sense of body ownership, as well as the sense of agency, undergo acute changes. It seems that, in the long-term, such damage can lead to phenomena such as complex-­ PTSD, depersonalization, and even schizophrenia.7

2.1.2 T  he Sense of the Body in Captivity: Collapse of the Simultaneous Subject-Object Dual Structure “The main experience in captivity is coping with the physical aspect, which is very difficult. Beatings, thirst, hunger, exhaustion. It’s burned deep into you and doesn’t come out. And there’s almost nothing that gives you the power to cope with the physical difficulty.” (E.) The captive is occupied mainly with his health, his physical fitness, and his bodily pains: “You’re very busy taking care  For an extensive discussion see: (Ataria 2019b, 2021).  For an extensive discussion see: (Ataria and Horovitz 2021).

6 7

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of yourself, your injury, your body.” (N.) As we saw, there is an inherent paradox in this situation. Indeed, in order to survive, the captive must detach from his body: “I put myself, my soul, into a balloon… going into a bubble, so you won’t get too scratched, so there are experiences but it’s the body that suffers and not the soul.” (L.) This explains the well-known claim that dissociation can work as a defensive mechanism, protecting the subject in times of trauma (Van der Kolk 1987).8 When a soldier is taken into captivity, his body ceases to be his own and becomes the property of his captors: “The moment I was caught, there’s no body, complete disconnection from the body, a kind of automatic movement. The head’s disconnected. In captivity the body was as if it were not completely mine.” (D.) Thus, the captive loses both the sense of body ownership and also the sense of the body’s agency, and the body becomes a “tool by means of which they could hurt me, or a tool that generates pain and discomfort, there’s a certain disconnection.” The body “belonged to captivity, but my head was mine, you couldn’t lose that. The battle was in your head.” (D.) This detachment from the body can spiral out of control. In such a situation, dissociation ceases to be a tool protecting the victim, instead becoming a problem in itself: the defensive mechanism itself causes harm. Let us explain why and how this change occurs. Although from a cognitive and neural viewpoint the sense of ownership and sense of agency can be separated (Sato and Yasuda 2005), in normal situations, the sense of ownership and the sense agency go hand in hand. Indeed, usually we control (sense of agency) the body that is our own (sense of body ownership); hence it would be very awkward and uneasy to feel strong control of a hand that is not ours (agency without ownership) and, similarly, to lack the ability to control a hand that belongs to us (ownership without agency).9 During trauma, the victim has little control over the situation and hence develops a sense of helplessness, in cognitive terms the sense of agency weakens. If, in response, the sense of bodily ownership decreases (approximately) equally, then he would feel detached but continue to function. In this case, the sense of ownership and the sense of agency continue to be more or less equal—they weaken in a similar manner. By contrast, when the sense of bodily ownership does not weaken  It is important to note, however, that detachment from the body during trauma is a great risk factor for the subsequent onset of post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) (Ozer et al. 2008; Breh and Seidler 2007). 9  Such conditions are unknown in the professional literature: for example, one who suffers from alien hand syndrome feels that he can control a hand that is not his own (agency without ownership). In contrast, someone who, like the Nazi scientist in the film Dr. Strangelove, suffers from what the professional literature defines as anarchic hand syndrome feels the absence of control over a hand that is completely his (ownership without agency). 8

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sufficiently or, alternately, weakens too much, a gap emerges between the sense of bodily ownership and the sense of agency. Consequently, the dissociative mechanism is no longer a mechanism that enables functioning but rather one that makes it impossible to function; thus it becomes a destructive mechanism.10 When a captive lacks a bodily dimension for too long, and the dissociative experience becomes intolerable, he must find a way to return to his body, and through the body to reality: I didn’t know what to do with myself. I saw I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, so I used to start to hurt myself in the area that was wounded during the interrogations. That’s my method, to pain myself where it hurts, you’re busy with the pain, that way you aren’t busy with questions, you go into a different niche. A pain niche. (M.)

In the case of the captive, reality is divided into two extreme poles with nothing in between: solitary confinement and a sense of over presence of the body and the world. In practice, this means that the captive can move between the two poles: separation from the world and a feeling of “over presence of the body” and the world. M adopts two methods to revive his bodily senses, both associated with violence toward his body. When possible, he provokes the guard to beat him—“I used to curse the guard so that he would come in and beat me up, so that I’d see somebody and not go crazy.” (M.). When the latter is not present, and M feels a strong need to regain bodily feelings, he causes himself pain: I hurt myself, night and day, worse than the torture itself. The pain lets you think about what happened what will be and what now, here you know what you have, you have this pain, you know how to cope with it, it hurts but you cope. That’s very important in states of stress, it keeps you quiet, in pain but quiet. The mind hurt me worse than the wound. (M.)

When the subject causes himself pain, he brings back the bodily dimension, while reviving the sense of bodily boundaries, that is, the sense of body ownership and the sense of agency over his body.11 Another way to return to the body, meaning to strengthen the sense of bodily ownership, is talking to oneself:  For extensive discussion see: (Ataria 2015a, 2015d, 2018).  For an extensive discussion see: (Ataria and Somer 2013; Ataria 2018).

10 11

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After especially harsh interrogations, they took me I don’t know where—one day, two days, five, I have no idea, I don’t remember. Even then I had no idea of time. And then, after a while, I started to talk to myself—to my body. Not out loud, silently. From delusions. (E.)

In M’s case, we detect an attempt to revive the fundamental structure of being simultaneously a subject and an object, which, according to Merleau-­ Ponty (1964), and as was discussed at length in the previous chapter, constitutes our metaphysical structure. In captivity, this structure breaks down and the captive begins to lose his sense of subjectivity.12 With this in mind, we may suggest that when a person hits himself, he is trying to become a sensing(being)sensed kind of creature once again; he is trying to return the body to the state of being simultaneously subject and object which is a precondition for humanity—for being human: What if our eyes were made in such a way as to prevent our seeing any part of our body, or if some baneful arrangement of the body were to let us move our hands over things, while preventing us from touching our own body? … Such a body would not reflect itself; it would be an almost adamantine body, not really flesh, not really the body of a human being. There would be no humanity. (Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 163)

This can take place while touching oneself or talking to oneself—when a person talks to himself, he strengthens the structure of self-as-subject relative to self-as-object.13 Although M.’s decision to hit himself may appear problematic, in extreme cases, with no other options, it is sometimes necessary to adopt harmful strategies, for example self-injury.14 Indeed, while M.’s method is distorted, it is important to understand that his purpose is to feel the encounter with the world, to generate a sense of a certain boundary that will enable the captive to establish a minimal sense of self. Moreover, when the guard enters the captive’s room, this generates a tangible gaze; even though the other person in this case is indeed hell, and not metaphorically so, Sartre (1956) and Levinas (2006) agree (albeit not for the same reasons) that the gaze of the other is a precondition for my sense of subjectivity. With this in

 This is in fact the central characteristic of spaces of extreme trauma, such as concentration camps, in which there is no subject and no gaze; the person is reduced to an object, or, perhaps more accurately, a THING. See: Ataria 2021 Primo Levi and Ka-Tzetnik: The Map and the Territory. 13  For an extensive discussion see: (Ataria 2016a). 14  For an extensive discussion see: (Ataria 2016b, 2016d). 12

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mind, clearly this rather extreme strategy allows the captive to revive the dual subject-object structure. In captivity, one feels that the body is only an object—“You’re almost like a thing.” (S.) The sense of agency, as well as the sense of body ownership, completely collapses—the captive loses control of the body, which has become foreign to him. In turn, when the sense of bodily ownership is totally destroyed, one can no longer feel at-home in the world.15 While undergoing torture, the subject is reduced to a pure object, the body loses the subjective dimension and in extreme cases this process can end in a total destruction of the minimal-self.16 The more the body is experienced as an object, the more prominent it becomes for us. Rather than a transparent tool through which we perceive the world, the body thus becomes the object of perception (even if not the perfect object of perception) and the world ceases to be a world of possibilities, narrowing to pain and bodily suffering—our horizon shrinks to our flesh. The same process can be described in terms of a disturbance to the equilibrium between the sense of bodily ownership and the sense of agency over the body. Usually, we control our body; nothing is more natural. During trauma, however, this delicate balance is disturbed, and we find ourselves thrown into a situation in which we cannot control the body that is ours, or, alternatively, we are able to control it as though by remote control—without a sense of body ownership. Essentially, in both cases, our body ceases to be a world-entrenched kind of body, and the world ceases to be the same embodied world. Indeed, a reciprocal relationship exists between the lived-bodys (body-as-­ subject) and the dead-body (body-as-object); at every moment in everyday life, there is an equilibrium between the two states of the body. During mystical experiences, for instance, the boundary blurs, and the balance tends towards the lived-body. During traumatic events, by contrast, the balance tends to the body-as-object. Continuing this analysis, one can say that in captivity, the captive’s body becomes a thing; even if the captive controls his body, he controls it as disembodied tool—it is like controlling a car remotely rather than sitting inside it. When the captive completely loses control of his body, the captor is the sole ruler of the captive’s body, which is now no more than another object in space. In sum, in extreme solitary confinement, the captive loses the ability to be at once both the object of consciousness and part of the environment; both  To some extent, the very notion of Home collapses altogether (Ataria 2017). For an extensive discussion see: (Ataria 2019a, 2019b, 2019c). 16  For an extensive discussion see: (Ataria 2019b; Ataria & Gallagher 2015). 15

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subject and object in the world. The dual structure of our being both a lived-­ body and dead-body, body-as-subject and body-as-object, collapses. In this state, the captive loses the ability to perceive the world through his body—the boundary between the captive and the world becomes too rigid. Moreover, in this state, the sense of minimal self, which constitutes the basis for the sense of subjectivity, collapses. Consequently, the captive ceases to feel like a human being. Lacking a sense of body, the world too disappears or becomes extremely distorted; the captive sinks into a world lacking any orderly meaning, a world in which he is completely passive, a world of dreams and delusions.

2.1.3 The Sense of Time in Captivity 2.1.3.1  The Sense of Time and the Bodily Dimension Time, according to Merleau-Ponty (2012, p. 454) “is literally the sense of our life, and like the world it is only accessible to the one who is situated in it and who joins with its direction.” With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that time plays a key role in captivity: “I learned that the most important thing was time… time is a dimension which is very, very, very significant.” (P.) L. explains: “One of the biggest problems in prison is how to deal with the dimension of time, every day that passes you get farther away from life…The problem of time is marginal but essential. Look, I didn’t know how long it would go on.” (L.) It appears that there is a strong link between the sense of time and the bodily state: I had no organization of time, just bodily time. My bodily time was made up of needs, when I start to be thirsty, when I start to be hungry, and the other needs too. My time was the bodily pace, the hunger told me that time had passed. (D.)

In order to cope with his situation, the captive tries to organize a routine: “I tried to build myself a kind of constant daily routine.”(S.) E. connects between an organized daily routine and good thoughts: “First you organize a daily routine, some of the activities so you don’t…to occupy yourself, so as not to sink into thoughts that are not good.” (E.) G. claims that a daily routine is associated with more organized thoughts: “After some time you develop a daily routine, do some exercises, organize your thoughts.” (G.) Of course, the captive does not always succeed: “You have no control over time, I couldn’t organize my time and create a routine.” (R.) Losing a grip on time has

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important implications: the captive’s ability to preserve his sanity depends heavily on his ability to not be thrown out of time. In solitude, the captive attempts to create a more general time frame, both in order to measure the passing days and to create a certain framework of time in which the nightmare will come to an end. At the most basic level this means, “Every day a ceremony, marking a line on the wall that another day has passed.” (E.) In longer periods of time, the captive creates a framework within which he can preserve his sanity. To do so, he locates himself in a time frame rooted in a tangible horizon, thus generating hope, but the horizon will never be too close, in order to avoid disappointment and despair. You always give yourself a target in time of…till then—November I said to myself, till December, no further away than that. After that it’s till Chanukah. If you’re normal and don’t fall into depression, then you set a new target each time the date comes close. (E.)

An incorrect determination of the time frame can lead to deep depression: “I knew we would be back in six weeks, you create a mental state for yourself, that every day it again becomes two more months.” (R.) P. used a similar method: “I said in two months I’m going to be free,” (P.) because “if I said to myself in advance that I’d be spending four months in solitary, it would have been impossible for me to bear.” (S.) According to Heidegger (1996), our uniqueness as humans is due to the fact that, unlike other creatures, we are fully aware of our finitude, our own death. Being-toward-death, and more precisely being-toward-our-own-death, as a unique event that no man (das man, the They, any-one) can take away from us. As such, it shapes our existence. This phenomenon stands at the very heart of human anxiety: “Being-­ toward-­death is essentially Angst” (Heidegger 1996, p. 245).17 Thus, it is clear  In Heidegger’s case, this enables awakening and transition to authentic existence—but that is not the subject of our discussion here: 17

The being-at-an-end of Da-sein, however, means existentially being-toward-the-end. Resoluteness becomes authentically what it can be as being-toward-the-end-that-understands, that is, as anticipation of death. Resoluteness does not simply “have” a connection with anticipation as something other than itself. It harbours in itself authentic being-toward-death as the possible existentiell modality of its own authenticity…. Resolutely, Da-sein takes over authentically in its existence the fact that it is the null ground of its nullity. We conceived of death existentially as what we characterized as the possibility of the impossibility of existence, that is, as the absolute nothingness of Da-sein. Death is not pieced on to Da-sein as its “end,” but, as care, Da-sein is the thrown (that is, null) ground of its death. The nothingness primordially dominant in the being of Da-sein is revealed to it in authentic being-toward-death. (Heidegger 1996, pp. 282–283)

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that a time frame of a certain length is a basic precondition for existence in the shadow of anxiety. Without a future time frame, one that generates a certain horizon, death confronts the captive in all its might, right-here-right-­now. Indeed, in captivity, being-towards-death is not some future dimension; instead, it entirely takes over the present. To be more precise, the towards (within the being-towards-death) collapses, and death alone remains: being and death become one inseparable moment. Accordingly, anxiety ceases to be on the horizon of possibilities but dominates the entire being. The interviews indicate that there is an intimate and profound relationship between the bodily experience and bodily senses, on the one hand, and the sense of time, on the other. When the body suffers, the captive dissociates both from his body and from the world, and thus also from time as some kind of objective dimension. The body itself is the anchor for the sense of time. We have already seen that the body cannot be described as detached from the world. Thus, the sense of time represents the manner of our being cast into a world that is always already a shared world. S. tells us how he lost his grip on the sense of time: After that there was a week of standing, which I don’t know if it was really a week, there I did lose a bit, I was confused in terms of time, because it was after a series of really bad torture during which they also starved us, they didn’t give us anything to drink and made us stand up all the time, if I’d fall or lean on the wall, right away they’d pick me up. (S.)

When tortured and isolated, the individual is detached from the world— both the physical world and the shared intersubjective world. The result is a loss of the ability to achieve maximum grip on the world, which on its part releases the individual from its own grip into an endless fall. It is important to stress that this is not a fall in Heidegger’s terms (seated at the heart of inauthentic existence) but a situation in which the person is falling in a field of zero gravity, infinite falling during which the body itself loses sensations, during which the body itself ceases to be. During this fall, death penetrates into life itself—one not only faces death but experiences one’s own death. As such, when the captive is completely cast out of the world, as if he had never belonged there, time itself (both the sense of time and time as an objective dimension) collapses. When the physical experience becomes impossible, the real dimension of being-in-the-world ceases to exist and the sense of time is lost: “When you’re in a hard physical condition, you lose the sense of time…Listen, you reach a state in which there’s no time, the state you’re in—there’s no time in it.” (E.) The

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captive simply “doesn’t know if half an hour has passed, one hour, or six hours.” (E) D. too connects the physical difficulty to a state in which there is no time: If you’re blindfolded, if you’re being shaken, and if you get beaten up without any rhythm, and if you’re always thirsty and hungry and they don’t let you sleep, and you have to stand with arms up and you’re always hungry, there’s a lot of pain, a lot of tiredness, enormous thirst, then there is no time. (D.)

With this in mind, clearly the sense of time plays an important role during dissociation. We are thrown into the world through time. More precisely, to be thrown into the world is already to be thrown through and with time. To be absorbed in the world through our body is to be absorbed in time, in the physical-historical-shared-disciplined time, yet it is also to be thrown into the here-and-now, as experienced through the sense temporality. The sense of temporality is the foundation of the intimate link between ourselves and the world, and perhaps, more precisely, the result18 of this encounter: “We hold time in its entirety and we are present to ourselves because we are present in and toward the world” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 454). It is clear, then, why a breakdown of the link between ourselves and the world is expressed in the collapse of the dimension of time and, in particular, breaking up the sense of continuity and temporality: “I thought a lot of time had passed, but I can’t tell what a lot of time is, I wasn’t exactly unconscious, more half asleep….there are very deep daydreams where you can’t keep track of how much time passes.” (Y.) We saw earlier that in order to be capable of gripping the world, we need to be present in it through our bodies. When the level of suffering exceeds a certain threshold, the body-world connection is cut—this is the organism’s way of surviving. However, it comes at a heavy price. Indeed, in practice, disconnecting the body from the world requires the breaking of the sensorimotor circuits (expectation-movement-sensing—see Fig. 2.1). When these circuits are broken, the whole system of expectation-­ movement-­sensing collapses. The sensorimotor circuits and the system of expectation-movement-sensing enable the creation of the sense of time, which in turn is necessary for that same triple structure: expectation-movement-­ sensing. Therefore, when the cycle of expectation-movement-sensing does not function properly, we cannot generate a sense of time that is familiar to us from everyday life, and this leads to a breakdown of the sense of time. The breakdown of the sense of time, we emphasize once again, symbolizes a loss of grip on reality, that is, the experience of being cast out of the world.  I believe that the requirement for a cause-and-effect kind of relationship in this case is superfluous. In any case, this is a philosophical question that is outside the boundaries of the present discussion. 18

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Movement

B

Expectation

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C

Sensation

Fig. 2.1  Expectation-Movement-Sensation in normal situations and pathologies Figure A demonstrates how the Expectation-Movement-Sensation system operates. This is a horizontal system with no hierarchy, a sensorimotor system that enables us to grip the world. In Figure B we see the system of expectations in terms of higher probability (center) and lower (top and bottom). Figure C presents the system of expectations in the case of a schizophrenic—scenarios of low probability are repeatedly realized. In this situation, it is very difficult to generate expectations (fragmented protention in schizophrenia) and the system of Expectation-Sensation-Movement collapses. Consequently, harm to the minimal self may ensue (Figures B and C are from the article by Fuchs [2007] and are reproduced with his permission)

2.1.3.2  Th  e Creation of a New Dimension of Time Detached from the Bodily Dimension In order to survive, the captive disconnects from his body and from reality. However, to maintain his sanity, he must create an alternate world to fill the vacuum. In an empty world without a body, which serves as our anchor to reality, the captive must find a new way to establish and create the arrow of time in his inner world, in the sense that A is the cause of B and also precedes it in time. It appears that the nature of thought affects the sense of time. P. reports: “I think that it’s sometimes related to the task you’ve taken upon yourself or the story you’re experiencing… in its quality or essence.” (P.) There seems to be a relationship between the depth of the mental process and the sense of the measure of time that has passed: “A sense that, also, that ok, I’ve done serious work here. If I’ve done serious work, it’s a sign that it took a lot of time.” (P.) P. finds it hard to express his experiences, but the relationship between depth of thought and mental process and the sense of time passing is clear to him: the deeper and more meaningful mental processes take more time than ordinary mental processes. Indeed, P.’s feelings are consistent with the principle of cognitive load: he does not know how much time has actually passed. Therefore, lacking his body, thought becomes the reference point for the creation of time as well as a measure of sorts for the sense of time. Thus, when the world ceases to be accessible, the sense of time anchors itself in thought. It is worth noting, in this context, how former captives describe the pace of their thoughts as nearly frozen: “The pace of thought is as slow as possible.” (B.)

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Time is expressed as change; in captivity, in a state of total freeze, the only change that takes place is in the captive’s inner world. During solitary confinement, the sense of time stems from circular activity: the sense of time anchors itself in the train of thought, whereas the train of thought, for its part, is the result of activity in the inner horizon. In this state, the sense of time appears to collapse into itself, entering an internal whirl. While isolated, the sense of time, which is usually embedded in the body that is cast into the world, changes its character. The train of thoughts has two dimensions—rate (the pace at which one thought is replaced by another) and content. When the world is no longer accessible, time depends on the rate at which thoughts change, which is much slower than usual in captivity. At a higher cognitive level, time is influenced by the content of thought: the “deeper” the thought, from a subjective point of view, the greater the cognitive and emotional resources it requires. In accordance with the model proposed by Zakay and Block (2004; 1997), the greater the cognitive and emotional resources required, the longer the passage of time that the subject senses in retrospect. In complete solitary confinement and over a period of time, when the captive is completely disconnected from his external environment, the inner world and stream of consciousness cease to exist as a continuous and stable dimension. In the long term, when we disconnect from our environment, and consequently the subject-world interaction collapses (the sensorimotor circuits break down), there is no stream and no continuity. Therefore, naturally, the sense of time is severely damaged. Indeed, freed captives describe thought as standing still. However, when the vacuum is total, there are no thoughts and no sense of time.

2.1.4 Vacuum One of the central motifs in the interviews with former captives was the fear of vacuum, of emptiness: The most frightening thing is that a vacuum emerges in your head, that suddenly the thoughts end, that empty space is created. I kept trying to fill up the space. I created stimuli for myself with which I could fill up this vacuum, I was terribly afraid of this vacuum. It might be the strongest threat, this vacuum, it’s the hardest thing. (S.)

The word vacuum represents the encounter with anxiety; using Heideggerian terminology, we may suggest that the encounter with the vacuum is the

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encounter with being (in) itself. In solitary confinement, lacking any anchor to reality, emptiness becomes one of the most significant threats. In the long run, solitary confinement in prison removes all defensive mechanisms (Grassian 2006; Guenther 2013), leaving the captive to cope with the meaning of his own being and thus confront Being itself—the outcome is a severe existential crisis which can end up with anxiety. To survive, the captive must create a protected inner world. To that end, he needs to disconnect from his body. In so doing, the captive falls into his inner world—the world of thoughts and imagination: In the course of the day, I disconnected every line of thought from captivity. Imagination starts to play a very important role in preserving sanity. I used to get up, walk the one eighty meters, remind myself where I was, and go back to bed. The imaginings went very deep. (H.)

It is clear, therefore, why imagination, as a purely mental process that takes place in our inner horizon, plays a decisive role in captivity. Imagination allows the captive to face the vacuum, and to soften the sense of emptiness. We have seen that in the absence of a body that anchors consciousness and enables it to be tuned to the world, the captive has difficulty differentiating between reality on the one hand and delusion and imagination on the other. One of the important insights to emerge from the interviews with former captives concerns the role of imagination in conditions of solitude. Intuitively, it is clear why imagination plays a decisive role in a world lacking any stimuli. Indeed, in the face of the vacuum, imagination becomes a shield (or, more precisely, a double-edged sword) between the captive and bare anxiety. Unlike ordinary, everyday states of consciousness, the captive does not perceive reality as self-evident; that said, it is obvious why the captive has an existential need to differentiate between dream and imagination. The captive lacks something that we take for granted in everyday life—the world itself. Note that the world is not merely the best affirmation of its own existence (self-evident) but also the best evidence of our own existence. In the words of Merleau-Ponty (2012, p. 454), the world is “the primordial unity of all of our experiences on the horizon of our life and as the unique term of all of our projects.” Given that the world is at-once the thing that the captive needs the most and the thing that he tries to avoid with all his might, his situation becomes untenable. Indeed, the captive needs to fight for it (the world) and against it at once, he wants to avoid reality and to escape to the world of imagination, and at the same time to find a way to grip reality in the tangible experience and rational thought. Therefore, he must find a way to both reject and preserve the body as the foundation of rational thought.

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The captive wants to, and thus must, be able to differentiate between a dimension in which consistency does not exist and there is no need for control (dreams), on the one hand, and a dimension in which he is awake (or at least thinks so) and sunk in thought, on the other. To cope with the situation, the captive puts himself into different types of meditative states: “I pretty much tried to go into meditation, don’t know what it is but it’s intuition, to disconnect in order to survive, to calm down, to escape.” (B.) While meditating, a person is awake, in control, but disconnected from the experience of captivity: “You go into this kind of meditation where it’s like you’re awake but you’re not there, you’re somewhere else…Usually you’re very attentive, a guard moves, shouts, in this state, nothing.” (E.).

2.1.5 What (and Why) Does the Captive Try to Control? The captive has no control over life: “One of the things is that you have no control over your life, you’re almost like a thing” (S.). Similarly, Y. says, “Nothing was under my control.” The analogy to a thing is not accidental; a thing is passive. If we accept the assumption that our sense of control over our life is essential for our existence, it is clear why the captive attempts to control whatever he can: “I was in control all the time. It’s not a matter of choice, it’s just like that.” (A.) At the practical level, this means limiting yourself to your area of influence alone: “All the time I found things to occupy myself. I occupied myself only with the world that I could influence.” (R.) The pursuit of the sense of control is imperative, because control means the preservation of sanity: “My subjective feeling was that there’s a connection between control and mental clarity.” (S.) The alternative is clear: Loss of the sense of control over our lives leads to madness. Let us look at the following description: Hands tied, without food or drink, [I] don’t know if it’s day or night, so after some time…I began to think I was a rabbit in a cage. I remember as if I’m a rabbit. I started to talk to myself, to my hands, to my feet, I gave them names just to talk to them …I don’t know. These thoughts aren’t controlled. It was completely out of control. (E.)

As E.’s testimony shows, when the body is gone, illusions and hallucinations become a real threat. If, usually, our thoughts arouse bodily sensations and also stem from bodily sensations, in captivity the thoughts float. When lacking the body that ties us to the world, it is hard to preserve orderly, organized, and controlled thought. Thus, as the pressure increases, the victim’s chances at preserving his sanity

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decline. In this context, it is interesting to note that one of the central characteristics noted by persons who develop schizophrenia19 is a sense of losing control of thoughts—which are actually his own (Gallagher 2015). This experience can be described in terms of a gap between the sense of ownership and the sense of agency at the level of thought.20 Indeed, similarly to the phenomenon we defined earlier as anarchic hand syndrome—the feeling that one is unable to control his hand—in certain cases individuals who develop schizophrenia feel unable to control their own thoughts. E’s testimony demonstrates how such phenomena can begin to develop at times of extreme trauma. Without a sense of body, the equation becomes simple: control of thoughts versus losing sanity: “Keeping the brain sane is the aim, the battle is in the head, to keep it clean. There are moments when you’re on the edge.” (Y.) Likewise, in D.’s words: “It was very important to me to exert discipline over my thoughts because the thing that frightened me, besides dying and hurting, was losing my sanity. And so, I exerted very strong discipline over my thoughts, I took care not to go insane.” (D.) With this in mind, we must investigate the link between the ability to control thoughts and the sense of sanity. When there is no possibility of generating control over the outside world, even the most minimal control, the captive must control his inner world. Indeed, in captivity, the captive struggles to preserve and manufacture control over everything possible: “You direct your thoughts because they couldn’t bring me down to the level that I couldn’t control.” (R.) This manifests particularly in realistic thought: “I was very real, very practical.” (N.) “I was very realistic.” (L.) Loss of control over thoughts can lead to a total breakdown. P. stresses that “You need to be able to force the brain to think.” (P.) The freedom to choose what to think, and, no less importantly, how to think is a sign of control. Indeed not only content is important but also style. Control of thought offers a chance to preserve logic: “Every logical thought is a type of control, and a way out from the situation you are in.” (R.) As we already have seen, in solitary confinement, imagination plays a decisive role. Yet, by its very nature, imagination rejects control. While depending on his imagination, the captive’s ability to maintain his sanity becomes particularly difficult. On the one hand there the captive needs to close himself up in his inner world where imagination rules, on the other hand he needs to preserve control. In contrast to the lack of control and absence of logic that rule his life—due to loss of the bodily dimension and the arbitrariness of the state of captivity  It is important to emphasize that there are different types of schizophrenia and so any generalization would be incorrect. I refer to some people who develop schizophrenia. 20  For an extensive discussion see: (Ben-David and Ataria 2021). 19

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itself—the captive attempts to create dimensions in which he can exert control, dimensions in which there is a trace of certainty: “There are states in which you have zero control, you learn how to deal with it, you try to create control by coping, but the reaction from their point of view doesn’t always fit, so I tried to continue on the path of control.” (B.) The world of thoughts is the last refuge in which the captive has a possibility of control. Thus, “What I did to disconnect form this impossible reality is I tried to go deep into thought.” (L.) However, we have already seen that the breakdown of thought, and the sense of internal vacuum that this creates, is a significant threat to the captive. Thinking logically, so it seems, means disconnecting from reality. Hence it is clear why the ability to think logically means survival: “To escape, to disconnect, was part of my survival strategy.” (S.) The testimonies clarify why, in the absence of any ability to control the external situation, the prisoner needs, as far as possible, to enter into his inner world: “It’s helplessness, the eyes are open, and you see nothing. You are not in control; you know you’re not in control. In such a situation the inner feeling is telling you to close your eyes because you’ll feel better.” (H.) The captive strives to achieve a kind of release from an impossible situation, from the total helplessness in which he is immersed. This is, however, not absolute release. Rather, it is a restricted kind of freedom, release with self-­ control, freedom under strict discipline: “I think that all the time I was in a kind of control, it didn’t take me, this meditation, to some other place, because all the time I was also aware of what was happening around me.” (B.) As noted above, the fact that the captive controls the situation has great importance for him: “It was a controlled process, to get myself into this thing.” (P.) Y. reports: There are very traumatic moments, you feel [like] your brain is smashed to the floor. I had a long period, don’t ask me how long, during which I felt a total freeze, the mind doesn’t work, I felt that I was just not capable of working the mind, and I remember saying to myself: Concentrate, think, concentrate, think. I know just when it happened. I knew, I reached an understanding that I was stuck, everything was totally automatic, and I felt that I was unable to stop, and you ask yourself “Why?” You say to yourself, “Concentrate think,” and there’s no reaction, everything happens without knowing, without consideration, it just happens to you, you don’t know how. And again, you say, “Concentrate, think,” and the head is completely empty, you don’t know what to do, loss…end…you see stars and you think to yourself, “Concentrate, think,” you want to control something, the head is completely empty and there’s a terrible feeling of absolute helplessness, of uncertainty, of nothingness of nothing, I don’t know how to define it. The period in which things happen and you don’t control them is one of the most terrible things I remember from captivity. (Y.)

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Without control, facing nothingness, our sense of certainty completely disintegrates and our ability to judge collapses altogether. From here, the path to anxiety, madness, despair, and depression is swift. Thinking means control: if the head is empty and the captive cannot think, helplessness and uncertainty overwhelm the entire dimension of being. When undergoing strong dissociative experiences, the captive’s main aim is to preserve sanity. The dissociative mechanism protects the subject, and, at the same time, in higher doses (and intensity) represents a threat: a conflict between the vital need to disconnect from reality, on one hand, and the desire to preserve logic and realistic thought, on the other. This fundamental conflict leads to the complex relationship between imagination and delusion: Imagination is an anchor and delusion is the beginning of madness. Therefore, the question is how the captive can imagine and yet know that this is not the reality, how he can imagine but preserve the real existence—and all this along with detachment from the body that constitutes our anchor to reality. The existential question the captive faces is, therefore: How can he detach himself from captivity but not lose the body? The conflict stems from the fact that in captivity the body is not the captive’s property: “There’s the body that is concerned with whether there is food, if you need to pee, to poop, and this belonged to captivity, but the head is mine, that mustn’t be lost, the battle is for the head.” (D.) In this state, imagination fills the vacuum, hence the danger that delusions will take over reality increases and intensifies. This is the basis for that struggle: preserving realistic thought without a body, within the bubble that the captive creates in order to survive: I built a kind of bubble that I go into, inside things are beautiful and good, and always, when I wanted to remember the process, I would go out of the bubble, see the environment, and understand the situation I was in, do some exercise, and go back…. (H.)

2.2 The Experience of Meditation 2.2.1 The Sense of Body Ownership When meditators make statements such as, “The body is my anchor,” (G.) they are usually referring to the lived-body: the body-as-subject that is attached to the world at the most basic and primal level. However, meditators sometimes feel that “the bodily sensations are not me” (J.), and in some way the sense of self is detached from the body: “I see myself sitting, I hear myself

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talking, but I observe myself from outside.” (A.) In this case, dissociation is not from the body-as-subject but rather from the body-as-object. As was already discussed, a reciprocal relationship exists between the body-­ as-­subject and the body-as-object. When the relationship favors the lived-­ body or the body-as-subject, the meditator detaches from the body-as-object, leading to an experience of dissociation. Essentially, however, this experience is accompanied by a deep and primal connection to the environment. That said, we must make a sharp and clear distinction between detachment from the lived-body (captives) and detachment from the dead-body (meditation). Our bodies are usually both subject and object. This is our unique structure. In daily life, there is a certain equilibrium between the body-as-subject and the body-as-object. While one can think of the body-as-­subject (Leib) not only in terms of the lived-body but also in terms of the body from within (1PP), the body-as-object (Körper) can be described not only in terms of the dead-body but also as the body from outside (3PP). In the case of captives, the equilibrium between the body-as-subject and the body-as-object tends toward the latter (since the lived-body is caught in an intolerable reality): the body becomes an obstacle and we feel detached from the world. By contrast, in the case of meditators, the balance tips towards body-as-subject, leading to a feeling of unity with the world. When practicing meditation, physical sensations are not necessarily sensations of an “I,” meaning that bodily sensations are detached from the self: “This sensation in my leg is not felt as a sensation of ‘I.’ It’s not ‘I,’ this feeling. My leg. But it’s not me.” (J.)21 There is no complete loss of the sense of body ownership, but rather the intensity of this feeling decreases. To better understand this point, let us consider a prosthetic limb. In a world of perfect technology, a prosthetic limb will be absolutely transparent: it will be part of the lived body, totally ready-to-hand (see Chap. 1). Today, as things stand, a prosthesis that bumps into an obstacle and receives a blow does not transfer the exact sensation to a real bodily organ. In this sense, if the prosthesis is not perfect, it does not become part of the lived body and fails to become a perfect knowing-body—it is more like an external tool. With this in mind, let us examine another example of the waning sense of body ownership: “There, inside the experience, there is no element that this is my foot touching the carpet.” (T.) This raises the following question: Where does the sense of body ownership end? According to Martin (1995), the sense of body ownership can be defined in terms of the body’s boundaries. To  We shall return below to the relationship between I and ME. At this point, I treat these words in a neutral fashion. 21

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awaken the experience of this-is-my-body, the boundaries of the body must be sensed. A sense of boundary, even the most minimal, is associated with a sense of separateness from the world. Conversely, when there are no boundaries between the subject and the world, a sense of body ownership cannot emerge. Thus, a sense of separateness, which is rooted in the sense of body ownership, is a condition for a certain (even if very thin) sense of self. Indeed, the sense of self depends on the sense of separateness from the world: the minimal self requires some sense of boundaries. While practicing deep meditation, this separation blurs: Only when it was clear to me that I was inside or outside was there also a sense of boundary, but most of the time it simply wasn’t clear to me, I wasn’t inside the body and also there was no sense at all of a clear boundary between me and the world, there was no sense at all that this was my body. (K.)

When there is no clear sense of boundary, the sense of mine-ness also weakens, sometimes disappearing altogether. In this case, the sense that things are happening to me and that I am at the center of the world considerably weakens. This can also be phrased in terms of dissolution (and not disintegration, as in the case of the captives) of the minimal-self. Having defined the sense of body ownership in the context of the sense of body boundaries, we must now reformulate the question: Where does the body end and the world begin? The immediate and clear answer to this question is that the boundaries are “first of all at points of direct contact.” (W.) Husserl (1989) holds that the sense of touch creates the subject’s most primal connection with the world—we are hooked up to the world through touch: while we are touching (something) we are, simultaneously, being touched; we encounter ourselves through our encounter with the world. Essentially, the structure of touching-being-touched stands at the very core of our sense of liveliness. Returning to the idea that the sense of body ownership relates to the sense of the body’s encounter with the world and to the sense of the boundary between the body and the world, it is clear why the sense of touch plays such an important role in the sense of body ownership: The body “belongs to me” through the encounter with the world. Put differently, The body becomes My body through interaction with the world. Hence it is clear why a subject in a flotation tank, disconnected completely from the sense of touch, feels his boundaries dissolve and, as a result, her sense of body ownership weakens considerably. In the flotation tank, the subject experiences the world purely through the lived-body or the body-as-subject, resulting in the sense that her

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boundaries are completely blurred. Under these conditions, the sense of body ownership also dissolves. The sense of body ownership is rooted in the nature of our encounter with the world. The sense of sight, in opposition, for example, to the sense of smell, naturally provides an immeasurably stronger sense of boundary (O’Shaughnessy 2000). Note, however, that even when we focus on one particular sense, we must be aware of nuances. In the case of the sense of touch, for instance, we should distinguish between the encounter with “the world” as a whole (for example, while swimming in the sea) and the encounter with a specific object. In the same way we must differentiate between the sense of boundary created when we look at a certain object and the sense of boundary during the Ganzfeld effect. The sense of body ownership depends, therefore, on the character of the encounter between the subject and the world: sight as opposed to hearing, touching a specific object as opposed to “touching” the world. That said, even if a specific sense plays a bigger role than other senses, each sense must be treated as part of our body’s unity: I do not simply contemplate the relations between the segments of my body and the correlations between my visual body and my tactile body; rather, I am myself the one who holds these arms and these legs together, the one who simultaneously sees them and touches them…. (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 151)

When the sense of body ownership operates in the usual fashion, “I know where the boundaries of my body are, I know where my body is located.” (J.) To know where I am located means to sense where my body ends and where the world begins. It is important to emphasize that the sense of body ownership does not operate in a binary fashion, this is not a yes or no state but rather a spectrum; it is a flexible and adaptive mechanism (de Vignemont 2010). While practicing meditation, the sense of body ownership apparently alters. F. describes the following experience: “I couldn’t tell you where my toes were, where my hand was, because the sense of body was of the body in general.” (F.) F. does not feel detached from his body, he also does not feel that this is not his body. Rather, he feels that he cannot say precisely and absolutely where his organs are located. There seems to be an intermediate stage in the decreasing intensity of the sense of body ownership. This description indicates that during meditation there is a change in the sense of kinesthesia—the sense of physical posture and movement of body and limbs vis-à-vis our location, of how we are positioned in space. W. describes an experience in which the sense of body ownership drops to a relatively low level: “I don’t exactly feel the body as separate but there is some

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doubt about it.” W. continues: “Part of this feeling was that it’s not in this body.” That is, things do not happen in the meditator’s body. With this in mind, it seems that there is a strong connection between alterations in the sense of boundaries (diffuse and more flexible), the weakening of the sense of body ownership, and the experience of not being within the body (out-of-­body experience): It’s not that I’m floating, you know, physically it’s within the experience, it’s not outside the experience. And inside the experience, sometimes it’s a feeling that it takes you completely outside the body, there’s some kind of a total departure from the body, and it’s not from a distance, it’s from within the experience, from inside, and these are rare moments of going outside the body. A lot of silence, very great presence, and it’s open and has form, there is no sense of boundaries, sometimes there’s a sense of a very very different form, the form changes a lot, a sense of another form and also beyond form. (T.)

The more the sense of body ownership decreases (within a certain range), the more the subject feels disconnected from his environment: “Suddenly I don’t feel the environment, don’t feel anything, the body doesn’t feel.” (V.) Concomitantly, the flexibility of the bodily boundaries increases, and, accordingly, the individual experiences a more diffuse world: “I didn’t have this sense that I’m sitting here and you’re sitting there, or of any boundaries at all.” (W.) This is evident in the following description: The body began to spread out, the boundaries of the body began to spread out, they also became, they became less of a boundary…but there was presence from my point of view, I call it body because it’s presence that is aware, and it’s presence that has awareness there, for me I call this body, but it wasn’t what I call the boundaries of the physical body….the more relaxed the body is and the more open the awareness, the more this space of the body becomes more spacious, more spread out. (R.)

This supports the idea that the body-as-subject/body-as-object relationship tends towards the body-as-subject during meditation, generating a more diffuse sense of boundary and a weaker sense of body ownership. We can say, therefore, that as the equilibrium between body-as-subject/body-as-object tends to the body-as-object, the greater the sensation of dissolution of the sense of boundaries. The sense of belonging to the world grows stronger, the meditator feels more at home in the world. This stands in complete contrast to the experience of captives: in the latter case, the equilibrium tends toward the body-as-object: the body becomes an obstacle; the captive feels alienated from his body and a stranger in the world.

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2.2.2 T  he Relationship Between the Sense of Boundary and Specific Senses The relationship between the sensory experience and the sense of boundary depends on which sense is active: “The boundary changes according to the experience, [that is] at the moment that there is a sensation, it defines the boundary. There is a sense of hearing, then my boundary is within hearing range” (U.), or, as another mediator commented, “There are sounds, so I already start to locate them even further from me, but it’s clear that this is not me, it’s clear that the bird I hear now is there and isn’t me.” (J.) The deeper the meditation, the more the sense of boundary blurs: I started to focus on the sounds, I focused on the sounds in the ear. And there was clearly like a wall, something between the outside and inside, and the sound was hitting the sensitive part of the ear, which was the doorway in that wall. When the mind shifted to a more refined place, it was just the sound arising inside the mind, the sense of a wall disappeared, the doorway disappeared. But as it was a pure hearing consciousness in my mind, there was no sense of a wall. (K.)

Thus, while practicing meditation, the meditator’s sense of boundary dissolves. Below, K. describes how an auditory object first generates a sense of perceiver and perceived, a sense of boundary, and slowly dims until it is completely contained within the consciousness, without any defined location in the world: It was an ice-cream truck or something like that. And the music was, in a way, interfering, so I swept into the sounds, and the sounds became, at that point, the sound that was over there, in the distance, it shifted more into this pure sound that was arising in my mind from the ear. So this change in distance… this sound was no longer coming from an object that was over there, an ice cream truck or whatever. It was pure sound that was happening in my mind. Of course, it was coming from my ear, but it was more like it was arising from the ear to my mind. My immediate association or recognition was that the ice cream truck was over there. Then there was a specific object in a specific location, that was somewhere over there. And then I observed that the object itself, the fact that it was an ice-cream truck, disappeared. The next thing was the location. First the object itself disappeared. The so-called ice-cream truck. Then the location, in other words, distance disappeared, and I began to focus on the sounds that entered my ear. And there was a sense that it was no longer in the ear, but it was in the mind, that it was… the hearing consciousness was arising in the

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mind. At that point there was no location, I would say that the location was inside of me, and there was no object. There was a very small object inside my mind… it was pure sound. Pure sound that was not associated in any way to a thing. (K.)

It seems that the auditory dimension generates a unique sense of boundary, different from that generated, for example, by the visual dimension. Indeed, in comparison to sounds, a visual viewpoint on the world generates a stronger sense of separateness from the world: The source was maybe a little stronger there, but if you tell me that the voices come from there, or even from there or from here or from here, it would be reasonable, there’s no real location to sounds, they come….they come from everywhere. (F.)

We have seen that the sense of boundary begins where the body touches the world— direct contact with an external stimulus creates a clearer sense of boundary: when the point of encounter is unclear and there is no direct contact between our bodies and objects in the world, the boundary between “the skin-from-outside” and the “world” is less clear. As O. notes: “The body is not in opposition to the space that is ostensibly outside it. It feels more like flow.” (O.) Yet, even under these conditions, the boundaries do not completely disappear or dissolve: “The moment that I started to pay attention to breathing, the boundaries in general moved, that is, they changed, they were relatively clear boundaries that somehow felt flowing and flexible, but there was still a sense of boundaries.” (K.) The more one practices meditation, the stronger the sense of a lack of boundary becomes. Eventually, it is no longer clear where the body ends and where the world begins, whether the objects are in space or within the body: The right answer is everywhere, because… if you ask me where there are no sounds, I couldn’t tell you. I definitely didn’t locate it any place where it clearly is, it was impossible to locate, it was all over, in my body as well as outside of it. I was there, I was able to recognize the source of it, but it was also there. (F.)

Merleau-Ponty (1968, p. 135) describes this in terms of flesh: “The thickness of the body, far from rivaling that of the world, is on the contrary the sole means I have to go unto the heart of the things, by making myself a world and by making them flesh.” The experience of boundary in this state is more blurred. It is also characterized by changes in the phenomenological perceptual field, which undergoes radical changes—the meditator experiences a

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wide and unified field of existence: “The walls of this place spill over, they don’t collapse, don’t explode… the space grows until it encompasses the entire world.” (W.) In this existential field, there is a sense of blurriness and a lack of separateness: I am in some kind of bubble in which your movement on the chair is closer than the sound of the machine, but it isn’t really located in space, I try not to locate things in space, unlike my perception here where everything is also located in space, I’m not wrong in saying the table is here before you. There, I have, within my inner space, I feel there is a kind of sameness to all the voices and sensations. (F.)

When the boundaries blur, it is much harder to distinguish between the internal space and the external space, between the inner and outer horizons— this is a carnal-fleshy reality in which it is no longer possible to describe the world in a dichotomous manner. Thus, the sense of self, which from the outset is thrown into a certain world and results not from reflection but from a grip on a certain field of action, also dissolves. Indeed, there is a relationship between the lack of a sense of self and a sense of more diffuse boundaries: “When the sense of the self dissolved, it receded, there were no boundaries, no feeling…. the boundaries weren’t defined.” (K.) These descriptions depict the experience of a diffuse boundary between meditator and world. In such circumstances, the meditator identifies more strongly with the body-as-subject, altering the entire experience. One of the reasons for this relates to the dissipation of the sense of sight. The visual experience tends to create a feeling of strong separation between ourselves and the world—unlike the case of tactile sensations, we are unable to feel that we are seeing while being-seen. Consequently, via sight we experience a world that not only lies outside ourselves but is also detached from us. In the visual dimension, at least in the naïve experience, the subject is completely detached from the object. In another formulation, in contrast to the fleshy space generated by the sense of touch, the sense of sight creates an experience of sterile space, a space detached from us. The sense of sight is responsible, more than any other sense, for the feeling of inside relative to outside. We are able to locate objects in space relative to ourselves far more distinctly via sight than any other sense: “When I close my eyes, the boundaries are less tangible, there is no visual situation that defines them.” (U.) When we do not use the sense of sight, there are two main alternatives: consciousness can leak out of the body into the world—“My consciousness goes out and meets the world or opens up to it.” (O.) Alternatively, there can be “a strong retreat inward.” (Q.) The world does not disappear but

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is entirely contained in the inner world of the meditator: “It sort of emphasizes for me that this whole world is actually inside me and not the other way around,” (Z.) or, in other words, the field of consciousness is “inseparable from the inner space.” (R) Therefore, W., exactly like Z., describes a state in which “I feel the events around me as if they’re inside me.” (W.) In both cases, the world and our consciousness blend, the usual dual structure of object-­ subject, perceiver-perceived, dissolves. However, both tend towards the body-­ as-­subject, making the boundary between the organism and the world blurred. The sense of self is no longer located within the organism but overflows, with the body-as-subject, into the world itself. It is possible to summarize this principle in the following way: subjectivity stands at the heart of the world, and the world itself is at the heart of subjectivity: “I am thrown into a nature, and nature appears not only outside of me in objects devoid of history, but is also visible at the center of subjectivity” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 361).

2.2.3 The Sense of Self “Locating” the self during meditation is a complex issue. At times, the sense of self is unmistakably located within the body—“I felt as if I am inside a bubble where the sounds come and penetrate, but I’m inside the body. I have myself very strongly within the body,” (Q.)—and even at a specific location in the body: “Every time that I say ‘I,’ it’s like a kind of arrow pointing in this direction, it’s very intuitive, it points in this direction—inward…in the heart, the stomach, somewhere here, it’s in between—the heart, the stomach.” (Z.) For the most part, however, when practicing deep meditation, a more diffuse sense of self develops. The description of a more diffuse experience, in which the dual structure dissolves, is expressed in a sense of quietness: “And then, if for a moment there’s more quiet, or the location is more diffuse, not so much at one point, there’s no specific point.” (U.) In a moment of quiet, one can see that the subject-object structure would begin to fade—the sense of self has no precise location and there is also no strong sense of identification: “There is no point at which I’m located … whenever there is a point where I an [can be located], then there is also identification.” (X.) In some states, the sense of self is located within the body but is not identified with it—the body is a vessel in which the self is located (without any sense of ownership). In these cases, the sense of self is experienced as separate from the body: I feel like I am looking through the eyes, as if they were a display window. If I look at you now, I don’t feel I am looking at you through the eyes, I feel as if the eyes are a window and I am behind, looking through it to what lies outside. (Z.)

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The sense of body ownership and the sense of agency are essential to the sense of self. Specifically, there seems to be a direct link between a decrease in the sense of ownership and a weakened sense of self. In this situation, the sense of agency also fades: The sense of ownership is weakened and then the sense of self is also less present there. It comes from the experience of a more panoramic picture. In this situation, of the panoramic picture, things happen more in themselves, there’s no need for an observer. The feeling is of the self fading out of the experience. (F.)

This sense that things happen of themselves and do not “need somebody” is a definition, albeit a negative one, of the sense of agency—our sense in daily life that we must be in control. Thus, when we feel that there is no need to be in charge, the sense of agency apparently decreases: It’s ownership and control, it didn’t need a controller, I wasn’t in charge of it, I wasn’t controlling, these things were happening by themselves, they were kind of guests that arrived, even the sounds, it was like it just arrived. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t choose it, I wasn’t controlling it, I didn’t react to it, I didn’t need to react to it because I was much less involved in operating the whole picture. So that sense of not being the executive…that was the feeling. (F.)

During a deep state of meditation, the sense of agency fades. In practice (at the level of the experience) this means that the meditator no longer needs to operate as an active agent. This experience is also characterized by a sense of absorption into the world as well as an absence of boundaries and a lack of the sense of self: “I cease to be. I have no feeling that I’m observing and I have no feeling that I’m hearing.” (R.) Based on this testimony, we can suggest that a strong and thick sense of self, which we occasionally possess during our daily life, is probably related to the body-as-object. More precisely, it seems that a more diffuse sense of self is rooted in the body-as-subject (I), and a stronger and thicker sense of self is rooted in the body-as-object (ME). As was said before, there is usually a certain balance, some kind of equilibrium, between body-as-subject and body-as-object, between the I and the ME. As long as this equilibrium remains, at least to some degree, a sense of dissociation between the I and the ME does not emerge (Fig. 2.2). Fundamentally, the basic human structure is dissociative—we are both subjects and objects. With this in mind, we may suggest that the dissociative experience is merely a matter of intensity. Put somewhat differently, the structure of consciousness is always dual—dissociation is not a mechanism that

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Self-asobject

Self-assubject Fig. 2.2  Self-as-subject vs. self-as-Object The self-as-subject is embedded in the lived-body in the here-and-now. The more immersed we are in the lived-body, the more we are in the present moment at the expense of the self-as-object. The less we focus on the here-and-now, the more we can perceive the self-as-object. When we operate effectively in the world, the self-as-object is not there with us, the explanation is straightforward: when our cognitive resources are invested in a particular activity in the current moment, we lack the cognitive resources required to consider our future or to analyze our past. To put this notion in a wider context: the higher the intensity of our presence in the present moment, the more the equilibrium between the self-as-subject and the self-as-object tends toward to former. However, when the self-as-subject is not preoccupied with preforming in the world, the equilibrium tends toward the self-as-object. In those times, we engage in analyzing the past or planning the future

Self-as-subject

Self-as-object

Body-as-subject I Here and now Minimal self

Body-as-object ME Past-present-future Autobiographical self

operates only at times of stress, during mystical experiences, and the like but rather all the time, albeit at varying intensities. Indeed, dissociation is seated at the heart of consciousness: “There is always a depersonalization at the heart of consciousness” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 139). Dissociation is always present: from the moment that there is a sense of boundary, even the most minimal, the split already exists. The only question concerns intensity; a baby feels united with its mother, but after a few hours the baby can imitate its father, when the latter sticks out his tongue. Therefore, one can say with relative certainty that a minimal sense of boundary already exists at the moment a baby leaves the womb. Usually, when a gap is created between body-as-subject and body-as-object, we enter into an ASC. Yet an ASC can develop in two opposite directions: When the equilibrium tends toward the body-as-object we feel disconnected from the world. Alternatively, when the equilibrium tends toward the

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body-­as-­subject, the sense of self detaches from the body and dissolves into the whole world. The critical question concerns what happens to the sense of agency in each one of these situations. A strong sense of agency apparently relates to the body-as-object. The body-as-subject is already in the world in the most basic and primal sense. As we saw in the first chapter, at this basic level there is openness between the (living) body and the world: the world invites the body to act in it. It seems more appropriate to describe this relationship in terms of a dance in which one holds the other: We are being held and guided by the world, with no need for top-down planning; hence, there is no need for a strong sense of agency. The experience happens by itself. Note, however that the sense of agency does not disappear; rather it functions perfectly at the sensorimotor level. When, by contrast, we collapse toward the body-as-object, the body becomes an unbearable obstacle—a sense of over presence of the body. Consequently, the sensorimotor system fails to predict the next move and we feel as if we are detached from the world. There seems to be a direct relationship between a decrease in the sense of agency and weakening of the sense of self: “Every sense of decision immediately involves the self, so the moment the ‘decision maker’ relaxes, the self too is less present there” (D.) Note that when D. describes the process of decision making, he portrays a process that involves self-awareness. The sense of agency is related to self-awareness, and, in return, self-awareness empowers the sense of self. These two processes occur in parallel and are interdependent: “Self-­ awareness appears when the sense of self appears.” (D.)

2.2.4 Dissolution of the Dual Structure (I) When we describe perception in simple terms, we adopt the subject-object, perceiver-perceived structure. Consciousness is always focused on a specific object. That is the intentional structure of consciousness, and in Brentano’s famous words: Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, reference [or relation] to a content, direction toward an object (which is not to be understood as a reality), or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself, although they do not all do so in the same way. In presentation something is presented, in judgment something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on. (Brentano 1995, p. 68)

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Thus, it seems that once our consciousness is directed toward something (a memory, a thought, an object in the outside world), it becomes an object: “The moment that our consciousness goes to something it becomes an object.” (U.) Or, as in the following description: The more I try to be more precise, the more I understand that in fact everything that is precise is still an object under my observation. It doesn’t matter how big or how small it is, the fact that I succeed in observing it locates it as an object in my consciousness. (Z.)

Indeed, as U. puts it, when there is an object, “right away there’s this division, right away it becomes ‘two.’ There was a sound, and the one who heard the sound, and the one who said, ‘Ah, now I hear.’” (U.) It seems, then, that the very existence of a subject depends on the existence of some kind of object: “When there is thought, at the same time a kind of subject is created.” (F.) To generalize even more, it seems that the sense of self is rooted in the presence of some object, that is, in the dual structure. As thoughts about a certain issue become deeper, the object becomes more distinct: “It became a more defined thing the more I thought about it.” (D.) And, following this process, the clearer the thoughts about a certain object, the more present and thicker the sense of self becomes: “The sense of self becomes more emphasized when I do this.” (D.): The sense of self becomes more present, stronger, thicker, and more emphasized when the object is more distinct: “The more the thing becomes more defined, thus I as a thinker become more defined.” (D.) This is the polarized structure that the practice of meditation dissolves: “The boundary between subject and object is less clear. It dims. The deeper the meditation, the dimmer it gets.” (U.) And, in a more general sense, in this state there is no sense of a polarized world: “There was no actor, there was no stage, I was the audience, the actor, so there was a collapse in terms of subject-object.” (F.) The moment that the gap between subject and object dissolves, our viewpoint on the world (our first-person perspective) dims: “Just like you can’t see the world through a screen or a net, the feeling is that objects are translucent, and I can see through them. In this state, it’s not clear whether I can define a viewpoint anymore.” (W.) Once an object appears, a certain viewpoint immediately returns, albeit at low intensity: “For that same blink of the eye during which I saw lighting, so I have a viewpoint, I look and I see, but right after that, the so-called viewpoint disappears.” (W.) It seems almost impossible to describe the dissolution of the dual structure: “If it would be really quiet I wouldn’t be able describe it to you because there

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would be no subject and object.” (U.) It seems that the word “quiet” expresses the experience of a disintegrating dual structure. The corollary is that the possibility of describe something (in words) depends on the strength of the dual subject-object structure. The disintegration of the dual structure affects the ability to describe, as it does during a traumatic experience. Indeed, the inability to describe the subjective experience is at the heart of both the mystical experience and the traumatic experience. However, although it is impossible to directly describe the collapse of the dual structure, we can try to trace other variables, for instance the sense of time. As we saw in the testimonies of captives, the sense of time is deeply rooted within our encounter with the world, or, to be more accurate, the sense of time expresses the way we are being thrown into the world. Thus, the sense of time is in fact a mirror image that tells the story of this encounter: “We [F. and the world] were really close, we were married, there was no distance, it happened as if inside me, to me, through me, and I’m connected to it, and then it also becomes timeless.” (F.) There is a strong link between the subject-object structure and the sense of time: “When there’s a sense of the observer and of something being observed, then there is also more of a sense of time, but the way it was, where I was part of it, then there’s no sense of time.” (F.) With this in mind, a subject completely submerged in the world clearly cannot experience the sense of time at all: “The absence of time comes with closeness or unification between the subject and object. I mean the real feeling of closeness or intimacy and then things are timeless.” (F.) An object of any kind—thought, memory, feeling—intensifies the subject-­ object structure. In turn, when the dual structure becomes more present, the sense of time begins to return as well: “Every thought comes along with a certain sense of time.” (F.) Apparently, this is because the sense of time relates to the strength of the dual structure: “Time always comes with a kind of duality, with a feeling of observer and observed.” (F.) As the dual structure disintegrates, so too the sense of agency dissipates: in this situation there is no need to feel control of the world. Indeed, once the dual structure collapses, the meditator begins to feel that things happen by themselves, and there is no need for him: “When I was inside this feeling of sharing, of a lack of clear boundaries, then I felt that everything happened on its own and didn’t need me.” (F.) As in the case of captives, the sense of time requires a sort of encounter between the individual and the world, more precisely, the sense of time results from the way we are being thrown into the world (Fig. 2.3).

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Openness of the world Fig. 2.3  Sense of duration as a function of the openness of the world The sense of duration is a function of our openness to the world. However, although the sense of duration ceases to exist when it is completely closed to the world (POWs) as well as when it is completely open to the world (deep meditation), the experience in both instances is fundamentally different

2.2.5 Disintegration of the Dual Structure II22 F. describes an experience of disappearing: a sense of dropping, it’s like falling into empty space…I dissolve into the world and, where you have the boundaries and the self as foreground and the world as background or as ground, here there isn’t a ground, there isn’t a foreground, in a way the background is everything, although not identical to the world, I’m not separate from background.

F. is totally immersed, or very close to being totally immersed, within the world. Thus, background is everything. In addition, F. describes an experience without either a sense of center or a sense of location: there is no center…there’s really no address. I have no idea where I am in stage three, it’s all background, I’m not there, basically, just world, so there’s no real location at all in stage three…the body is so diffused that it’s very difficult to know where it is and what it is.

Similarly, distinctions disappear altogether: “I become absorbed into the background, meaning the whole world without any separate entity…dropping distinctions, dropping interest in any boundaries or limits, dropping habit and automatic sensor-reality.”  This section is based on an advanced interview with one of the most experienced meditators who took part in the research and discovered a unique ability to describe his experience in extreme situations. 22

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This experience goes hand in hand with the lack of a first-person bodily egocentric point of view: “There’s no personal point of view, it’s the world point of view, it’s like the world looking, not ME looking, the world is looking.” Boundaries become irrelevant: “a sense of dissolving…and the feeling that there is no need for any boundaries of any kind.” Reading this quotation carefully, we discover that F. uses the word “need”: “there is no need.” By describing the sense of boundaries in terms of need, F. offers a deep insight: in a way, the sense of boundaries is a protective shield. For this precise reason, one becomes dissociated during trauma, closing off one’s boundaries as a defensive mechanism. By contrast, when one feels secure, there is no need for rigid boundaries and, consequently, the sense of boundary becomes weaker and may even disappear. Essentially, the sense of boundary can be described in terms of one’s need to protect oneself. As one goes deeper into the meditation process, the subject-object structure fades out completely; in turn, this sense of need for protection grows weaker until “there is no need for boundaries.” Thus, the lack of a sense of boundary may indicate feelings of comfort and safety within the world, feeling at-home: “I am part of the world so there is no need for protection, there is no need for boundaries.” In addition, it seems that when there is no need to protect oneself, the sense of priority weakens: when the dual structure grows weaker, there is simply “no sense of priority,” which goes hand in hand with “deep relaxation.” To be more precise, a sense of priority is the sense that my body is more important than what is mine but is not ME (my car, for instance). When the subject-object structure fades away completely, the gap between ME and “NOT-ME” narrows, becoming almost, or even completely, irrelevant. When the intentional structure (subject/object) disappears, there is no sense of location in space: “I really can’t tell you where it is, I don’t have any kind of sense of location.” Similarly, “time is not relevant anymore.” Furthermore, throughout this experience, F.’s sense of ownership also drops: “sense of ownership here is, there really isn’t any…it’s a feeling of dissolving…there is no sense of mine there is no sense of me.” The same also applies to sense of agency: “There is no sense of controlling.” Despite the weakening of the intentional structure, F. describes the following experience: “There’s still a witnessing happening, and that witnessing is what’s left of me.” F.’s ability to witness reflects a dimension in which F. is still somewhat separated from the world. Indeed, if there is a sense of witness, even a very slight one, there is a dimension in which F. is not completely immersed within the world. Ostensibly, this sense of witness can be described as a very thin subject/object kind of feeling. Yet, according to F., this is not what he experiences. Instead, he says, “It’s like knowing it is happening without an

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object, or without a specific object.” Therefore, this experience cannot be described in terms of subject and object—the nature of this experience remains under the threshold of the subject/object structure (there is no sense of object). Thus, we can suggest that this is a basic experience in its nature, with no clear sense of subject versus an object. The touching-touched structure allows us to illustrate extremely primitive relationships between the organism and the world—“though we are of the world, we are nevertheless not the world” (Merleau-Ponty 1968, p. 127). Just as it is possible to describe the touching-touched structure in terms of touching (and being touched by) the whole world and not a specific object, we can describe the experience of knowing without a clear object (knowing it is happening without an object, or without a specific object) as a thin touching-­ touched structure in which one feels immersed in, yet at the same time also somewhat separate from, the world. While touching the world in-itself (and not a specific object), this sense of touching/being-touched becomes so diffuse that it does not generate a strong sense of boundaries, yet nevertheless a very thin sense of touching/being-touched continues to exist.

2.2.6 Inner Talk as a Process of Perception23 Inner talk is a process via which we become aware of our own thoughts. The word makes the inner experience more accessible to us: “The moment that the experience received a word, it was more at the front of the stage and so it was more accessible to me.” (L.) In some cases words can express a thought: “I feel as if it’s thought,” (R.) or, more precisely, on occasion, “Thought speaks itself, it’s verbal.” (E.) S. takes this description a step further: “Thoughts appear to me as if I hear them. The words are spoken.” (S.) Inner talk calls for attention—this is a kind of perception in the inner horizon: “Inner talk and thoughts about events are identical, they come from the same place, they come together with the sense of self and the sense of awareness of what’s happening.” (D.) As we already saw, the sense of self is the result of a certain gap between subject and object. In order for such a gap to be created, some object is necessary. Note that a word is also a kind of object that intensifies the sense of self. Inner talk calls for awareness of what is happening in the stream of consciousness. Indeed, at times, thoughts become inner talk, thus requiring attention: “Many times my thoughts are actually inner talk. It’s as if the word 23

 Meditators did not practice the method of naming every experience that arose.

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appears but the moment my attention is there, the thought disappears right away.” (U.) Yet notably attention and inner talk are not the same thing: “Aside from attention, there is an additional element that is not ’attention,’ it is the statement itself.” (V.) Inner talk allows us to frame our experience: “I feel my tension, and when I explain to myself, ‘Oh yes I’m worried,’ that’s done in words. A kind of inner talk.” (J.) Inner talk creates the main axes that organize an experience: “Words draw the lines within the experience.” (B.) In this sense, language is a tool that facilitates various types of complex cognitive processes. To be more precise, inner talk enables us to summarize (to ourselves) a certain process, to get a grip on what is happening to us: “I felt as if the word was a kind of summary, a conclusion for an inner feeling.” (Y.) The word is a tool that we use not only to express ourselves to others, but also (and perhaps first and foremost) to organize our inner world. That said, it is important to understand that the word is also an object, and as such it strengthens the dual-polarized structure. When the dual-polarized structure is strengthened, we are in the process of perceiving an object. The word in-itself, like any other object, empowers the dual (subject/ object) structure and at the same time is perceived. Crystallization of experience into words brings the non-conscious and pre-reflective experience to a certain peak—the pre-reflective experience is transformed into a word, like frozen vapor that can be grasped, and thus undergoes a sort of tagging. In this process, the non-conscious and pre-reflective experience crosses a threshold and enters into our awareness, making us conscious of our experience: “In certain conditions, this doesn’t reach a verbal place, and then it feels like some kind of energetic movement, but when this movement receives a little more momentum—then the verbal is added to it… then it is covered by the verbal…” (U.) Via the process of verbalization, labeling, and naming we become more aware of our experience: our awareness becomes more concentrated, that is, our attention is strengthened and focused. Indeed, “conscious experience appears with some kind of verbal level.” (S.) In this context, some argue (Carruthers 1998) that conscious thought is realized through inner talk. X.’s testimony demonstrates this notion: “Thought speaks itself, it is verbal.” (X.) Awareness of inner talk is perception of inner talk, and inner talk is in fact a process of perception. Becoming aware of something, not merely in the outside world but in our inner horizon as well, is a process of objectification, which, in turn, can be defined in terms of stronger attention. Clearly, this strengthens the dual structure. To understand something, we must perceive it. This is also true of cognitive processes: We must transcribe them, talk them through, and then perceive

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them as if from outside. The process of naming and labeling transforms the experience into an object that can be grasped, just like any other object in our perceptual field. In a certain sense, this is simply the way our system works— we are perception-based creatures, hence, to understand something, a perceptual process is necessary. Therefore, strange though it may seem, even information that apparently comes from within must pass through our perceptive systems. When experience crosses the threshold and becomes verbal, it becomes much easier to control: “The moment I become aware of this automatic thing that suddenly started to operate within me, I can stop it, I don’t have to continue” (Q.) The idea that a conscious decision is frequently reached during the transition from a non-verbal to a verbal experience is demonstrated clearly in the following description: It was the stimulus of a hair, it started as an unpleasant stimulus that got the word ‘scratch’ and then the understanding that it’s a hair and not a mosquito, for example, and the knowledge, the understanding, hair, you can say the word ‘hair’ came. A picture came together with the word. I think first the picture came, like through a mirror, as if I’m looking at it in the mirror. But at the same time, I also experienced it within me. What came first is the internal sensation, as you call it, to feel it from within, and a fraction of a second later the picture of it together with a name. At first it is only a stimulus, without a word, but immediately afterwards the picture and the word appear. The word appears at the end. And then I decided to move the hair. (L.)

In conclusion, an experience that is put into words becomes more approachable and clearer, making it easier for us to reach a conscious decision.

2.2.7 Meaningless Stimuli While practicing meditation, meditators feel “completely aware of what happens around” (V.) them, yet they consistently describe their experience in terms of stimuli that refuse to become meaningful perceptual units—to some extent the sensual data remains rough and does not become an object of perception: “Only hearing the sounds without the words reaching me” (J.); “I heard a sound without content, I didn’t hear content.” (U.) Apparently, during the primal encounter with our surroundings, there is no real knowledge and understanding of what that object is: “I heard only sound, I didn’t know what it was” (P.)

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Being aware of what happens around ourselves does not necessarily mean that, from a subjective perspective, everything has meaning. In other words, we can be aware of our environment without casting meaning upon it. Note, however, that when it comes to meaning, or lack thereof, it is important to consider the finest nuances. “Meaning,” in the strongest sense, indicates that a certain stimulus is labeled in the form of a word (and we have seen that this is a perceptual process). In most cases, however, raw sensations are not labeled, and “it could be without a word—just a sensation” (S.) As W. puts it: “It is a very very delicate network of very very delicate experiences, the kind that I couldn’t describe or call by name.” (W.) This description illustrates perfectly the experience of almost meaningless stimuli. W. describes a great wealth of sensations that simply cannot be defined as having meaning in the strong sense, nor in a medium sense. At this point, we must ask whether there are also meaningless sensations. In a certain sense, we are asking whether it is possible that the basic sensations remain without meaning during the perceptual process and are “perceived” as primal sensations (without interpretation, without narrative, without any structuring). At least on the face of it, U.’s description attests that such a possibility exists: The words are already there [in the context of words that were heard from the outside while meditating, and not in the sense of labeling the experience], as if there are words all the time, but in the first second it doesn’t yet sound verbal. It’s heard as a sound, but for a second there’s no place that interprets them. (U.)

Based on this testimony, one could claim that there are indeed sensations without any meaning, or better, meaningless sensations. In my view, however, it is very difficult to confirm this claim. As we saw in the first part of this volume, we are always thrown into the world in a certain kind of mood and operate in a certain context, or, to be more precise, the body itself brings context via the way in which it is absorbed into the world. Hence, talking about meaningless sensations seems somewhat problematic (unless we are completely detached from our body). That said, let us return to U.’s testimony. U. knows that the sounds she hears represent language and not dogs barking. Therefore, it is perhaps more accurate to define this as a pre-­ reflective and pre-interpretative (nonthetic) understanding, namely, non-­ conceptual knowledge. Yet, rather than defining this knowledge by negation, it can be defined as the lived-body’s practical understanding of its environment. With this in mind, I would like to suggest that we should differentiate between three levels of meaning: meaning in the strong sense—e.g., meaning of the word that includes interpretation; meaning in the medium sense—e.g., identification of sound as a word and not vehicle noise; meaning in the weak

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sense—e.g., a natural non-mechanical sound. As we saw in the previous section, meaning in the strong sense implies naming, cataloging, location, and labeling. We are immediately aware that the sound we hear comes from a mobile phone, we hear a sound that has meaning. To better understand the bottom-up process, let us examine at the following description: “Then I heard a chirp without a bird, and, after that, the bird came. First there’s the sound and after that the naming of it.” (S.) First comes the initial stimulus, which has some kind of meaning. The knowledge that it is a chirp defines a medium level of knowledge; definition of the sound as a chirp (it is an animal rather than a mechanical noise) reveals some level of existence beneath the surface— understanding of the lived-body. I. describes another example of an experience that begins from a low level of meaning and then becomes stronger: A sound and I then quickly identified it as the sound of a car, and I saw and also felt not only this, I also felt how it’s passing. Then I even saw a black car, something like a dark car moving from that direction to over there. It’s visual, with a sound… In the beginning, it’s a sound and afterwards it’s identified with a label, and after that it becomes a car, and after that the type of car. It’s a sound, which is then identified with an object, then it is identified with what it is, and then it gains more depth as something visual or something like that. (I.)

In this case too, we can say that from the very first moment there was knowledge that the source of the sound was mechanical. Another description shows how one becomes aware of the stimulus, and then how one becomes aware of becoming aware; awareness that is expressed by second order thoughts, thoughts that are verbal at some level or another: “Only the sound. And then, following it, thoughts, a thought or two. A first order thought and then another thought, every further thought is more story, more meaning, more word, more mine, more I.” (D.) The stimulus undergoes labeling, becoming “word” and then “story,” and in this process the sense of self becomes thicker and more present. This process can also be described in terms of the strengthening of the dual subject-object structure. It is important to emphasize that some kind of pre-reflective self-­ consciousness (non-reflective awareness) at a minimal level is apparently present already at the subject’s first encounter with the world, exactly as the phenomenological approach claims: “There is a sound that I can’t identify, I couldn’t give it a name, couldn’t conceptualize it, but I still hear something, and I am aware that I’m hearing something.” (S.) As this example shows, non-­ reflective awareness does not require identification of a certain object, and certainly not of an object with meaning. It is possible to be aware without falling into clear content or a whole story. Rephrasing this notion, we can

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experience open and floating awareness. That said, let us stress that awareness of a certain sensation is not separate from the sensation itself, or, pre-reflective self-consciousness emerges along with the stimuli. This process, however, does not require reflection—usually things do not pass the threshold of consciousness and take place on a non-reflective level. The important point in this testimony is the awareness of hearing even when it has no meaning (at least not in the strong sense): “I am aware that I am hearing something.” If the above description is accurate, we can say that even when sounds have no actual meaning, there is still awareness of the process itself—this is part of the most basic structure of the experience; awareness always comes with pre-reflective self-­ consciousness and, thus, every experience is accompanied by pre-reflective awareness. Indeed, the ability to report experiences before they receive strong meaning derives from this ability.24

2.2.8 T  he Bodily Dimension of Thought and the Relationship to the Sense of Self When thoughts fade away, there may be a feeling of leaving “the body or a feeling that I have no boundaries, I have no form…the boundaries of “I” fade away.” (T.) The fading of thoughts relates to the primal bodily sensations and it is even possible to propose that thoughts, at its basis, are bodily: “Words and thought and this is also a kind of shrinking of the body.” (T.) For example, when the meditator develops a feeling that the body is less dense and airier, “The thoughts are very airy.” In contrast, when “The body is in a place that’s more closed in, more shrinking,” then, “The thoughts are dense.” A shrinking body and dense thoughts come together with the experience of “Thoughts that run all the time.” (O.) There appears to be a direct link between the intensity of the dual structure (subject-object) and the character of thought. A change in equilibrium between the body-as-subject/body-as-object is expressed in the structure of thought itself. The structure of thought is rooted in the nature of our presence in the world, that is, in the intensity of the boundaries between ourselves and the world. Likewise, thoughts that are heavier and denser are also related to a thicker sense of self: “The experience of an ‘I’ connects to this thickness, to the weight. The more solid it (thought) is, the thicker and heavier, the more there is a feeling of ‘I,’ of ‘myself.’” (T.) There appears to be a relationship between the existence of thoughts and the sense of self. When there are no thoughts,  From a methodological perspective, this possibility opens up a new horizon. I believe that this is what Husserl (1960, 1965, 1970) intended when he spoke of a real science of consciousness. 24

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“Then the sense of self isn’t there… so ‘I’ isn’t there… without thought, it’s just sensations, it’s just experience. Also there’s nothing of ‘I’ at that minute when there’s no thought. There’s a kind of freedom. There’s a kind of sense of freedom. Opening and widening. It’s empty.” (T.) The word empty is not coincidental. The lack of a sense of self relates to the sense of emptiness and quietness, and the sense of emptiness attests to the dissolution of the dual structure—in this situation there are no thoughts. In a state of emptiness, there is no field of objects—in the widest sense of “object.” Even though we cannot give a causal description (and, as was said, the aim of phenomenological research is to describe) concerning whether weakening of the sense of self is the result of emptiness or vice versa, the relationship clearly exists. Some kinds of thoughts seemingly relate to the body-as-subject, while others relate to the body-as-object. Thoughts of the latter kind consider, for instance, the gaze of the other, they relate to planning the future, and their center of gravity is the self-as-object (ME). Thoughts of the former type (I) are qualitatively different, they are more open, more flexible, less judgmental, rooted in a fleshy and vague reality. Even though it is very hard to describe the sense of self, it is possible to describe indirect indications of its existence. The sense of time and space, for example, play an important role in the presence of the sense of self: “Moments without thoughts are moments without time. Time and space are the first to go.” (S.) And, as we already noted, when there are no thoughts, there is no sense of self, only a sense of quiet and emptiness: In the place of utter silence there is simply nothing, you go to a sub-atomic place in terms of your awareness, so there are happenings there but they don’t get a name, it’s like being cut off, that’s what I’m trying to say. In that place that we can call ‘no thought’, there are no words. Time also does not exist there. When I am sitting in practice, I have no sense of time. (W.)

That being said, it is clear why Merleau-Ponty (2012, p. 190) insists that “Our view of man will remain superficial so long as we do not return to this origin, so long as we do not rediscover the primordial silence beneath the noise of words”.

2.2.9 Feelings “Feelings are anchored very strongly in the body; Feelings always have some expression in the body.” (S.) In most cases, a feeling does not take on a verbal expression: “There were no words for the feeling. It was physical. In the stomach.” (H.) N. describes it in the following manner: “To know what I’m feeling

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emotionally is to know what I sense bodily.” This stands out particularly when one experiences strong feelings: “I’m upset, I felt it in my body.” (H.) It appears that every feeling has an echo in the body, the question is how to link a certain bodily sensation to the feeling associated with it: There is tension in the body, which is the emotional source. This tension could be very very subtle, but there is an emotional dimension. Like changes in tension, that’s the most appropriate word, if you’re more tense or at ease, so there’s tension in the chest, I can feel it tensing up. It seems a rather accurate reflection of my emotional state. (T.)

Another important characteristic relating to the emotional dimension is the inability to let go or release, unlike thought that is not emotional: “The emotional component makes it harder to let go, to release.” (S.) We have seen that awareness of thought is sufficient to dissolve it, but this is not the case with feelings: If it is something intensive and also negative, fear or anger for example, you can be aware that you are angry and don’t want to let it go or can’t stop it, but if it’s a thought that is not emotionally loaded, then the very fact that I am thinking about it now, this is a thought, a thought is now passing, it’s like popping a balloon with a pin and it simply disappears. (S.)

Perhaps this relates to the fact that the emotional dimension is accompanied by a more present and less controlled sense of self: “Both pleasantness and jealousy had the same point because I was there, it was mine, my feeling, my experience, there was the same attitude and there I didn’t see myself as director, but I experienced it personally.” (A.) If so, feelings, in particular unpleasant feelings, are connected to a stronger sense of ownership, and thus also to a thicker and denser sense of self: “Thought appeared, along with a slight feeling of concern, and then, at the moment of concern, there was a sense of a slightly collapsed space, and at this moment there is more of a feeling of ‘I’.” (F) It seems that feelings in general, and unpleasant feelings in particular, intensify the sense of self. Fear, for example, is accompanied by a heavier sense of self: “There was fear and so also more ‘I’.” (P.) This also applies to worry, “The worry just sucked me into it with a greater force. It was a stronger thought than the others, there was more ‘I’ there.” (J.) As expected, this is also expressed in an unpleasant bodily sensation, as well as a feeling of inability to free oneself from the feeling: Fear of my death or concern about what will be with me or happen to me, it’s like there’s concern with the individual’s world and fate increases and other things in the world become much less important in relation to this, in other

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words, it takes up all of the inner space, the experience of life becomes full of concern, concern about experiences I will have, or about remnants of experiences I had, and it also becomes heavier, that too, and it could be because of the practice, it could be accompanied by awareness, meaning I could be very aware, really to the moment, that I am totally preoccupied with thoughts and worries and there are these unpleasant bodily sensations, and despite the awareness, there is no sense of release, there is no sense of lightness. (T.)

Concern is accompanied by a sense of time and a more present autobiographical sense of self: “The sense of time returned immediately when I started to feel concern about the wedding, and there was also a greater feeling that I am the focus of this whole story.” (P.) In addition, strong feelings, in particular negative ones, are accompanied by a denser physical experience, a stronger sense of ownership, a weaker sense of control of one’s feelings, and a thicker sense of self.

2.2.10 On the Character of Memory Memory, in certain cases, can be extremely tangible and alive: “I saw her as I had seen her yesterday. There was memory, this memory for a short period of time became tangible and alive before my eyes, just as I look at a screen and see a movie.” (A.). Usually, a memory just pops up: “How did it come up, the memory, I don’t know, it just popped up.” (S.) An interesting point relating to memory is the viewpoint of the event that appears. The meditators repeatedly used the terms “director” and “camera” in this connection: “In the memory I was like a director who sees the situation through a lens…I saw them as a director.” (A.) That is, “My viewpoint while remembering was the camera.” (S.) In this state, the subject again sees the situation from a first-person perspective as he first experienced it, yet he also sees himself from the viewpoint of the director: “I saw myself too…apart from my being the director….standing on the balcony…I saw me standing on the balcony and looking at them, the whole picture is from the director’s viewpoint.” (A.) It seems that this testimony reveals the possibility of being at two points in time—within the event and outside it simultaneously. An additional description emphasizes the camera element: The picture included me, the picture was of me and of the circle around me in the room. Like a camera from behind. It was behind me, about a meter behind me and a bit from above, so you could see the entire room and the entire group and me. But a little, let’s say not over there at the edge of the wall, but let’s say from this height. (S.)

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Yet memory does not have to appear as a movie. In most cases, it is “just a picture, like a snapshot, not a movie.” (S.) Often, the memory appears in the form of segmented pictures that generate the general experience during the event. The subject observes these pictures from a static point of view. Usually, the picture is accompanied by a certain associated context: It wasn’t like I was looking at a full truck. I snapped a photograph. It was more of an image that floated in… and it was about 65% formed. I was seeing it from the side. It was me seeing it from the side. It was me today. Even though it was associated with my childhood there wasn’t an image of me as a child. And it didn’t, there was no further association, it didn’t evoke any… image of a child running for ice-cream or any child. (K.)

The following example demonstrates clearly how memory operates. It describes how thought becomes memory, and how the memory joins with the feelings of the moment of remembering, so that every instance of remembering is a new experience: There was a thought that a man is sitting there. Suddenly, I remembered, it’s a type of memory, the man. Yes, I can see his face. As if my glance went there and back, something like that. I went, mentally, not physically, from here through the wall. Like a camera, yes. I saw, yes, I saw, because it was mental, I went through the wall. I saw him, at first, I saw him sitting here next to me, then I imagined with a sort of vision, him lying down. As if I am above him, sitting at a certain angle, and he is here, like I’m seeing the cup. A kind of story is created, and it all happened in the fraction of a second. His name too, his father’s name, Abed. In the story it was also mentioned that this is the son of Abed, something like that. Maybe a kind of internal statement. It could be there was an internal statement, and all this is just a fraction of a thought, do you understand what I’m describing now? Yes. Maybe I’ll even see the letters A-B-E-D in front of my eyes because then it’s easier to remember names. (I.)

In other cases, the feeling is one of transition into the memory: there is no observation of the memory (as if from the outside) but rather presence within it. In most cases, the absorption into memory relates to an emotional dimension connected to this memory: “The feeling took me inside more strongly.” (C.) Memory is almost always specific—the subject remembers a specific thing and not abstract feelings: “I remembered some specific bell.” (V.) Fundamentally, the more loaded the memory is with strong emotions (especially negative ones), the more the viewpoint is not here-and-now but rather then-and-there—within the memory as-if it happens once again. This

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can also be phrased as follows: The “then-and-there” becomes present through the living-body in the “here-and-now.” Note that from a bodily perspective, memory is always here-and-now, however, a stronger the bodily experience at the moment of remembering means that the subject will be less able to locate the memory in the past. In this state, when the bodily intensity accompanying the memory becomes strong, the past becomes here-and-now. Likewise, at least from the perspective of the structure of the experience, we “remember” the future in the same way that we remember the past: I think it was a visual scenario, probably of a wedding that happened, but again not clear at all, it wasn’t that I saw the wedding and the people, and you know, not at all, it was enough of a picture to give me a sense that there’s a wedding tomorrow, me under the wedding canopy, but without people or, a sort of a minimal picture was there, and with it was a slight concern that maybe I can’t do it tomorrow. It wasn’t there, maybe I cannot do it tomorrow, there were no words there, I didn’t feel like words at all, I couldn’t picture them or anything, I couldn’t recognize them as words, they were a general feeling, a very small discomfort that I might not be able to be there tomorrow. It was brief, for a (milli-) second I was there. (F.)

The fact that we “remember” the future in the same way as we “remember” the past enables us to describe the autobiographical self as a field, an autobiographical field spread out to the horizon of past-present-future.

2.3 Conclusions This chapter presented two studies that were conducted among different research groups—prisoners of war (15 subjects) and senior practitioners of meditation (27 subjects). Clearly, these studies are not sufficient to provide a full picture of the human experience. These are two extreme situations (ASC), and, in order to understand human experience, it is necessary to create an immeasurably wider mapping. Yet this task is technically impossible, and it is also not the purpose of this study. By means of the interviews, I hoped to present the richest possible picture of human experience from the viewpoint of phenomenological research, which focuses on understanding the structure of consciousness. Indeed, analysis of the interviews produced insights that digress from the field of the research and have implications for the structure of human consciousness. In the next chapter, based on the theoretical part and the interviews, I will try to develop a more complete theory of human consciousness.

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Bibliography Arieli, Amos, and Yochai Ataria. “Helplessness: The Inability to Know-that You Don’t Know-how.” Philosophical Psychology, 2018. Ataria, Yochai. “Acute Peritraumatic Dissociation: In Favor of a Phenomenological Inquiry.” Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 15, no. 3 (2014a): 332–347. https:// doi.org/10.1080/15299732.2013.853722 ———. “Becoming Nonhuman: The Case Study of the Gulag.” Genealogy 3 no. 2 (2019c): 1–27. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy3020027 ———. Body Disownership in Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018a. ———. “Body without a Self, Self without Body.” Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 36, no. 1 (2016a): 29–40. https://doi.org/10.1037/ teo0000029 ———. “Dissociation during Trauma: The Ownership-Agency Tradeoff Model.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14, no. 4 (2015a): 1037–1053. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s11097-014-9392-9 ———. “I Am Not My Body, This is Not My Body.” Human studies 39, no. 2 (2016d): 217–229. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-015-9366-0 ———. “Investigating the Origins of Body-Disownership: the Case Study of the Gulag.” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 51, no. 1 (2020b): 44–82. ———. Primo Levi and Ka-Tzetnik: The Map and the Territory. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. ———. “Sense of Ownership and Sense of Agency during Trauma.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14, no. 1 (2015d): 199–212. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11097-013-9334-y ———. The Phenomenology of Trauma: The Case of Dissociation During Trauma. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2015c. ———. The Structural Trauma of Western Culture: Toward the End of Humanity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. ———. “The Witness’s Death: Primo Levi and Georges Perec.” In Interdisciplinary Handbook of Trauma and Culture, edited by Y. Ataria, D. Gurevich, H. Pedaya, & Y. Neria, 195–216. Springer, 2016b. ———. “Total Destruction.” In Jean Améry: Beyond the Minds Limits, edited by Yochai Ataria, A. Kravitz and E. Pitcovski, 141–158. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019b. ———. “Trauma from an enactive perspective: the collapse of the knowing-how structure.” Adaptive Behavior 23, no. 3 (2015b): 143–154. https://doi. org/10.1177/1059712314578542 ———. “Traumatic and Mystical Experiences: The Dark Nights of the Soul.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 56, no. 4 (2016b): 331–356. ———. “Traumatic Memories as Black Holes: A Qualitative-Phenomenological Approach.” Qualitative Psychology 1, no. 2 (2014b): 123–140. https://doi. org/10.1037/qup0000009

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———. “Where Do We End and Where Does the World Begin? The Case of Insight Meditation.” Philosophical Psychology 28, no. 8 (2015c): 1128–1146. ———. “When the Body Becomes the Enemy: Disownership toward the Body.” Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology 23, no. 1 (2016c): 1–15. https://doi. org/10.1353/ppp.2016.0002 ———. “When the body stands in the way - Complex posttraumatic stress disorder, depersonalization and schizophrenia.” Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 26, no. 1 (2019a): 19–31. Ataria, Yochai, and Eli Somer. “Total Otherness in Dissociative Identity Disorder.” Journal for Otherness 4, no. 1 (2013): 1–25. Ataria, Yochai, and Gallagher, Shaun. “Somatic Apathy: Body Disownership in the Context of Torture.” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 46, no. 1 (2015): 105–122. https://doi.org/10.1163/15691624-12341286 Ataria, Yochai, and Omer Horovitz. “The destructive nature of severe and ongoing trauma: Impairments in the minimal-self.” Philosophical Psychology (2020a): 1–23. ———. “The destructive nature of severe and ongoing trauma: Impairments in the minimal-self.” Philosophical Psychology 34, no. 2 (2021): 254–276. Ben-David, Avia, and Yochai Ataria. “The BI-BS/Ow-Ag Model for Pathologies: Four Case Studies.” In Body Schema and Body Image, edited by Y. Ataria, S. Gallagher, & S. Tanaka, 328–348. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Breh, Doris C, and Günter H Seidler. “Is Peritraumatic Dissociation a Risk Factor for PTSD?” Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 8, no. 1 (2007): 53–69. Brentano, F. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. (L. McAlister, Ed.) London: Routledge, 1995. Carruthers, Peter. “Thinking in language.” In Language and Thought, edited by Jill Boucher and Peter Carruthers, 94–120. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998. de Vignemont, Frédérique. “Embodiment, ownership and disownership.” Consciousness and Cognition 20, no. 1 (2010): 82–93. Fuchs, Thomas. “The temporal structure of intentionality and its disturbance in schizophrenia.” Psychopathology 40, no. 4 (2007): 229–235. Gallagher, Shaun. “Philosophical conceptions of the self: implications for cognitive science.” Trends In Cognitive Sciences 4, no. 1 (2000): 14–21. ———. “Relations between agency and ownership in the case of schizophrenic thought insertion and delusions of control.” Review of Philosophy and Psychology 6, no. 4 (2015): 865–879. Grassian, Stuart. “Psychiatric effects of solitary confinement.” Journal of Law & Policy 22, no. 325 (2006): 327–383. Guenther, L. Solitary confinement: Social death and its afterlives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany: New York Press, 1996. Herman, Judith Lewis. Trauma and recovery. New York: Basic Books, 1992.

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Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian meditations: an introduction to phenomenology. Translated by Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960. ———. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy—Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution. Translated by Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989. ———. Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy. Translated by Quentin Lauer. New York: Harper and Row, 1965. ———. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Translated by David Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970. Levinas, Emmanuel. Humanism if the other. Translated by Nidra Poller. Urbana; Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006. Ludwig, Arnold. “Altered states of consciousness.” Archives of general Psychiatry 15, no. 3 (1966): 225–234. Martin, Michael G F. “Bodily awareness: a sense of ownership.” In The body and the self, edited by J L Bermúdez, A Marcel and N Eilan, 267–89. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A Landes. London and New York: Routledge, 2012. ———. The primacy of perception. Edited by James Edie. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. ———. The visible and the invisible. Edited by Claude Lefort. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968. O’Shaughnessy, Brian. Consciousness and the World. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000. Ozer, Emily J, Suzanne R Best, Tami L Lipsey, and Daniel S Weiss. “Predictors of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Symptoms in Adults: A Meta-Analysis.” Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy S, no. 1 (2008): 3–36. Parnas, Josef, and P Handest. “Phenomenology of anomalous self-experience in early schizophrenia.” Comprehensive psychiatry 44, no. 2 (2003): 121–134. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Translated by Hazel Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library, 1956. Sato, Atsushi, and Asako Yasuda. “Illusion of sense of self-agency: discrepancy between the predicted and actual sensory consequences of actions modulates the sense of self-agency, but not the sense of self-ownership.” Cognition 94, no. 3 (2005): 241–55. Tart, Charles, ed. Altered States of Consciousness. New York, London, Sydney, Toronto: John Wiley, 1969. Van der Kolk, Bessel A. Psycological Trauma. Washington: Amrican Psychiatric Press, 1987. Zakay, Dan, and Richard A Block. “Prospective and retrospective duration judgments: an executive-control perspective.” Acta Neurobiologiae Experimentalis 64, no. 3 (2004): 319–28.

3 Embodied Consciousness

Based on insights from the interviews conducted with the two study groups, former POWs and long-term meditators, in this chapter I present a (static) structure of human consciousness (Fig. 3.1). Before continuing, however, it is worth noting that I do not seek to construct a complete model of consciousness but rather to present a model that seriously considers the subjective experience, that is, to describe the subjective experience from within the subjective experience and derive insights from this approach.

3.1 The Structure of Consciousness 3.1.1 The Basic (Pre-Noetic) Structure 3.1.1.1  The Embodied Experience of Being-in-the-World As we have seen, on the most fundamental level, we are present in-the-world through our lived-body. At this level, the body melts into the world and the world is absorbed into the body. Essentially, while fluid, the boundaries nevertheless exist. Merleau-Ponty uses the word “flesh” to describe this encounter.1 When we breathe, for instance, the air is both inside and outside—it becomes “us” and ceases to be “us” at every second. A similar process takes place when we drink or eat—water flows through the tap, I bring my mouth to the tap, allowing the water to enter my mouth and continue down my  Merleau-Ponty (1968, p. 147) emphasized that “what we are calling flesh, this interiorly worked-over mass, has no name in any philosophy.” 1

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Reflective selfconsciousness

Pre-reflective selfconsciousness

Fig. 3.1  The structure of consciousness Consciousness can be broken down into two parts—which of course are only artificially separated in a static model but normally (within a dynamic reality) always work in tandem. Whereas the lower part can be defined as the emotional-schematic-implicittemporal part, the upper part is the feeling-explicit-autobiographical-accessible-verbal part. This gap can be defined in terms of the pre-reflective self-consciousness (prenoetic) level versus the reflective self-consciousness level

throat, and the water becomes a part of me—the substance is not represented in the body, it merges with it. The same applies to a piece of bread that I hold in my hand and put in my mouth, chew, and swallow. This is our initial dialogue with the world: “The presence of the world is precisely the presence of its flesh to my flesh” (Merleau-Ponty 1968, p. 127). At this level, there is no clear distinction between object and subject or between perceiver and perceived; there is no meaning, no thought, no awareness—there is only the body that holds on to the world by any means. This constitutes the basis of the experience of being-in-the-world. This experience of being-in-the-world is founded on the diffuse human-­ world relationship (holding/being-held), and it stands at the core of the structure of consciousness. It is a sense of openness and amorphous borders that express an initial and quite diffuse connection between the organism and the world. Note that already on the preliminary and pre-reflective level of the encounter with the world, there is a weak sense of body ownership, which is based solely on bodily schemas and sensorimotor loops. The sense of agency is also extremely weak—there is no deliberate or conscious control of the body. Indeed, there is no need for a strong sense of agency—things simply happen of their own accord. A weak sense of ownership is accompanied by an initial and minimal sense of mineness: a basic experience of a first-person perspective on the world; things are happening to me (again, without a strong sense of self ) and from my point of view. However, there is no Cartesian I at that level. Zahavi (2006) claims that we can define the sense of perspective on the

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world as a sense of minimal self. These are not strong and lasting sensations but rather fleeting and tentative ones. At this stage, there is still no sense of duration or continuity. Essentially, the sense of minimal self accompanies all our experiences—it is the foundation of the sense of subjectivity: “If the subject is in a situation, or even if the subject is nothing other than a possibility of situations, this is because he only achieves his ipseity by actually being a body and by entering into the world through this body” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 431). The sense of minimal self is not permanent and continuous; rather it changes from one moment to the next, while only the subjective dimension is fixed, meaning, the initial sense of an embodied perspective on the world that is inherent to our experience.

3.1.1.2  Emotions Emotions that gain momentum can become conscious feelings, yet emotions by themselves are not feelings. Indeed, whereas feelings require emotions, emotions do not necessarily generate feelings: It is true that the common usage of the word emotion tends to encompass the notion of feeling. But in our attempt to understand the complex chain of events that begins with emotion and ends up in feeling, we can be helped by a principled separation between the part of the process that is made public and the part that remains private. For the purposes of my work I call the former part emotion and the latter part feeling …. emotions are actions or movements, many of them public, visible to others as they occur in the face, in the voice, in specific behaviors. To be sure, some components of the emotion process are not visible to the naked eye …. Feelings, on the other hand, are always hidden …. emotions and the host of related reactions that underlie them are part of the basic mechanisms of life regulation; feelings also contribute to life regulation, but at a higher level. Emotions and related reactions seem to precede feelings in the history of life. (Damásio 2003, p. 28)

On an initial and fundamental level, we are present with our body in-the-­ world. Being imbued with the world means to be present in it emotionally: the emotional-dynamic process is a regulating system that generates an ongoing and continuous dialogue between the organism and its surroundings, maintaining its integrity, survival, and wellbeing. We can think of an animal that interacts with the world but does not develop any emotion (a jellyfish, for

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example), and thus I distinguish between the initial layer of the bodily experience and emotions. Nevertheless, for a complexed organism, this distinction is rather artificial (thus I have defined the model as static), and, when it comes to human beings, it is impossible to separate the first stage from the second, meaning, the initial bodily experience is always accompanied by emotion. To be in a certain state of mind, for instance dejected or in love, is to be in a certain emotional state; an implicit bodily experience that shapes how we are thrown into the world. Heidegger (1996) defined this as mood. The term “mood” helps us to understand how the mind, the body, and the world work as one unit. Ledoux (1996) claims that in times of stress, the emotional paths in the amygdala go awry. As a result, the emotional field collapses and the world is perceived as unreal and meaningless. The reason for this is fairly obvious: The emotional level is necessary in order to create a world imbued with meaning. Indeed, in the absence of an emotional field, the world loses its meaning, it becomes foreign to us. With this example in mind, it is clear why emotions should be positioned on the side of the body-as-subject: emotions shape the intentional structure of consciousness and stand at the root of every perceptual process; emotions force us to perceive the world the way we perceive it.

3.1.1.3  Duration As was evidenced by the study conducted among former POWs and meditators, the sense of duration is strongly related to the nature of our encounter with the world. Indeed, in both instances, separation from the world leads to a radical change in how time is experienced. In extreme situations, the sense of duration falls apart and we feel as though we are cast out of the world or, alternatively, that we are (almost) completely absorbed into it (Fig. 3.2). Therefore, it seems that the sense of duration tells us just how much the world is closed or open to us. Note, however, that I am not highlighting a causal relationship but rather reciprocity. Listening to testimonies we discover that when describing the sense of duration, people in fact describe the way they are being thrown into the world, the degree to which they feel at-home, and even their existential state. According to Ratcliffe (2015), the sense of duration expresses and mirrors our emotional state. For instance, according to studies, people who suffer from chronic depression report that time slows down (Bschor et al. 2004) (Fig. 3.3).

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Present moment (thick present)

Past phase (retention)

Now phase (primal impression)

Future phase (protention)

Timeline

Fig. 3.2  The present moment The present moment is not sharp but rather thick and continuous—it contains both the immediate past phase (defined by Husserl as retention) and the immediate future phase (defined by Husserl as protention). Zahavi (2003b) suggests that the immediate temporal horizon (thick moment), which holds within it both the past phase and the future phase, is a prerequisite for our ability to perceive and understand our world—in other words, if we were not living within a thick temporal moment, we would not have been able to perceive anything. In that respect, the temporal thick moment (which can be defined as inner time-consciousness) is a prerequisite for the perception of an object to take place. As I see it, however, we should not conceive the temporal thick moment as separate from our presence in the world; it is impossible to think of the present moment separately from the sensorimotor loops

A sense of duration is accompanied by a stronger sense of a first-person perspective on the world, of “mineness,” and a sense of ownership. The boundaries between subject and world are less diffuse, the dual structure is more present, likewise there is a stronger sense of what is inside the organism and what is outside it. The sense of duration is a part of the structure that allows us to perceive the world, meaning, a part of the intentional structure rather than a perceived object per se.

3.1.1.4  The Emotional-Temporal Field (ETF) Our presence in the world is bodily through and through. As we saw, both the sense of duration and the emotional experience are embedded in primary and basic bodily processes, and so, the perceptual field should be defined in terms

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Sensorimotor loop

Emotion

Duration

Fig. 3.3  Body, emotion and duration The sense of time, just like the emotional experience, lies in the bodily experience. The emotional experience and the sense of time are both rooted in a bodily level; they intertwined through the bodily dimension

of duration and emotional experience from the outset. With this in mind, let me present the emotional-temporal field (ETF) (Fig. 3.4). We live in a familiar world of distinct objects; it is polarized and well defined, accessible, available, and meaningful. Above all, it is our world. Essentially, the ETF stands in the background and allows a foreign and alienated world to become our world. The question, then, concerns how we move from an ETF to a dual-polarized perceptual field in which there is a perceiving subject and a perceived object. The subject-object structure does not appear from nowhere, it already exists in a weak manner at the level of the ETF. Indeed, the dual perceptual field is based on the ETF, through which the world becomes familiar to us. Merleau-Ponty (2002) claims that: “There is always a depersonalization at the heart of consciousness” (p. 139). Continuing this line of thought, I wish to claim that the dual-intentional structure of consciousness is the result of the diffuse line that exists between the organism and the world, creating a primal experience of separateness and distinction. In other words, the strong separation between object and subject is the result of that initial separateness in a relatively diffuse world on the emotional-temporal level.

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Emotionaltemporal field

Duration

Emotions

Being-in-the-world (sensorimotor loops)

Fig. 3.4  The emotional-temporal field (ETF) The sense of duration and the emotional layer form an emotional-temporal field (ETF). To be thrown into the world is to be thrown into a perceptual field that has already been shaped by the ETF. The ETF shapes the intentional structure and as such it remains in the background

The emotional layer, along with the temporal layer, creates the emotional-­ temporal field: this is the ETF. This field is the infrastructure onto which meaning is projected and, perhaps it would be more apt to say, from which it arises—it allows the object-subject structure and a strong sense of duration to emerge. Without these elements, the world remains meaningless. Indeed, when we perceive the “world,” we are not aware of negligible emotional changes but of the objects that appear against the background of the ETF, which via its structure signals what demands our attention and as such guides our perception. The theory of relativity allows us to improve our understanding of how this process takes place (Fig. 3.5). According to the theory of relativity, we exist in a curved space affected by mass. The mass appears within it –masses are woven into space and change shape. Every area of curvature is a sensitive area, and the more curved an area is, the more it calls for our attention. Conscious perception occurs at the highest and lowest points of curvature.

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Fig. 3.5  Mass distorts the space—the EFT The grid in the illustrations (defined by the general theory of relativity as “spacetime”) represents the ETF, and like spacetime in the general theory of relativity, the ETF is impacted by the objects woven into it. Different masses distort spacetime (the ETF) in different ways—as a mass becomes heavier, it distorts the grid (ETF) more strongly. The curvier an area is that the more strongly it diverts attention to itself. Distortion amplifies the subject-object structure and leads to a certain attention and, thus, to a stronger sense of self The image on the left (printed with the permission of David Blair from): http://www. abc.net.au/radionational/image/6712732-3x2-700x467.jpg. The image on the right: http://exam7.kalvu.net/wp-content/uploads/Spacetime_curvature.png

The ETF, which is shaped continuously by the human-world encounter, is the background for perception—defining what demands our attention. And similarly to the theory of relatively, according to which a large mass that bends the path of light, a central object also bends the path of attention. We are mostly aware of what stands on the main path and what distorts space more noticeably.

3.1.2 A World of Meaningful Objects Even if Descartes was wrong in philosophical terms, he perfectly described our world in terms of our everyday experiences—one cannot argue with the feeling that there is an I distinct from the body.2 Indeed, the starting point of our conscious and reflective life is one of a split, a world of a subject and an object—whether these are objects in the world, the body, or in our inner world. We can characterize this world as follows: It is a world of conscious feelings, a world with a broad temporal horizon of past-present-future and a sense of self, of reflection, of a strong sense of agency, a world of clear and rigid boundaries. It is a world of words, language, and stories. It is an uncanny and polarized world, a world in which we are always foreign to ourselves. Thus  At least in western-monotheistic cultures.

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Explicit perceptual field (EPF)

Duration

Emotions

Threshold of consciousness

Beneath the threshold of consciousness

ETF

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Being-in-the-world (sensorimotor loops)

Fig. 3.6  Explicit perceptual field Beneath the threshold of consciousness, we can find the ETF. That is the pre-reflective self-consciousness (pre-noetic) level. Above the threshold of consciousness, we find the polarized-explicit perceptual field, which is the reflective self-consciousness level. The shift from the ETF to the explicit perceptual field is a shift from a defuse world to a polarized and dichotomic world of subject and object. In this world there is a strong sense of self that extends over a long period of time and conscious feelings

far, we have addressed the pre-reflective layer. We will now explore the reflective layer (see Fig. 3.6): our conscious feelings; the fact that we are autobiographical creatures and, as such, are thrown into a wider temporal field of past-present-future; and our tendency for introspection—a quality that many believe distinguishes us from other creatures.

3.1.2.1  Feelings Whereas emotions express a certain state in the pre-reflective layer below the reflective threshold, feelings are to be found in the reflective layers. This is an immediately accessible experience, and for this accessibility to exist, it must be polarized. A polarized world is a world of feeling—a world of objects rather than background. Indeed, a central characteristic of feeling is that it is directed at something—I am jealous of X, I am afraid of Y, I am in love with Z—as opposed to emotion, which has no object. Essentially then, feeling is a polarized phenomenon that involves a feeling subject.

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3.1.2.2  Past-Present-Future (Autobiographical Field) The Fundamental Structure of the Self-as-Subject (I) and Self-­as-Object (ME) The minimal self lacks any horizon of past or future. Our existence, however, cannot be described merely in terms of the here-and-now; indeed, we are autobiographical creatures, and, as such, we are thrown into a wider temporal field: past-present-future. In fact, it would seem that most of the time we are sailing along a certain timeline, never fully in the present, whether we are thinking about the future or remembering things that happened in the past. It appears that we are creatures that transcend ourselves—we transcend the present moment to past and future. Although we tend to throw ourselves into the future and the past, in our everyday lives we have no doubt that we are present with our body in the current moment. Indeed, sometimes we fantasize about being somewhere else; other times, we forget ourselves in a video game or in a movie; on occasion we find ourselves deep in a childhood memory. Yet, unless we have a delusional or dissociative pathology or are under the influence of psychedelic drugs, we always remain in the here and now—we do not lose ourselves in memories or fantasies. When we think about tomorrow, or when we close our eyes and recall an event that took place fifteen years ago (T−15), the self-as-subject (I) remains in the present moment (T0). We are present in the here-and-now through the lived-body. The self that we imagine in the future is the self-as-­ object (ME) and should be differentiated from the self-as-subject (I) that is always here-and-now. Indeed, as opposed to the self-as-object (ME), which moves along the timeline rather freely, the self-as-subject (I) is anchored in the present moment. James (1890) makes a similar differentiation by defining the self as a knowing and exploring subject who conducts the introspective process as I, while the self as an “observed” and “examined” object in the introspective process is defined as ME. Continuing this line of thought, we can distinguish between the sense of self on the perceiving end (I) and the self on the perceived end (ME). This is the polarized and fundamental structure of the self. Essentially, the dual structure of the self is rooted in the dual structure of consciousness. This does not imply a Cartesian I but rather a sense of self that originates in the structure of consciousness.

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One crucial question concerns the source of the split between the I and the ME. Our structure as an organism that operates in the world is dual because at the core of our encounter with the world there is a sense of boundary, of separation between myself and the world. Thus, even in the narrowest version, the minimal self requires separateness, and separateness, in turn, requires a sense of boundary, if only a rudimentary one. It follows that the polarized structure of separateness, of boundary, is a prerequisite for the formation of some sense of self. The more “sophisticated” and “complex” the organism, the more complex the sense of separation, to the point of reflective experience—in this state we can observe ourselves as though from the outside.

The Self-as-Subject in the Present Moment in Relation to the Self-as-­ Object on the Timeline The self-as-object (ME) moves along the timeline but lacks the dimension of things are happening to me here-and-now; it lacks a sense of mineness— the bodily dimension that anchors us in the world at any given moment. When we recall our childhood today, for instance, we see ourselves from a distance, as though we are watching a movie. Our perspective on the world remains here and now, it does not shift to the perspective of the child we used to be. The self-as-object (ME) is rooted in the structure of the body-as-object and lacks the physical quality of the body-as-subject (I). Indeed, excluding exceptional cases, like flashbacks, the ME (self-as-object) lacks the bodily experience of being in-the-world here-and-now. That is to say, whereas the ME can move around between past and future, the I (self-as-subject) is anchored through the body in the world and in the here-and now (Figs. 3.7 and 3.8). From our own perspective, the same guy (Y.A.) who shot hoops when he was a 10-year-old boy (T−30) is also the man who writes these lines today (T0), thirty years later. This is a fundamental principal in our life, allowing us to feel that we have a continuous identity over time. Without this sense of continuity, we will collapse. The question is, then, how, despite the inherent split between I and ME, this unity is maintained—if we were only an I we would have lost the future and past, while if we were only ME, we would have lost the here and now. The answer concerns the lived-body.

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ME1

T

+1

I ME

-1

T0

T

-1

Fig. 3.7  From autobiographical self to autobiographical field I am present as a subject (lived-body) at time T0 (I) and perceive myself as an object at time T1 (ME1) and at time T–1 (ME–1). It is completely impossible, however, to define the autobiographical self as separate from T1 (ME1) and T–1 (ME–1). The autobiographical self extends over time (T–1 → T1), or in more general terms T0 → T∞. With this in mind, it is obvious that the term “autobiographical self” should be replaced by an “autobiographical field”

self-asobject (T-n)

self-asobject (Tx)

self-asobject (T+n)

Autobiographical field self-as-subject (T0)

Fig. 3.8  The autobiographical field The self-as-subject (I) is located in the present moment and can perceive itself as an object (self-as-object, ME) at a different future or past point in time. The autobiographical self is “a dot on a timeline” but a field in which the present self (T0), the past self (T–n), and the future self (T+n) are unified (through the self-as-subject, i.e., through the livedbody in the here-and-now). The autobiographical self is thus a field that extends over time and within time. The basis for this structure is dual; in its very core there is an I (selfas-subject) at T0 that is able to perceive the ME (self-as-object) at T(+/–)n, that is, in the past or in the future. Essentially, any perceptual process in which the self-as-subject perceives the self-as-object creates polarization. What makes the autobiographical field unified (although any perceptual process demands polarization) is the fact that the perception of the self-as-object (ME) at different times is processed through the body-as-subject, which anchors our presence in the here-and-now in this very world. In other words, the ME becomes I through the bodily experience at the level of the lived-body

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The past and the future are inseparable parts of who I am now, meaning, of the lived-body that operates in the world. The autobiographical self at time T1 and the autobiographical self at time T−1 are both perceived as objects in relation to the I that is also the subject at time T0. At time T0 the I perceives the self-as-object (ME) at different points in time. To be very clear on this point, the self-as-object is perceived and, in that sense, the ME is separate from the I by definition—just like any other object. We should keep in mind that, with a few exceptions, the positioning of the sense of self as a knowing subject (I) is only here-and-now through the lived-­body that was thrown into the world. The self-as-subject (I) is found only at one point in time—the present moment. The sense of unity exists because the (I) perceives the self-as-object (ME) at different points in time through the present moment, meaning, through the body-as-subject. In that sense, what renders the autobiographical field unified is the fact that the perception of the self-as-object (ME) at different times passes through the body-­as-­subject, which is the anchor for our being here-and-now in this very world. In other words, the ME becomes the I through the physical experience at the level of the lived-body. At the same time, the I in the hereand-now is located within an autobiographical field and hence a sense of continuity is possible (Fig. 3.9).

ME[T-1]

ME[Tn]

I[T0] ME[T-1]

ME[T1]

ME[T1]

I[T0]

Fig. 3.9  I versus ME Our ability to perceive the self-as-object at another point in time through the livedbody creates continuity and a sense of unity, despite the separation between the present moment and every other moment that transpired in the past and will happen in the future. As one can see, there is an inherent tension here: continuity and a sense of unity on the one hand and a sense of separation and polarization on the other. As we saw, any process of perception requires distance and separation; hence if the ME is perceived, it must be separated from the I in the here-and-now. The unified field is a polarized field and yet remains unified. The sense of unity results from the relationship between the self-as-subject at the present moment and the multiplicity of the selvesas-objects on the timeline generating the autobiographical field, which is comprised of stories, each story representing a self-as-object at a particular point in time. The same is also true of future experiences and plans. There is a string of autobiographical selves that spread forward and backward. The present moment is one of these dots—the I is always in the process of becoming ME and, as such, a part of the autobiographical field

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The Emotional Dimension and Its Impact on the Autobiographical Field The sense of self does not precede the emotional dimension, since the sense of self is, among other factors, the outcome of an emotional experience. In the interviews conducted with meditators, we saw that a thicker and more present emotional dimension leads to a denser and more present sense of self. The emotional experience, particularly in the case of negative emotions, is accompanied by a present sense of self. The nature and intensity of the feeling also affect the nature of the past-present-future time horizon. For instance, the angrier we are, the more present our sense of self becomes—and, to be more precise, the angrier we are, the more the interplay between the self-as-subject and the self-as subject tends towards the latter. There is a reason for the common saying that we do not act rationally in times of anger: in a state of anger, the time horizon is minimized and it is impossible to consider future consequences. Likewise, similar past situations do not emerge in times of anger because the nature and intensity of the feeling impact the nature of the past-present-future temporal horizon. In that situation, the autobiographical field is anchored too strongly in the present, unable to encompass the past and the future in a gravitational field that implodes into the present. Anger is an example that elucidates how the nature of the feeling alters the temporal horizon. Just as the gravitational field is affected by the masses it contains, the autobiographical field is affected by emotional intensities. A difficult emotional past event shapes us, we are caught up in it, unable to “break free.” The autobiographical field concentrates around the self-as-object at that point in time and becomes past-oriented. The same is true of an important event to which we look forward in the future, making the autobiographical field future-oriented.

3.1.2.3  Introspection It seems almost impossible to talk about the structure of consciousness without discussing introspection—a quality that many believe essentially distinguishes us from other creatures.3 Reflection can be future orientated or focused on the past, as we reminisce about and analyze different situations. Yet in many cases, reflection takes place here and now—we examine ourselves at this very moment. In terms of experience, many would argue that at this stage the  Even if chimpanzees pass the mirror test, this in itself does not prove that they have introspective capabilities. 3

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ME

I Fig. 3.10  The reflective structure When reflecting (introspecting on oneself), the self-as-subject (I, the knower) examines itself as an object (ME, the known) as though without any time gaps, while in fact there is a very small time gap. This is the dual structure of the self. During introspection the selfas-subject at time T0 perceives itself as an object at time T0– (the signs [–][+] represent minimal time gap during reflection). It would be more accurate to define the introspective process, not as a pure process of perception but as one of semi-perception, since while the separateness is fundamental and stems from the (dual) basic structure of consciousness, it seems that there is an intimate and close link between the self-as-subject (the knower) at time T0 and the self-as-object (the known) at time T0–. This intimate link is the result of the resonance of the self-as-object at time T0- in the body-as-subject at time T0

I and the ME operate in parallel—the dominant image is one of a mirror, or an inwards gaze (reflection and introspection, accordingly). As we shall see momentarily, this is a misconception. What actually occurs is that, like other objects, the self-as-object is perceived by the self-as-subject within a certain time gap (Fig. 3.10). To understand this process, we should examine the self-as-object created at time T0. At each and every moment the I turns into a ME—let us freeze this moment and define it as time T0 (I[T0−] → ME[T0]). The self-as-object at time T0 passes in the “blink of an eye” to self-as-object at time T0− (ME[T0] → ME[T0−]). Reflection is a situation in which the self-as-subject at time T0, that is I, perceives the self-as-object (ME) at time T0− (or alternatively, the self-as-subject at time T0+ perceives the self-as-object at time T0). In terms of the mechanisms activated, reflection is not a phenomenon that originates in an independent and unique mechanism. Rather it takes place within the context of perception—in order to reflect, we need to reflect upon something. Most of us feel that the I stands on both sides—reflecting and reflected upon, the eye that sees itself. Yet this is simply not the case. It is a mistake to say that an I reflects on the ME. Instead, the I perceives the ME. Far

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from being purely mental, this process also involves the lived-body: exactly as the world is perceived through the lived-body, the ME is perceived through the lived-body. The self-as-object entails an emotional element. Hence, the process via which the self-as-subject perceives the self-as-object clearly activates the emotional layer, and any kind of emotion activates the lived body. Indeed, the introspective process is not purely cognitive; rather it is a process that involves the body itself; the introspective process is accompanied by emotional experiences at the level of the lived-body. Thus, introspection always take place in a certain mood and, of course, can change our mood as well. At this point, I would like to clarify a critical issue. I have argued that introspection is a perceptual process, but I italicized the word perception. I will now explain why. As suggested, any reflection takes place at an imperceptible and minimal time gap so that there is no possibility for the self-as-subject at T0 to get a grip on the self-as-object at T0. At most, the self-as-subject at T0 can get acquainted with the self-as-object created at T0−: when the self-as-­ subject gets in touch with the self-as-object (through reverberation in the body that lives at a certain moment), the self-as-subject will be at T0+ whereas the self-as-object will be at T0 (see Fig. 3.11). The reflective process is not a process via which the self-as-subject perceives the self-as-object in a full and complete sense but rather semi-perception (hence perception). Introspection is more similar to masturbation than to watching an inner movie, that is to say, ME[T1+]

ME[T0+]

I[T0]

I[T1]

ME[T2+]

I[T2]

ME[T3+]

I[T3]

Fig. 3.11  Introspection as a time-based process Introspection can be described as follows: the I at time T0 (I[T0]) becomes ME (I[T0] → ME[T0+]); however, this process takes place over time and is therefore defined as T0+. Introspection is a process wherein I at time T1 (I[T1]) “perceives” the ME at time To+ (the dashed arrows). There is a reason we do not define ME in time T1 but at an intermediate time T0+: Such a time gap would be reflected in an overly strong sense of separateness between the I and the ME, but in practice, as we all know from everyday experience, we feel that the I and the ME “hold on” to each other for that split second. The small time gap is responsible for this illusion

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introspection obeys the structure of touching-being touched. Nevertheless, the reflection process is based on a perceptual process of creating a boundary and a certain polarization. Broadly speaking, any process of understanding requires setting a boundary and amplifying the polarization. Yet, while perception is (usually) conceived in terms of sight, the reflection process is more comparable to the sense of touch—a process via which we feel ourselves feeling; the reflective process is an intimate process in which we touch ourselves.

3.1.3 Interim Conclusion In this section, I described the structure of our consciousness and the sense of self as it emerged from studies I conducted with former POWs and long-term meditators. Essentially, it is a (static) structure that evolves from the bottom up (Fig. 3.1). In the first stage, we are present in the world with our body and there is a preliminary, yet fluid, sense of boundary between the organism and the world; in the second stage, there are emotions that express the organism’s ongoing dialogue with the world; as a result of the organism-world encounter, a rudimentary sense of duration is formed. This sensation, along with the emotional level, creates an ETF, which serves as the foundation for the perceptual field. The ETF always stands in the background. The perceptual field is dualistic in nature, and above it is a feeling stemming from an emotion that intensifies and turns into a feeling. Another step up, we find the past-presentfuture temporal horizon that brings about an autobiographical sense of self and introspection.

3.2 The Internal Horizon 3.2.1 The Internal Horizon—The Main Argument The structure of consciousness, as presented so far, focuses primarily on our external horizon, that is, on our ongoing encounter with the world. However, in order to complete the description of human experience, we have to explain, albeit in broad strokes, what takes place in our “inner world.” This inner world often feels detached from the “outside world” and, at first glance, even precedes it—this is, as I have already mentioned, the Cartesian legacy. By inner world, I refer to what James defines as the “stream of consciousness,” which according to him is “the first and foremost concrete fact which everyone will affirm to belong to his inner experience is the fact that

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consciousness of some sort goes on. ‘States of mind’ succeed each other in him” (James 1890). James further asserts that states of mind change constantly in a continuous, and for the most part, logical manner. As opposed to James, I wish to argue that there is no continuous and distinct stream of consciousness in the way that we usually describe it; the inner horizon, in itself and separately from the organism’s encounter with the world, does not produce a sense of duration. Indeed, based on the interviews with former POWs and meditation practitioners, we learn that we cannot describe our inner horizon as continuous (Fig. 3.14), clear, and organized when it is completely detached from the external horizon. The feeling of continuity, so I will argue in this section, is the result of us being thrown into the world and of the experience at the level of the lived-body. This feeling is projected into our inner world, creating the illusion that there is continuity within our inner horizon.

3.2.2 T  he Nature of the Experience and the Dependence on the External Horizon Metaphorically speaking, our experience of the stream of consciousness is similar to a movie projected in our mind. It feels as though we have a complete, full, and continuous world inside our heads; our private world. At times, the movie is nothing but relentless inquiries, questions, thoughts and second order thoughts (thoughts about thoughts), judgments and second order judgments (judging the act of judging), and so on. In a sense, the stream of consciousness does not need us, it happens on its own. Examining the stream of consciousness separately from how we are thrown into the world reveals that the word “stream” in the phrase “stream of consciousness” is misleading—our inner horizon is not continuous, at least not as we tend to believe. The stream of consciousness (the inner horizon) is utterly dependent on the existence and nature of the organism’s encounter with the outside world. The external horizon and the inner horizon are intimately linked and interactions unfold between the outside world (the external horizon) and the internal world (inner horizon). At times, we are completely immersed in the outside world and at times it is the internal world that runs wild, while the external world is almost unnoticeable. When we close our eyes, our link to the outside world considerably weakens, and usually, if we do not fall asleep, the activity of the stream of consciousness intensifies, at least in the early stages. However, in this situation, we are not disconnected from our environment and are still aware of outside stimuli. The reason for the intensification of the stream of consciousness is

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that the default of human consciousness is a certain level of activity—at any waking moment, our consciousness is active to some degree (in a sense, meditation aims to lower this level as much as possible). Therefore, when external stimuli diminish, the consciousness itself generates reality—and at the same time continues to “consume” this self-generated reality. Due to its intentional structure, our consciousness needs content to which it can direct itself. This explains why, when the outside world is not present in our experience, the inner horizon intensifies. We have seen that this is exactly the problem that former POWs faced while isolated. This also explains why a subject, fully immersed in an activity that requires many cognitive resources on the external horizon, lacks a stream of consciousness. However, even when our inner world stands still, we tend to assume that it continues to function, just like a little child who is sure that the light in the refrigerator stays on after they close the door.

3.2.3 Altered States of Consciousness An examination of altered states of consciousness reveals that the tradeoff between the inner horizon and the external horizon works only within a certain range of external stimuli. When the level of stimuli dramatically decreases, or increases, over time, the stream of consciousness ceases to function (Fig. 3.12). An extreme decline in activity on the external horizon leads to a decline in activity on the inner horizon as well. Indeed, in the long-run, the inner horizon depends on the external horizon—on how our body is thrown into the world. What we perceive as continuity on the inner horizon stems from the organism’s encounter with the world, that is, from activity on the external horizon. When the external horizon collapses, the inner horizon is also eliminated, since the stream of consciousness accompanies our encounter with the world and has no independent existence divorced from the world—at least not in the long-run and in extreme conditions of sensory deprivation. Hence, when we are disconnected from our surroundings, the stream of consciousness fades away. At the core of the principle presented here lies a simple notion: we are creatures who operate in the world by our nature; when we do not have the world to hold on to, our inner world also destabilizes. To return once again to the metaphor of the movie, we may compare our inner horizon to a soundtrack of a movie (actual reality). As such, while it has a dramatic impact on the overall experience, it has no independent existence. Of course, each movie has moments at which the music is more dramatic than what takes place on screen, but at the end of the movie, the music also stops.

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Inner horizon

A

Total absorption in the world

B Sensory isolation

Stimulus

Trance

Fig. 3.12  Inner horizon versus external horizon Above the level of stimuli (point A), there is a tradeoff between activity on the external horizon and activity on the inner horizon: as the level of stimuli increases (activity on the external horizon—represented on the X-axis), activity decreases on the inner horizon (the Y-axis). However, during sensory isolation (point B), the activity on the inner horizon does not intensify but rather disappears entirely. In this situation, the inner horizon also collapses because in the deepest sense it depends on the external horizon

3.2.4 T  he Stream of Consciousness, the Emotional Dimension, the Corporal Level, and the Sense of Self We all know from our daily life that sexual thoughts generate intense physical sensations, yet this is only one instance that is representative of a much broader phenomenon. Similarly, unpleasant memories can be expressed in unpleasant bodily sensations, which in some cases may lead to crying, nausea, and even paralysis. These are just two extreme examples that demonstrate the following principle: every thought has a physical resonance—in the words of Merleau-­ Ponty (1964), we have “to conceive thought as… corporeal” (p. 176). Indeed, bodily sensations can be the result of activity on the internal horizon. This resonance, in turn, allows us to understand the meaning of our thought— through the lived-body that we understand ourselves. As the content of the internal horizon of the stream of consciousness becomes more “important,” the levels of attention and awareness will also be higher. This process is not purely mental; instead, any activity on the inner horizon has a physical resonance at the level of the lived-body and, more specifically, at the emotional level—the ETF. We become aware of

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our inner horizon, inter alia, via the corporal-emotional resonance. The more intense the bodily experience is, the stronger the awareness, the polarized structure, and the sense of self will be. In turn, the intensity of the sense of self expresses the importance of the perceived content: the sense of self, which is present in the areas in which space-time is distorted (Fig. 3.5), is indicative of the importance of the information that the organism processes. Everyday experience shows that we sometimes have a thought that is of a great importance to us, and with it a relatively strong sense of self also emerges. These are the outcome of the intensification of the dual structure. One prerequisite for the dual structure is an object, and in the case of the stream of consciousness, the object is a thought (in a broad sense that also includes memories etc.). However, that is not always the case. As we saw, while we are disconnected from the world, thoughts are absent and a sense of emptiness and nullification emerges. Interestingly, whereas for meditators the absence of thought (the absence of objects) leads to dissipation of the sense of self and an experience of liberation and freedom, for POWs, the absence of thought leads to the disintegration of the sense of self, a terrifying experience. In both instances, however, this stems from the disintegration of the dual structure. The main difference, so it seems, lies in whether this disintegration is accompanied by a feeling of no control or a certain sense of control over the situation.4 In sum, an influential event on the internal horizon is an event of emotional significance, and emotions, as we have already seen, are physical bodily experiences. The bodily experience, in turn, is responsible for the intensification of the sense of self through the mediation of the emotional experience (ETF). Within the stream of consciousness, some thoughts trigger the bodily dimension more intensely than others—we become aware of what takes place in the stream of consciousness through its bodily effects: thought generates emotion, which demands attention, and in response intensifies the sense of self, in a feedback loop of sorts (Fig. 3.13).

 For a broader discussion see (Ataria 2016, 2018).

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Sense of self

Intensification of the dual structure

Awareness/ attention

Stream of consciousness

Resonance at the level of the lived-body

ETF distorted

Fig. 3.13  The stream of consciousness, the emotional dimension, the corporal level, and the sense of self

3.2.5 T  he Internal Horizon Disconnected from a Sense of Self—The Absence of the Emotional Dimension People with autism have difficulty recognizing the stream of consciousness as their inner world; the movie inside their head is not “theirs”; rather it is present on the internal horizon independent of them. To my understanding, this has to do with the absence of the emotional dimension.5 Indeed, as long as the movie is not accompanied by an emotional response, the movie cannot be “mine.” Only the emotional dimension (which resonates in the body) renders the internal horizon “mine.” The sense that something is “mine” stems from the sense of minimal self that emerges from the organism’s initial encounter with the world. Similarly, the stream of consciousness also ceases to be “mine” without a sense of minimal self. Since the sense of minimal self is the outcome of the encounter  This phenomenon should be examined on a certain spectrum, and of course the emotional experience can differ depending on the level of autism. 5

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between the organism and the world, it requires a bodily dimension. Compared to the external horizon, the corporeal dimension in our inner horizon is weaker. From here it follows that the sense of “mineness” is weaker in the stream of consciousness. Essentially, for an action on the internal horizon to develop a sense of “mineness” it must be realized on a bodily level. More specifically, in order to become aware of activity on the internal horizon, we must be able to locate the “remnants” and “reverberations” of this activity (within the internal horizon) on the bodily level—each thought and the traces it leaves on the bodily dimension. The ability to detect activity on the internal horizon depends on attentiveness to the bodily experience that accompanies any process taking place on the internal horizon. The more attuned we are to the corporeal experience and to the lived-body, the faster we can detect thoughts that emerge on the internal horizon. We are usually present on the external horizon and the internal horizon at the same time, meaning, while our inner horizon operates, we are still thrown into the world, hold on to it, and operate in it. Hence, the sense of minimal self is present and only its intensity changes. The more present we are on the internal horizon at the expense of the external horizon, the more the minimal sense of self weakens due to a weaker bodily encounter with the world. This was evident in the interviews with former POWs, and we could say that this phenomenon shapes the experience of solitary confinement. In situations of detachment from the surroundings, we feel disconnected from our thoughts, from the world, and from our own body. In these situations, content on the inner horizon ceases to be “mine.” For better or worse, in the absence of a bodily experience, nothing can be “mine.”

3.2.6 T  he “Stream” in the “Stream of Consciousness” Is an Illusion According to the phenomenological approach, temporality is how the world opens up to the subject who is already infused with the world and inseparable from it. It is a mistake, however, to conceive our connection to the stream of consciousness as we conceive our connection to the world—this is not duplication or a mirror image: our connection to the outside world or the external horizon is not similar to our connection to the internal horizon, that is, the stream of consciousness. We evolved to act in the world and not to contemplate it. The temporal dimension, as we experience it in the subject-world relationship, is inherently different from the temporal dimension as we experience it

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in the connection between the subject and the stream of consciousness. While in terms of the dual-polarized-intentional structure there is a resemblance between the internal horizon and the external horizon, this does not mean that this is a mirror image. In fact, one of the biggest mistakes is the metaphor (or the notion) that there is a self of some sorts inside our mind that observes what transpires in front of it, be it the “world” or “the stream of consciousness.” The sense of time emerges from our being thrown into the world through our body, indeed, our encounter with the world is responsible for the sense of continuity. Essentially, however, we are not thrown into the stream of consciousness in the same way that we are thrown into the world. Given that there is no independent (Cartesian) self that links all our experiences, we should ask what allows the sense of a continuous stream within the inner horizon to emerge in the first place. As the studies presented in the previous chapter show, there is no evidence of a stream. With this in mind, I allow myself to suggest that there is a problem with the very notion of a “stream of consciousness.” The concept of stream is taken as a starting point even though it is not at all clear why we should assume such a flow exists on the internal horizon (Fig. 3.14). If we examine the internal horizon, we do not find any actual sense of duration. Even James (1890) talks about large time gaps in the “stream of consciousness.” We already saw that the sense of duration is the result of the structure of consciousness, which is embodied and present in the world. Normally, when the movie on the internal horizon plays in our mind (metaphorically Time gap

Internal horizon

A B C D

D

The stream of consciousness illusion

E

Timeline Fig. 3.14  The stream of consciousness illusion The thick line (E) symbolizes the illusion that the stream of consciousness is continuous. Examination of what takes place on the inner horizon during ASC (A → D) reveals that these are irregular and even independent processes that take place one after the other, sometimes with major time gaps. There can be time gaps between thoughts (B → C), and even in the process itself (D → D). In these gaps between thoughts, the subject is immersed in the external world and is unable to notice them

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speaking), it is playing within embodied consciousness that imposes the structure of temporality. The sense of duration that emerges from the encounter between the subject and the world and is then projected onto the internal horizon creates an illusion of continuity. Indeed, for good reason, neither meditators nor former POWs can talk about a sense of continuity on the internal horizon—in both cases the subjects are disconnected from the external horizon and the internal horizon is unable to create a sense of continuity. We tend to think of our inner world in terms of being thrown into the world itself, and that creates the illusion of duration in the inner world. Yet, in fact, there is no continuity as such on the internal horizon. The sense of unity is therefore the outcome of the organism’s encounter with the world rather than a homunculus that sits inside one’s mind and generates this feeling. When disconnected from the world, it is impossible to produce the sense of duration needed for perception and other actions.

3.2.7 Interim Conclusion Our encounter with the world creates a sense of duration. However, as we saw in the case of POWs and meditators, when the subject is disconnected from the outside world, his or her sense of ongoing continuity becomes much weaker. The sense of duration on the inner horizon stems from our encounter with the world in the external horizon. This sense of duration makes us feel and assume that such a feeling is found on the inner horizon independently of the bodily dimension. However, that is not the case. The sense of duration does not exist as such in our inner world, it is an illusion, and the stream of consciousness is in fact irregular fragments of thoughts.

Bibliography Ataria, Yochai. “Becoming Nonhuman: The Case Study of the Gulag.” Genealogy 3, no. 2. “Mindfulness and Trauma: Some Striking Similarities.” Anthropology of Consciousness 29, no. 1 (2018b): 44–56. ———. “Traumatic and Mystical Experiences: The Dark Nights of the Soul.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 56, no. 4 (2016): 331–356. Bschor, T, et al. “Time experience and time judgment in major depression, mania and healthy subjects. A controlled study of 93 subjects.” Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 109, no. 3 (2004): 222–29. Damásio, António. Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. Orlando: Harcourt, 2003.

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Heidegger, M. (1996). Being and Time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany: New York Press. James, William. The Principles of Psychology. Vol. 1. London: Macmillan, 1890. Ledoux, Joseph. The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. New York: Simon & Schuste, 1996. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A Landes. London: Routledge, 2002. ———. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A Landes. London and New York: Routledge, 2012. ———. The primacy of perception. Edited by James Edie. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. ———. The visible and the invisible. Edited by Claude Lefort. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968. Ratcliffe, Matthew. Experiences of Depression. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Zahavi, Dan. Subjectivity and Selfhood. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006.

4 Concluding Essay: The Knowing-Body and a World of Meaning

Are we indeed nothing but an isolated central system inside a brain that happens to have a body? In light of recent technological advancements, this question is not merely hypothetical but rather one that is debated by many philosophers, scientists, and engineers: Can we build a robot that will act like us, will have our abilities but be in its entirety a central system that generates endless computational processes? As it stands today, it seems that robots find it hard to function in the world based on a central system. Indeed, it would appear that one of the main challenges in building robots concerns precisely this issue: the ability to build a robot in which the body is inseparable from the cognitive system; to be more accurate, to build a robot with a knowing body. Computers excel at logical computations. For instance, computers defeated the world chess champion and recently even accomplished the unthinkable (which is continuously being redefined) and defeated the world “Go” champion. Nevertheless, in his book What Computers Can’t Do (1972), Dreyfus stresses that computers’ real challenge actually has to do with being-in-the-­ world; robots lack the pragmatic bodily intelligence, which is more complicated and perhaps even impossible to quantify as a mathematical formula, because it involves not only computation inside a “black box” isolated from the world but also the world itself. In this sense, Dreyfus believes (2002), any attempt to describe human activity in terms of information processing must necessarily include the body itself, and how it operates in the world independently and autonomously, without disturbing the central system. However, as Dreyfus notes (1992, 2017) the intelligent-pragmatic body, which acts independently and explores the world, is the very thing that eludes a central

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computational system. We could say that, in a sense, robots do not have the ability to understand the world because robots lack the world; robots are incapable of being in a mood—robots are not thrown into the world, rather, they model it. The notion of Gestalt, which champions a more holistic approach, does not just mean that we perceive the whole and not the parts. It also suggests that the entire body as a whole perceives the world as meaningful, and that this ability is the result of being involved and immersed in the world from the very outset. This is true not only at the level of the sense of touch, but also at the level of the sense of sight—“the seer is immersed in the visible by his body” (Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 162). The body always operates in the world as one whole unit; it is this activity as one exploratory and intelligent unit that generates meaning. The intelligent and autonomous body produces a field of possible meanings even before the higher cognitive system intervenes. The active body produces a horizon of meaning imbued with the expectations within which we operate. The body produces a meaningful, unified perceptual field, and this serves as a foundation on which the cognitive system comes into play. This phrasing, however, once again falls short: it would be more accurate to say that in the first place the cognitive system does not function separately from the body that operates in the world. The way the body explores the world, the style, yields a horizon of possibilities, and this horizon of possibilities is a prerequisite for the emergence of meaning. Western philosophy has forgotten the lived-body, perhaps because when the body functions well, as it does most of the time, it is transparent. As long as there are no special problems, the body remains in the background, and that is what makes it such a great tool. Indeed, in our everyday life, we forget the body and simply perceive the world directly. Yet, as Merleau-Ponty’s famous adage states, “the theory of the body is already a theory of perception,” and therefore the way the body operates creates a horizon of meaning in which we exist. Indeed, it is the corporeal intelligence, the knowing body, which renders the world accessible and meaningful. The world around us, into which we are woven, turns to us in a way that allows us to operate with and on it in the most natural way—we are not present in an objective world but rather in an environment that is always already bodily and pragmatic, one that calls us to operate in it. Meaning emerges from the dialogue we have with the world in a certain situation—during this dialogue, The World becomes our own world. Essentially, this dialogue is not the result of a central computational system that examines the world without context but of a cognitive system that spreads within the body and through

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the body into the world. The cognitive system is situated in a body that is thrown into the world, a world that is already bodily through and through. The starting point for understanding how we operate in the world should not be the homunculus or any other central computational system but rather the intelligent active body situated at a certain point in time and space, and at a certain point on the historical timeline; a body that is involved in the world and operates in it at all times independently of higher cognitive systems. There is simply no need for a central system for “sense making,” nor is there a withdrawal to dualism, since there is no need for a tiny human in our mind to generate meaning. The body itself, via the sensorimotor loops, generates meaning; indeed, meaning is corporeal and emerges from the body’s encounter with the world.

Bibliography Dreyfus, Hubert L. Background Practices. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. ———. “Intelligence without representation—Merleau-Ponty’s critique of mental representation.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1 (2002): 367–383. ———. What computers still can’t do: A critique of artificial reason. Cambridge MA, London: MIT press, 1992. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The primacy of perception. Edited by James Edie. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964.

Epilogue

I look out of my window and see a tree. To be more precise, I see only part of a tree, only a fragment of its circumference, and yet this partial information is enough for me to know that this is a tree. I close my eyes, and, for a split second, I continue to see the picture, albeit with fewer details. The background virtually disappears, the tree’s vitality dissipates, the shine of the leaves totally vanishes, the outline dissolves. Yet I still strongly sense my perspective. “It’s only a tree,” I think. Perhaps I can conjure up thoughts of more vibrant things. I close my eyes and think about my daughter. This memory is more emotional, animated, and alive. Yet, even so, I find it difficult to conjure up a picture identical to the one that appears before me when I see something here-­ and-­now in the world. Again, I stare at the tree and begin to feel what lies on the side that is concealed from my view. I can feel, and even partially imagine (almost touch), the tree from a perspective other than that afforded by my body at this moment. When I delve further into this process, I can actually feel my body beginning to move through the world. Yet when I probe even deeper, I discover these are primarily assumptions about the world rather than actual facts. I do not know the circumference of the tree trunk, nor am I convinced that the side hidden from my view looks at all as I imagine it. The hidden side is familiar to me only because I know I can do something in the world—get up from my chair and go outside—in order to see it, even touch it. The tree is located within my field of affordance, it is within my reach, it is part of what I can do in this world. The sun is now shining in the morning chill, its rays hit the tree at a certain angle, and I realize I do not really know what is happening “on the other side of the tree.” Strong easterly winds blow, and the eastern side of the tree does not resemble its western side. Suddenly it

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strikes me that I know very little about this tree’s eastern side. Returning to stare at the tree, I now understand that the treetop extends beyond my range of vision. Until now I was not aware of this. I was sure that I was seeing the treetop as well, but when I attempt to imagine the tree’s foliage, I am unsure regarding the centimeters beyond my view. I bend down to look at it from a lower angle so that I can see the treetop from below. The need to perform such a simple action to see the treetop makes my experience “I see a tree” rather than “I see a tree without its uppermost foliage.” Indeed, there are different levels of invisibility, and the smaller the action needed to make the invisible visible, the more the invisible object is present in the experience, even when it is not there. Nevertheless, when I closed my eyes before bending down and tried to imagine the top of the tree, I suddenly understood that I cannot really see the tree. And if I do not see it, it does not really exist. There is no representation of a tree in my head, at least not in the sense of a one-to-one replica of the world. The tree is present only as something invisible that has the potential to become visible. This is embryonic knowledge, and as its potential increases, a sense of familiarity emerges. Thus, when I bend down, I am surprised, the treetop surprises me, the world always surprises me, at least to some degree. Essentially, if I so desire, I can go outside and walk around the tree, thus becoming familiar with its shape from the other side as well. I can touch the tree. Smell it. But I will never be able to see the whole tree. We always see only parts of the world because we perceive the world through our limited body. Our main limitation is that we possess only one perspective on the world, the bodily perspective. Yet the very use of words such as our or mine adopts a dualistic approach: I am not the owner of the body. I am my body. The word my is once again misleading. I am a body or, put better, a bodily-I. Because we are our bodies and nothing else, we always see only partial objects, faces, and sides, parts of the whole. However, we do not need to see the whole in order to identify it. We live in a world that is broken down into pieces, but we do not need more than this because we are almost always able to move within the world to complete the missing information. In fact, the word information is also misleading. It is not information that I am collecting, but rather the actual world within which I am activated. There is no need for the cognitive system to represent the world in full when in any case the world is there for us, grabs us, and calls upon us to investigate it. Let us return to the tree outside my window. In my mind I do not complete the partial picture of the tree and make it into a whole tree. I have no need for a category of “trees” that encompasses all the tress in the world or for a picture of an ideal tree. The world itself is the storeroom, not my brain. If the world stores the trees, it is only natural for us to look for them in the world. I

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identify trees in the world, and recognizing particular characteristics is sufficient for me to determine that I am seeing a tree. Unique features are all that we need in order to identify an object in the world—which, as noted, contains trees. But how? We do not recognize trees out of certain context but rather in a particular milieu or environment, under certain conditions, and from a particular perspective. We are doomed to be grounded and to operate against a given background. Without context we cannot perceive and understand. In this sense, we all suffer from some degree of prosopagnosia, a neurological disorder characterized by the inability to recognize faces. In his fascinating book, The Mind’s Eye (2010), the well-known neurologist Oliver Sacks acknowledges that he has prosopagnosia and states that the problem worsens when he meets familiar people in unfamiliar situations. For example, he was unable to recognize his psychiatrist in the corridor or his personal assistant outside of his office. Sacks therefore learned to recognize people through unique features such as their eyeglasses, beards, unusual clothing, the sound of their voices, birthmarks, hair color, and more. This sheds light on the way in which we perceive the world. All we need are certain features. Hence, we incessantly scan and explore the world in an enactive manner, collecting features and characteristics from our environment. We are in no way passive in this process. When I look through the curtain and see shadows of children in the garden, I recognize my daughter by elements of her movement. I need very little information to identify her, because from my point of view my daughter has unique features. When we are not sure what we are seeing, this is because we do not see the object’s identifying characteristics. However, as we follow the object (always keeping our eyes on the ball), draw closer to it, and perform other actions, exploring it through our body, it becomes more discernable to us, especially when it is in its natural environment. Not only do the attributes of the object itself make it recognizable, but its context helps us identify it as well. When we set out to investigate the world, we always possess pre-existing knowledge, even if it is only partial and preliminary. Perception always occurs in a certain context and a certain situation. In other words, I perceive the world when I am in a certain mood and am thrown into the world in this mood. Here we should make no mistake: No knowledge whatsoever can be complete and absolute. It is always only an approximation. Yet it is enough to survive. Objects are present in the world and are perceived only partially. I do not have an image of a tree in my brain. We do not maintain a perfect idea or representation or image of a tree because we have no need of such a representation—even in purely cognitive terms—when all we have to do is open our eyes and see our model in the world, our “storeroom.” I can never fully imagine the external world, even in

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the case of a simple object. The moment I close my eyes, the object dissolves, losing its vitality and precision. For example, I feel I have a picture of my car in my head. Yet, on second thoughts, I understand that all I have is a collection of pictures from very specific perspectives: when I leave the house, when I get into the car, when my wife comes home from work and parks. I actually have no “picture of my car” in my mind, nor do I have a picture of anything else. If I want to know something about the world, I must investigate and glean the information from the world in order to carry out a specific action in the here-and-now. When I attempt to imagine a particular object, I usually reconstruct the bodily and worldly experience of “seeing” it. That is, I do not imagine the object isolated from the way I actually saw it. What is defined as imagining an object is actually returning to the point at which I saw the object: we reconstruct our encounter with it and thus we “see” it as we saw it during our original encounter and/or other subsequent encounters with the object (for this reason too, we encode the event anew during the process of remembering). In other words, in order to activate our imagination, we need our lived body, because every image is bodily —a renewed experience through the lived body in the here-and-now. The focus of our life is this lived body. This applies to our life in the external world and our inner life. The fact that I am able to imagine a particular object does not signify that the world is trapped within my brain, but rather that I have very limited cognitive ability to reconstruct the bodily experience of perceiving objects. Let me be as clear as possible on this point. I am not suggesting that we possess no cognitive abilities whatsoever. Rather, I strongly doubt that we, humans, can be reduced to these abilities. When we encounter an object repeatedly, the set of bodily memories available to us for reference expands. While this creates the illusion that we possess a picture of a complete object, all we really have is a collection of bodily perspectives. As our encounter with an object becomes more complete and includes multiple points of view, this collection of viewpoints becomes more complex. Hence, we feel capable of reviving those close to us in our imagination. We touch them, smell them, producing a very large collection of bodily encounters that enables us to create a more distinct and vital mental object. However, these remain nothing more than a collection of bodily encounters between the individual and an object, which, under certain circumstances, can create the illusion that an image exists. However, this is an illusion, nothing more. A representation, if it exists, is the result of bodily arousal that incorporates the experience of the encounter with the object. This representation is an attempt, in a certain sense even a struggle, to reconstruct the experience through the lived body.

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This can be demonstrated by a little experiment. First, I stare intently at the pen I am holding. Then I close my eyes and try to retain the image of the pen in my mind. Yet, when I reconstruct the experience, I discover that as I attempt to produce the image, I continue staring at the pen from the same perspective from which I observed it the moment before I closed my eyes. I feel as if I am still staring at it. My memory is transfixed, stuck within the same perspective. This is a bodily experience. I feel that I am exerting a physical effort to see the pen. I begin to understand that the most important part of the structure of memory is the experience of a particular perspective on the pen. This perspective is physical and includes the entire bodily experience. We always need our entire body; perception is not something that is achieved only via the sense organs. Notably, once we understand that the hand is an extension of the eye, the question of how we “create” a three-dimensional picture of the world is solved immediately. The lived body is always in the background, enabling us to maneuver ourselves within this world, a world of which we are part, a world that is checkered and woven into our bones. Now I close my eyes once again and turn my head to the left. I remember how I carried out a similar exercise with a pair of shoes lying in the corner of the room. At that time, when I turned my head to the left, I felt exactly what I feel now. I had the feeling my head was being deflected to the right, toward the shoes. In order to remember the shoes, I must reconstruct, in the here-and-now, the perspective, the action of the body, the bodily experience during the initial perception. Memory is seared into the bodily experience. In reconstructing objects I saw this morning in my house, I feel myself walking from room to room, scanning the house as I saw it in the morning. The bodily experience is always present. When I recall a particular object, I remember it together with—indeed, through—the physical actions, the bodily investigation that I performed to become acquainted with it the first time I perceived it. Memory always retains the fragrance of the initial encounter, the bodily experience, the perspective of the lived body. I open my eyes and return to the shoes in the corner of the room. I discover that I did not remember the exact angle at which one of the shoes was placed. This is not a matter of theory but rather brute fact. I am now describing how images seem to look like pictures in my mind’s eye. When I try to do it again, it becomes clear that there is no image. Rather, there is a collection of memories that can only be my bodily encounters with the world. I delve more deeply into this notion and again think of my daughter. Now I understand that, despite seeing her every day, when I try to see her in my mind’s eye, I always remember her from a particular perspective: yesterday when I saw her dancing; the day before when I saw her playing on the lawn;

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or a year ago, on her birthday, with a crown on her head. I do not remember her abstractly but rather in a particular context or at a specific event. I have no objective and unconditional image of her but rather always a memory from a particular time and perspective. Every memory carries the lived body with it. I act in the world in order to perceive the object and this action is my memory of the object. Memory is action that requires activity on some basic bodily level. Hence, I contend that the body constitutes the background for all our actions in the world, including the various cognitive actions. Even the act of remembering does not take place separately from the body. I remember my encounters with my daughter even if they are ongoing, and this is the case for other objects as well. This perspective encompasses the entire world or, more accurately, the way in which I investigate the world. This being the case, remembering is tantamount to reconstructing a perspective and re-­ experiencing it by means of the living body. It involves reconstructing the world itself, sometimes in its entirety. For example, flashbacks entail the reconstruction of a traumatic event that is too alive to bear. Thus, when we are in a particular place, we remember what happened to us on the other occasions that we visited it. The world stores our memories, and these always contain our initial contact with the world. Unlike the theory advanced by cognitive brain sciences today, the world is not a Pavlovian stimulus for a closed cognitive system. On the contrary, the world is part of the cognitive system and thus operates this system, which encompasses the body and the world itself. The world plays an active role in the process of remembering. Yet we do not know the “world,” rather we know only the “bodily world” that is seared into our “worldly body.” Our memories eventually dissipate, along with our ability to revitalize objects in our minds, unless they have been totally absorbed into the body-as-­ subject. What we are left with is a series of intermittent and very partial flashes of pictures of bodily memories. Our encounter with the world is seared into the body, while the object we “remember” also has a bodily layer. It seems that we rely upon our inner world based on what we believe rather than on what is true. Yet in effect this inner world is empty and shattered. If you were to press me and ask me to describe an object, for example the pen I was looking at before, you will quickly discover that I can provide very little information. The weaker the bodily experience elicited by a particular object, the less I am able to describe it. I can say that I saw a “pen” because I remember what it looks like. People often claim to remember something as if it happened yesterday, but when pressed to provide details, they discover they have none, only one faded “picture.” We tend to confuse stating that something happened with knowing exactly what happened. While we refuse to admit it, our memory

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concerning specific details of events is quite deficient. The crisis of testimony is not merely a slogan. We are much less reliable than we presume to believe. We lie to ourselves regarding what we really know about our past. This is a harsh statement, yet it contains more than a grain of truth, as anyone who has worked with the testimonies of trauma victims knows. There is no central overriding system that “knows” things. There is only being-in-the-world here-and-now. All the rest is nothing but reconstruction and speculation. Accordingly, our inner world does not exist in the way we think it does. Yet, because we are so accustomed to our constant encounter with the world, we are unaware of this. We project the apparent completeness of the outer world onto our inner world, merely as a matter of habit. If we were to try to isolate ourselves from the world for an extended period, we would see that our inner perspective is fragmented and discontinuous; it does not contain any clear images. The Cartesian intuition and theory of how the world is represented in the brain derive from human beings’ reluctance to reconcile themselves to the fragmented nature of their inner world. We live in an extremely fragmented world, one that is less familiar and less stable than we would like to believe. Even so, based upon our experience, we cannot deny that we have an inner perspective, a stream of consciousness. This is a fundamental experience that we cannot undermine, because mostly we are present in the world and do not scrutinize our inner world. Nevertheless, let us emphasize, once again, that when we are cut off from the outer horizon, the inner horizon is less continuous and less structured than we commonly think. I am convinced that if we cease trying so eagerly to justify our broken inner world and to transform it from a fragmented world into a structured world, there will be no need for a theory of how images are represented in the brain. Beyond its role in helping explain the connection between the organism and the world, the purpose of such a theory of representations is to justify the illusion of a stable, continuous, and structured inner world. Yet if we shake off this illusion, we can progress toward a non-representational theory of perception. We are present in the world through our bodies. The world is the place where we exist, think, and act. Hence there is no point in studying the brain in isolation from the body and the world. In order to understand human beings, we must investigate how they are present and act in the world.

 Appendix: Phenomenology as a Method1

The Phenomenological Reflection To understand how psychological phenomenology differs from “ordinary” psychology (empirical-psychophysical), we must first highlight the differences between psychological introspection and phenomenological reflection. When the first psychological laboratories were established in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century, researchers such as Wilhelm Wundt began employing introspection as a tool to understand consciousness. Simply put, “Introspection refers to an observation and, sometimes, a description of the contents of one’s own consciousness. Introspection is believed to be a reflexive, metacognitive process, attending to or thinking about oneself or what is currently being experienced by oneself ” (Overgaard 2006). After receiving training, subjects practiced reporting their inner thoughts (Rieber and Robinson 2001). Yet, from the very outset, there was no clear agreement concerning how these inner observations should be arranged and organized, making it difficult to use to introspection as a scientific tool (Boring 1953). One critic highlighted that the very act of introspection changes the nature of the experience, while others claimed that subjects do not genuinely know what they feel and therefore cannot provide a reliable and trustworthy account of their inner world. These and other criticisms diminished the value of the method, and today introspection is generally not considered a reliable scientific tool in the context of psychology (Benjamin 2007).

 Based on (Ataria et al. 2019).

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Phenomenological reflection is not the same as psychological introspection and, as we will see, differs fundamentally from psychophysical psychology. The latter was deeply influenced by methodologies of the natural sciences, in which natural objects are observed from “nowhere,” that is from a purely objective perspective (Husserl 1970). According to the phenomenological approach, engaging in introspection by adopting a third-person perspective (3PP) on one’s inner world is, in its very essence, erroneous (Vermersch 2009)—we cannot observe our psyche as though it were an ordinary research object. Indeed, introspection within the framework of psychophysical psychology fails precisely in this respect: despite being a qualitative methodology that ostensibly addresses the subject, it does not relate to the subjective experience as a unique phenomenon but rather as an object like any other in nature (Jennings 1986). Thus, introspection is used only because at a given time this is the only (and, as such, the optimal) available tool to provide information about the subject’s inner world. Yet, by applying this (3PP) tool we give up on the subject, instead exploring it as a pure object, and consequently we lose the most important attribute in the field of psychology: the subjective experience, which must include our particular and unique perspective. In his seminal article “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” Edmund Husserl (1965) claimed that phenomenology, on the one hand, and empirical/psychophysical psychology (today all branches of the cognitive brain sciences), on the other, are closely related because both are concerned with the subjective experience. Husserl identified the reciprocal relations between two fields that address the same issues, yet from totally different perspectives: while empirical psychology in its broadest sense adopts the third-person perspective, phenomenological psychology focuses on the human experience from the perspective of the individual (first-person perspective, 1PP). Husserl offered an alternative to the naturalistic psychology approach, which turned human beings into collections of “facts.” The phenomenological approach does not pretend to investigate the world as it is. Nor does it relate to human beings or consciousness as a research object that can be examined using the ordinary methods of natural sciences. The turning point proposed by Husserl is the use of phenomenological reduction: concentrating on the subject as a subject, namely, from within. Yet, at the same time, Husserl did not abrogate the importance of psychophysical psychology. He believed that all progress necessitates complementary and ongoing dialogue between phenomenological psychology and psychophysical psychology.

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Phenomenology as a Methodological Approach As a methodological approach, phenomenology focuses on the lived body, on the pre-reflective experience of being-in-the-world through our body, and, as such, it is perfectly suited to facilitating an exploration of the traumatic experience. Yet, in order to reveal the bodily level of experience, and subsequently reconstruct the memory of the traumatic experience step by step, the survivor requires guidance. This process obviously necessitates appropriate caution. Although “people can be led to mistakenly recall entire experiences through misleading interviews” (Porter and Peace 2007, p. 435), we should not be afraid of asking what Hall and Steinberg (1994) call leading questions. By asking how and avoiding why it is possible to guide the traumatized individual, yet avoid interfering with the content of the story. Let us introduce, in brief, some phenomenological principles that should be applied when interviewing posttraumatic survivors. The phenomenological approach to the subjective experience differs fundamentally from introspection. According to the phenomenological approach, reflection can be defined as an attempt to understand the experience from within, from a subjective perspective; this process, known as phenomenological reduction, requires training. In turn, studies have shown that this can “bring a person, who may not even have been trained, to become aware of his or her subjective experience, and describe it with great precision” (Petitmengin 2006, p. 229). Phenomenological reduction—Husserl’s epoché or “bracketing,” a suspension of judgment about the “natural world” and a return to things themselves—requires the redrawing of old beliefs, conceptions and opinions. In addition, it emphasizes not goals themselves but the processes that enable their achievement. The method focuses on how (the pre-reflective level) rather than why. Given that this is a complex process, I prepared a working protocol that will enable those who are not necessarily familiar with phenomenology to adopt this approach.

The Protocol 1. Background and preparation for interview: 1.1. The interview should be conducted in a pleasant environment, one in which the interviewee feels comfortable. 1.2. The discussion with the interviewee should be as intimate and open as possible. It is likewise essential to create a safety net for the interviewee.

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1.3. It is vital to clarify that there are no “right” or “wrong” answers; any answer is acceptable. Moreover, the interviewee must be aware that it is possible to stop the interview at any juncture and that she is not obligated to answer any question. 1.4. The interviewee should be informed about the objectives of the research; it must be explained that the interviewee is not some kind of “research object.”2 1.5. The interviewee must understand that this is a shared journey: together with the interviewer, the interviewee will attempt to understand the subjective experience. 2. Training: The interviewee must understand the significance of describing the bodily experience and thus must be trained prior to the interview. 2.1. Breathing: Concentrating on breathing constitutes the core of the interview for several reasons:





2.1.1. Breathing is a well-known, simple and common technique for relaxing the system during times of stress. This is particularly important in interviews with trauma survivors, because this type of interview is liable to arouse disturbing content, raising the interviewee’s stress and anxiety levels. 2.1.2. Breathing serves as an anchor to which the interviewee can return at any point during the interview and constitutes part of the interviewee’s safety net. 2.1.3. By concentrating on breathing, the interviewee can practice paying attention to the physical experience. 2.1.4. Loss of attention: During the interviews, concentration often wavers. Both interviewer and interviewee tend to lose attention and drift into a narrative that deviates from the simple bodily experience of being in the world. Every time the interviewer feels this is happening, practice breathing for a minute (or longer, if necessary). This increases the level of concentration, returning the focus to the body. 2.1.5. Intimacy and empathy: The act of sitting together and breathing creates intimate relations between interviewer and interviewee on the pre-reflective level. Breathing together ­

 Since the research does not seek to corroborate or refute a specific hypothesis, there is no danger that the interviewees will seek to “please” the interviewer. 2

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places them on the same level and breaks the pattern of subject-­ object, interviewer-interviewee. This process is critical in reducing the interviewee’s tendency towards self-judgement. 2.2. Cognitive exercise: In most cases, interviewees are convinced they are seeing the world as it is. They are in a naïve-realistic state, yet unaware of this fact. Using several exercises that employ optical/visual illusions (such as Kanizsa’s Triangle, the Ponzo illusion, the Ebbinghaus illusion, the figure-ground illusion, etc.) we help interviewees understand that we often think we see the world as it is, yet there are other ways to interpret what we see. This type of exercise should help interviewees moderate their preconceived notions and encourage them to leave the comfort zone in which they are, in a certain sense, imprisoned. 2.3. Focus our attention on the body (from within):





2.3.1. Describing the bodily experience from the inside is not so simple. The interviewer must possess a good understanding of what it means to listen to the body from the inside.3 2.3.2. In preparation for the interview, the interviewer and interviewee should perform mindfulness exercises together for several minutes. There are many ways to do this. Here are some suggestions: 2.3.2.1. Start with relatively simple exercises. For example, eat a raisin and describe the process from the point of smelling the raisin, through placing it in the mouth, to the experience of tasting and swallowing it. Another exercise is to close your eyes, feel an object and focus on your feelings as you touch it, while attempting to disregard the object you are touching. 2.3.2.2. After this, proceed to describe the experience of breathing, for example by focusing on the feeling of inhaling air through the nose. 2.3.2.3. In the third stage, advance further and focus on the bodily experience at the moment of sitting down.

 The interviewer does not need to be an “expert” in meditation but should practice attaining a certain degree of experience in mindfulness or similar methods, such as yoga. 3

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3. The interview 3.1. Opening the interview

3.1.1. The interview begins with the “standard automatic” narrative. 3.1.2. At this stage we ask interviewees to focus on one or two important moments from the narrative. They often choose the moment directly preceding the trauma itself.



3.1.2.1. Note: If interviewees find it difficult to choose a meaningful moment, instruct them to tell the story again, while focusing on the bodily experience, thus enabling them to identify a meaningful moment in the narrative.

3.2. Focusing merely on the body: At this stage it is important to avoid any question that leads to explanation or interpretation, to avoid describing the content of the experience itself and focus only on the bodily experience at the current moment. In the event that physical stress is aroused, use the breathing techniques to reduce this.





3.2.1. Ask interviewees to focus solely on their bodily experience in the moment, in the here-and-now, as they remember the event, but not on the event itself. 3.2.2. If interviewees “drift” beyond the bodily experience at the current moment, return them to the present. It is important to let them know that they have deviated from the bodily experience, although not in a judgmental manner. It should merely be mentioned. 3.2.3. While interviewees are describing the bodily experience in the current moment (during the recall), several difficulties may arise: 3.2.3.1. Silence: an interviewee cannot find the words. Silence is not a problem in the interview. Indeed, quite the contrary. We must enable the interviewee to remain within the comfort of silence. After some time passes, we can ask the interviewee to describe the bodily experience while he or she remained silent. It is important to be sure not to ask about the content of the experience and, of course, not to ask the interviewee to explain the silence. 3.2.3.2. Impasse: In many interviews, interviewees feel distant from the description of the bodily experience—it is

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vague and superficial. Such moments of crisis present an opportunity for a breakthrough in the interview. Here are some methods for coping with such an impasse:





3.2.3.2.1. A relatively effective solution is to ask interviewees to concentrate on a sensory experience in one sensory channel, for example sound, sight, or smell. My own experience indicates that the sense of smell often provides a direct channel to the traumatic experience. 3.2.3.2.2. Ask interviewees to reenact the position of their bodies during the limited period of the traumatic experience. 3.2.3.2.3. Ask interviewees to continue with the vague and superficial description. It often becomes evident that interviewees are still relying upon defense mechanisms; providing an opportunity to continue with this ostensibly superficial description can lead to a breakthrough. Be sure to limit the time of the bodily description to the here-and-now. 3.2.3.2.4. If none of these methods is effective in breaking through the impasse, choose a different moment from the narrative and begin the process again.

3.3. Moving from the here-and-now to what happened there-and-then, and creating a bridge between the here-and-now and the there-and-then:

3.3.1. After focusing on the current experience, consult with the interviewee to determine whether the bodily experience while remembering the given moment arouses bodily experiences from the traumatic experience itself. This is the crucial moment in an interview. In most cases this process occurs spontaneously. During the description, interviewees naturally proceed to describe the traumatic experience itself. Prior to this stage, it is important for the interviewees to transform their breathing into a stable anchor in the here-and-now.

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3.3.2. In guiding the interviewees to the traumatic experience, the interviewer must first return to breathing exercises in order to strengthen the anchor and the link to the physical experience. If the interviewees do not manage to move on to the traumatic experience, there are two main alternatives:



3.3.2.1. Choose another moment from the narrative. 3.3.2.2. Continue to describe the bodily experience in the current moment. Note that many cases are marked by barriers and, therefore, being “stuck” signifies a traumatic experience that appears to be burned into another body. In other words, dissociative individuals often have difficulty “generating” a breakthrough in the interview. Indeed, because they are dissociative, their defense mechanisms are stronger, their barriers are more difficult to cross, and thus reaching the traumatic experience itself is more difficult. At the same time, there is a risk that such a breakthrough, when it does occur, will be uncontrolled and unstoppable. Hence, in cases of individuals suffering from dissociation, the process must be particularly controlled and slow, with frequent stops at safe transition points. Experience indicates that in some cases this is simply a matter of time and concentration, while in other cases the traumatic experience is too threatening. In such instances, do not continue with the interview before clarifying whether the interviewee can return to breathing as an anchor. Only then can the interview continue, and often a totally new image will emerge. 3.3.2.3. Limit the time span: In many cases, this state of being “stuck” is the result of focusing on a time span that is too broad. The more the interviewer can focus the interviewee on shorter periods of time, the greater the chances of arousing the traumatic experience burned into the body.





3.3.3. While the interview begins in the here-and-now, during its course, an interviewee may begin to feel fluctuations between the here-and-now and the there-and-then. This is manifested in a shift to the first-person present tense in describing the

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traumatic experience itself: “I see an arm detached from a body, I hear the screams, I smell the burning bodies.” At this juncture, it is important to allow the interviewee to move between two points in time: the here-and-now, anchored in the breathing, and the encounter with the interviewer, and the then-and-there. Often, an interviewee begins a sentence in the here-and-now and ends it by shifting to the then-and-there.



3.3.3.1. It is important to draw the interviewee’s attention to this and ask for a description of the bodily experience during these transitional points. 3.3.3.2. At this juncture, the interviewer must avoid all questions relating to the content of the experience and direct the interviewee’s attention to small and ostensibly unimportant details by concentrating on the bodily experience. 3.3.3.3. If interviewees try to explain why these things happened or why they are describing them in this way, allow them to finish the explanation. However, indicate that they are drifting towards cognitive explanations while the interview seeks to concentrate on the pre-reflective experience

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Index1

A

Abilities, xvi, xviii, xix, 15, 19, 21, 23, 27, 31, 40, 42–45, 48–51, 57–59, 72, 73n22, 74, 80, 111, 115, 116, 122, 124 Absent, xvii, 8, 12, 15, 16, 42, 109 Absorbed, xx, xxi, 4, 7, 9, 52, 73, 78, 89, 92, 124 Accessible, xvii, 22, 23, 49, 53, 54, 75, 94, 97, 116 inaccessible, xvii, 42 Action/actions in action, 42, 124 call for action, 15 Active, xv, 3, 9, 12, 14, 16, 20, 25, 26, 30, 36, 64, 68, 107, 116, 117, 124 Adapt, 42, 43 Algorithms, 30 Alien hand syndrome, 45n9 Altered states of consciousness (ASC), xxi, 39–85, 107–108

Anarchic hand syndrome, 45n9, 57 Anger, 82, 102 Anxiety, xvi, 50, 51, 54, 55, 59, 130 Apps, 25, 26 Arm/arms, xvi, 52, 62, 135 Arrow of time, 40n2, 43, 53 Artificial intelligence, 28 At-home, 9, 32, 42, 48, 63, 74, 92 Attention, 13, 23, 29, 65, 75, 76, 95, 96, 108, 109, 130, 131, 135 Autobiographical field, 85, 98–102 Autobiographical memories, 23 Autobiographical selves, 85, 101 Autonomous body, 116 Available, xvii, 4, 23, 42, 94, 122, 128 Awareness floating awareness, 80 non-reflective awareness, 79 pre-reflective awareness, 80 self-awareness, 70

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Ataria, Consciousness in Flesh, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86834-5

145

146 Index B

Background, xix, 4, 5, 11, 25, 32, 73, 94–97, 105, 116, 119, 121, 123, 124, 129 Balance, 15, 48, 60, 68 Baseball, 30 Being being cast out of the world, 52 being-in-the-world, xviii, 8–10, 34, 41, 51, 89–91, 115, 125, 129 being touched, 4, 61, 75, 105 Belief/beliefs, 5, 22, 129 Belong/belonging, xvii, 4–6, 9, 45, 61, 63, 105 Black box, 115 Blind/blindness, 21, 22, 25, 26 Bodily bodily dimension, 42, 46, 49–53, 57, 80–81, 99, 109, 111, 113 bodily encounter, xxi, 17, 111, 122, 123 bodily feelings, 46 bodily intelligence, 115 bodily level, 9, 111, 124, 129 bodily perspective, 15, 85, 120, 122 bodily schemas, 42, 90 bodily sensations, 56, 59, 60, 80, 82, 83, 108 bodily time, 49 bodily viewpoint, 9 bodily-world, 35, 124 egocentric-bodily, 74 Body actual body, 36 body-as-object, 9, 12, 25, 48, 49, 60, 63, 68–70, 80, 81, 99 body-as-subject, 27, 32, 48, 49, 59–61, 63, 66–70, 80, 81, 92, 99, 101, 124 body from outside, 60 body schema, 21 body suffers, 41, 51 corporeal body, xviii, 25

dead-body, 48, 49, 60 frozen body, xix knowing-body, 2, 60, 115–117 lived-body, xviii, xx, 2, 9, 10, 12, 25–27, 31, 33, 35, 36, 48, 49, 59–61, 78, 79, 89, 98, 99, 101, 104, 106, 108, 111, 116, 122–124, 129 sensing body, 4 Bottom-up, 6, 9, 14, 26–29, 79, 105 Boundary/boundaries blurred boundaries, 62, 65 clear boundary, 11, 25, 61, 65, 72 diffuse boundaries, 66 rigid boundaries, 74, 96 sense of boundary, 25, 41, 61–67, 69, 74, 75, 99, 105 Brain, xx, 1, 4, 14, 22, 23, 29, 30, 34, 35, 57, 58, 115, 120–122, 124, 125, 128 Breakdown, 46, 52, 57, 58 Brentano, Franz, 70 Brooks, Rodney, 27 C

Calculate, 29 calculating machine, 35 Captive, 40–61, 40n1, 63, 72 Captivity, 40–59 Cartesian, 13, 90, 98, 105, 112, 125 Cast out, 21, 43, 51, 92 Catch, xix, 13, 16, 24, 30 Cognition central cognitive system, 6 cognitive hallucinations, 6 cognitive illusions, 6, 8 cognitive processes, 14, 25, 32, 33, 76 cognitive system, 2, 6, 20, 25, 29–35, 115–117, 120, 124 higher-level cognitive system, 6, 7, 32 orthodox cognitive approach, 14

 Index 

Collapses/collapsed/collapsing, xix, 42–49, 48n15, 51, 52, 54, 59, 66, 70–72, 82, 92, 99, 107 Common sense, 44 Computers, xvi, 11, 25, 26, 28, 30, 115 Concealed, xx, 15, 23, 119 Concern, 40n1, 43, 55, 69, 70, 82, 83, 85, 94, 99, 115 Conscious control, 90 Conscious feelings, 91, 96, 97 Consciousness altered states of consciousness (ASCs), xxi, 39–85, 107–108 embodied consciousness, xxi, 1–36, 89–113 human consciousness, xx, 85, 89, 107 pre-reflective self-consciousness, 3, 79, 80 states of consciousness, 40, 55 stream of consciousness, 54, 75, 105–113, 125 structure of consciousness, xxi, 68, 70, 85, 89–105, 112 Conscious perception, 95 Constructs, 5, 6, 9, 89 Context, xix, 11, 13, 18, 24, 29, 35, 43, 53, 57, 61, 76, 78, 84, 103, 116, 121, 124, 127 Continuity, 40n2, 52, 54, 91, 99, 101, 106, 107, 112, 113 Control create control, 58 lack of control, 57 loss of control, 57 possibility of control, 58 self-control, 58 sense of control, 56, 83, 109 zero control, 58 Cope/coping, 28, 29, 40, 44, 46, 49, 55, 56, 58, 133 Corporeal intelligence, 116

147

D

Damage/damaged, 43, 44, 54 Dance, xvi, xvii, 23, 35, 39, 70 Dasein, 10 Delusions, 39–41, 43, 47, 49, 55, 59 Depersonalization, 44, 69, 94 Depression, 9, 50, 59, 92 Descartes, René, 3, 12, 96 Despair, 50, 59 Destruction destructive mechanism, 46 total destruction, 48 Detach/detached/detachment, 3, 35, 40, 41, 44, 45, 45n8, 51, 53–54, 59, 60, 62, 66, 70, 78, 105, 106, 111, 135 Dialogue, 9, 11, 15, 18, 19, 28, 32, 34, 44, 90, 91, 105, 116, 128 Diffuse diffuse boundaries, 66 diffuse sense of self, 67, 68 Disability, xvii Disintegration, 61, 72–75, 109 Dissociation dissociative experiences, 46, 59, 68 dissociative mechanism, 46, 59 Dissolution, 61, 63, 70–72, 81 Doomed, 9, 121 Dream daydreams, 43, 52 dreaming or delusional, 40, 41, 43, 98 Dreyfus, Hubert, xxi, 115 Dual duality, 72 dual-polarized-intentional structure, 112 dual structure of consciousness, 98 Dualism, 13, 117 Duration, 40n2, 91–95, 105, 106, 112, 113 Dynamic dynamic feedback, 14 dynamic-horizontal model, 14

148 Index E

Embedded, 1, 9, 34, 54, 93 Embodiment embodied, xx embodied consciousness, xxi, 1–36, 89–113 embodied perspective, 91 embodied world, 8, 48 Emotion emotional dimension, 82, 84, 102, 108–111 emotional element, 104 emotional experiences, 93, 94, 102, 104, 109, 110n5 emotional layer, 9, 95, 104 emotional past, 102 emotional state, 9, 10, 82, 92 emotional-temporal field (ETF), 93–96, 105, 108 emotional-temporal level, 94 Emptiness, xviii, 54, 55, 81, 109 Encoding, 43 Encounter bodily encounter, xxi, 17, 111, 122, 123 human-world encounter, 96 ongoing encounter, 105 organism’s encounter, 10, 29, 106, 107, 113 preliminary encounter, 9 Engaging, 19, 128 Equilibrium, xvi, 48, 60, 63, 68, 69, 80 Existential, 12, 13, 55, 59, 66, 92 existential crisis, 55 Expectation expectation-movement-sensing, 52 system of expectations, 16n2, 42, 52 Experience human experience, xxi, 2, 85, 105, 128 pre-reflective experience, xvi, 3, 39, 76, 129, 135 subjective experience, xxi, 39–85, 89, 128–130

Explore exploration, 9, 18, 19, 129 explored, 4 exploring, 15, 16, 18, 98, 121, 128 exploring organism, 4, 15 exploring subject, 4, 98 exploring the world, 3, 4, 15–19, 24 Eye, xvii, 4, 5, 13, 16, 19–26, 47, 58, 66, 67, 71, 83, 84, 91, 98, 103, 106, 119–123, 131 F

Fall, xvi–xix, 27, 31, 42, 50, 51, 55, 92, 106, 116 Familiar, xviii, 25, 34, 42, 52, 94, 119–121, 125, 129 Fear, 11, 39, 54, 82 Feedback, 14, 15, 17, 18, 28, 30, 42 feedback loops, xx, 2, 21, 42, 109 Feel, xvi–xix, 4, 9, 10, 12, 17, 19, 21–23, 25, 26, 31, 32, 39–63, 65–70, 72, 74–77, 82, 83, 85, 92, 99, 103, 105, 106, 111, 113, 119, 122, 123, 127, 129–132, 134 Field field of action, 42, 66 field of perception, xix, 4, 5, 11, 32 field of possibilities, xviii field of possible meanings, 116 I-can field, xviii, 2, 11, 25, 27 phenomenal field, 5 tactile fields, 22 unified field, 6, 66 Fingers, xix, 16, 26, 28 Flesh flesh and blood, 1, 35 universal flesh, 5, 7 Freedom, 28, 57, 58, 81, 109 Future, 10, 41, 42, 51, 81, 85, 96–102, 105

 Index  G

Gallagher, Shaun, xvii, xxi, 3, 44, 57 Ganzfeld effect, 62 Gaze, 13, 20, 21, 26, 47, 47n12, 81, 103 inwards gaze, 103 Gene, 4 Gestalt, xvii, 116 Gesture, xvi, xix Gravity, 10, 18, 33, 51, 81 gravitational field, 33, 102 Grip get a grip, xvi, 16–18, 22, 43, 76, 104 grasp, xvii, 3, 4, 16, 18, 23, 24, 33, 35 lose our grip, 32 losing a grip, 15, 49 optimal grip, xvi, 16 Guide, 15, 18, 28–30, 95, 129 H

Hallucination, 6, 56 Hammer, 26 Hand groping hand, 18 present-at-hand, xvii, 9, 21 ready-to-hand, 4, 9, 18, 42, 60 Head, xvi, xix, 1, 12, 20, 21, 26, 31, 45, 54, 57–59, 106, 110, 120, 122–124 Heart, xviii, 7, 41, 50, 51, 65, 67, 69, 72, 94 Heidegger, Martin, xvii, xxi, 9, 26, 50, 50n17, 51, 92 Helplessness, 45, 58, 59 Here-and-now, 11, 34, 42, 52, 84, 85, 98, 99, 101, 102, 119, 122, 123, 125, 132–135 Hidden, xvii–xix, 8, 15, 23, 91, 119 History, 7, 67, 91

149

Hold, xv, xvii, xix, 2, 16–18, 24, 28, 41, 42, 52, 61, 62, 70, 90, 107, 111 Holding-being held, 90 Holistic, 29, 116 Home, xvi, 9, 18, 24, 26, 30, 32, 122 Homunculus, 113, 117 Horizon external horizon, 105–107, 111–113 horizon of meaning, 116 inner horizon, 54, 55, 75, 76, 106–109, 111–113, 125 interior and the exterior horizons, xvi outer horizon, 66, 125 Human, xx, xxi, 2, 8, 13, 17n3, 31, 42, 47, 49, 50, 68, 85, 89, 90, 92, 96, 105, 107, 115, 117, 122, 125, 128 Hunger, 39, 44, 49 Hurt, 45, 46 Husserl, Edmund, xxi, 3, 80n24, 128, 129 I

I

I-can, xviii, 2 I-can-not, xviii Identification, 12, 25, 34, 67, 78, 79 If-then, 16, 19–21, 42, 43 Illusion, 4, 6–8, 22, 23, 40, 56, 106, 111–113, 122, 125, 131 Imagination, 6, 33, 55, 57, 59, 122 Immersed, 1, 8, 26, 58, 73–75, 106, 107, 116 Impossible, xvii, 5, 8, 12, 30, 32, 43, 46, 50, 51, 58, 65, 71, 72, 85, 92, 102, 113, 115 impossible reality, 41, 58 Information kinesthetic information, 17 proprietary information, 17

150 Index

Inner inner experience, 75, 105 inner horizon, 54, 55, 75, 76, 106–108, 111–113, 125 inner talk, 75–77 inner world, 40, 41, 53–55, 57, 58, 67, 76, 96, 105–107, 110, 113, 124, 125, 127, 128 Input, 1, 14, 16, 20, 21, 29, 30 sensory input, 16, 17, 19–21, 23 Inside, 2, 7–9, 12, 25, 31, 34, 35, 48, 59–61, 63–67, 72, 84, 89, 93, 106, 110, 112, 113, 115, 131 Instrument, xviii, 12, 19, 25 Intentional arc, 5, 11 Interpretation, 6, 78, 132 pre-interpretative, 78 Interrogate, 4, 20 Intersubjective, xvi, xx, 51 Investigation, xviii, 3, 17, 123 Invisible, 8, 12, 15, 120 invisibility, 120 Inviting, xvi, xvii Ipseity, 2, 44, 91 Isolated, 9, 22, 51, 54, 107, 115, 122 Isolation, 39–59, 125 J

James, William, 98, 106, 112 K

Kinesthesia, 62 kinesthetic information, 17 Know-how/knowing-how, xx, 2, 16, 19–23, 42, 43, 46, 49, 53, 58 Knowing-body, 2, 60, 115–117 Knowledge bodily knowledge, 21 practical knowledge, 21, 42 pragmatic knowledge, 42 Körper, 25, 60

L

Language, xvii, xix, 10, 13, 24, 32–34, 34n4, 35n5, 76, 78, 96 Laws if-then laws, 21, 42 laws of motion, 16, 17 physical laws, 10, 33 sensorimotor laws, 9, 19, 23, 24, 42 Learn, xv, 15, 17, 21, 24, 27, 28, 58, 106 Limb, 17, 24, 62 prosthetic limb, 60 Limit blurred limits, 11 limitations, xviii, 12, 15, 24, 27, 120 Location, 17, 19, 62, 64, 65, 67, 73, 74, 79 M

Machine calculating machine, 35 Madness, 56, 59 Max grip maximal grip, xv, xvi, 43 maximum grip, 35, 51 ME, 12, 60n21, 68, 74, 98, 99, 101, 103, 104 Meaning meaningful, 5, 17, 42, 53, 77, 94, 96–105, 116, 132 meaningless, 77–80, 92, 95 meaningless sensations, 78 Meditation long term meditators, 89, 105 meditators, xx–xxi, 59, 60, 63–68, 72, 73n22, 75n23, 77, 80, 83, 92, 102, 109, 113 senior meditators, 39 Memory autobiographical memories, 23 childhood memory, xix, 98 external memory, 23

 Index 

unpleasant memories, 108 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, xv, xvi, xx, xxi, 2–17, 19–22, 24–27, 29, 36, 44, 47, 49, 52, 55, 62, 65, 67, 69, 75, 81, 89–91, 89n1, 94, 108, 116 Metaphor, 2, 10, 32–34, 107, 112 Metaphysics, 13, 14, 47 Mine, 36, 45, 59, 74, 79, 82, 110, 111, 120 Mirror, 11, 13, 14, 72, 77, 92, 103, 111, 112 mirror test, 102n3 Model, 1, 3, 14, 15, 27–32, 54, 89, 92, 116, 121 orthodox model, 14 Mood, xviii, 9, 78, 92, 104, 116, 121 Motor motor activity, 16, 19, 21 motor intentions, 4 Movement manner of movement, 18 movement-sensation-expectation, 16 N

Narrative, 78, 130, 132–134 Neural activity, xx, 29 Neuron, 4 O

Object objective, 6, 9, 17, 51, 116, 124, 128, 130 object-subject, 67, 95 perceived object, 6, 11, 16, 93, 94 Operate, xvii, 9, 16, 16n2, 18, 19, 21–24, 27–29, 31–33, 42, 62, 68, 69, 77, 78, 84, 99, 101, 103, 107, 111, 115–117, 121, 124

151

Organism, 3, 4, 10, 14, 15, 28, 29, 31, 34, 52, 67, 75, 90–94, 99, 105–107, 109–111, 113, 125 organism’s encounter, 10, 29, 106, 107, 113 Output, 1, 14, 30 Ownership body ownership, 43–46, 48, 59–68, 90 sense of ownership, 45, 57, 67, 68, 74, 82, 83, 90, 93 P

Pain, xviii, 21, 41, 44–46, 48, 52 Paralyzes, xviii Passive, 14, 25, 39, 49, 56, 121 Past, 25, 41, 85, 98, 99, 101, 102, 125 past-present-future, 85, 96–102, 105 Pathology, 53, 98 Perception distorted perception, 43 perceived, 5, 6, 11 perceived object, 6, 11 perceiver-perceived, 70 perceiving, 6, 8 perceptual field, 5, 11, 13, 65, 77, 93, 94, 105, 116 perceptual schemas, 42, 43 phenomenology of perception, 7, 11 theory of perception, xx, 2, 4–5, 116, 125 Perspective first-person perspective, 44, 60, 71, 83, 90, 93, 128 third-person perspective, 60, 128 Phenomenology, xxi, 2–14, 127, 129 phenomenological approach, xx, xxi, 2, 39, 79, 111, 128, 129 Philosophy, 4, 89n1, 116 Picture, xix, 6, 19, 23, 24, 68, 77, 83–85, 119, 120, 122–124

152 Index

Point of view, 6, 13, 43n4, 54, 58, 63, 74, 84, 90, 121 Polarization, 105 Possibilities map of possibilities, 18, 23 poor possibilities, xviii range of possibilities, xviii Post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD), 45n8 complex-PTSD, 44 Practical practical knowledge, 21, 42 practical understanding, 78 Pragmatic, 42, 115, 116 Predict predictions, 41, 42 sensorimotor predictions, 42 Pre-reflective pre-reflective awareness, 80 pre-reflective experience, xvi, 3, 39, 76, 129, 135 pre-reflective self-consciousness, 3, 79, 80 Presence, 2, 4, 5, 14, 16n2, 34, 46, 63, 70, 71, 80, 81, 84, 90, 93 over presence, 46, 70 Present, xv, xviii, xx, xxi, 1, 4, 8, 12, 13, 15, 23, 32, 33, 35, 36, 39, 41, 43n4, 44, 46, 51, 52, 52n18, 68–72, 79, 82, 83, 85, 89, 91, 93, 94, 98–102, 105, 107, 109–112, 116, 120, 121, 123, 125, 132–134 Present-at-hand, xvii, 9, 21 Present in-the-world, 1, 12, 13, 33, 35, 41, 44, 105, 112, 121, 125 Primal primal encounter, 77 primal relationship, 4 primal units, xvii primary, 3–5, 33, 93 Prison, 39–44, 49, 55 Prisoners of war (POWs), xx, 39, 85, 89, 92, 105–107, 109, 111, 113

Process cognitive process, 14, 25, 32, 33, 76 mental process, 53, 55 perceptual process, 77, 78, 92, 104, 105 top-down processes, 6, 18 Prosthesis/prostheses, xvii, xix, 25, 60 prosthetic limb, 60 Protect, 26, 59, 74 unprotected, xviii Psychedelic drugs, 39, 98 Q

Quietness, 67, 81 R

Ratcliffe, Matthew, 9, 10, 92 Reachable, xvii Ready-to-hand, 4, 9, 18, 42, 60 Reality, xvii, 39–44, 46, 52, 53, 55, 58–60, 66, 70, 81, 107 impossible reality, 41, 58 Reduction, 4, 128, 129 Reference, 53, 70, 122 Reflection non-reflective, 79, 80 reflective, xvi, 3, 39, 96, 97, 99, 104, 105 reflexivity, 14 Representation, 6, 8, 14, 22, 23, 27, 29–31, 34, 120–122, 125 Reveal revealed, 23, 26, 50n17 revealing, 8 Robot, 2, 27–29, 31, 32, 115, 116 S

Sanity, 41, 50, 53, 55–57, 59 Sartre, Jean-Paul, xx, 47 Schemes, 9, 10 Schizophrenia, 44, 57, 57n19

 Index 

schizophrenic episodes, 42 Science, xxi, 1, 3, 9, 80n24, 124, 128 scientific research, 3 Self diffuse sense of self, 67, 68 minimal self, 44, 48, 49, 61, 91, 98, 99, 110, 111 self-as-object, 47, 81, 98–104 self-as-subject, 47, 98–104 self-awareness, 70 self-control, 58 self-injury, 47 sense of self, 3, 47, 59, 61, 66–71, 75, 79–83, 90, 96, 98, 99, 101, 102, 105, 108–111 Semi-perception, 104 Sense raw sensations, 78 sensations, 16, 18, 20, 42, 51, 56, 59, 60, 63, 64, 66, 77, 78, 80–83, 91, 105, 108 sense of agency, 44–46, 48, 57, 68, 70, 72, 74, 90, 96 sense of availableness, 11 sense of body ownership, 43–46, 48, 59–63, 68, 90 sense of boundary/boundaries, 25, 41, 61–67, 69, 74, 75, 99, 105 sense of duration, 40n2, 91–93, 95, 105, 106, 112, 113 sense of location, 73, 74 sense of mineness/mine-ness, 44, 61, 90, 99 sense of ownership, 45, 57, 67, 68, 74, 82, 83, 90, 93 sense of sight, 4, 12, 15, 20, 24, 62, 66, 116 sense of time, 9, 40, 40n2, 49–54, 72, 81, 83, 112 sense of touch, 17, 24, 61, 62, 66, 105, 116 sense of unity, 39, 101, 113 sensible, 13, 14, 36

153

sensing, 4, 13, 19, 24 sensing-(being)sensed, 47 Sensorimotor sensorimotor circuits, 42–44, 52, 54 sensorimotor laws, 9, 19, 23, 24, 42 sensorimotor level, 14, 42, 43, 70 sensorimotor predictions, 42 Sensory sensory deprivation, 107 sensory input, 16, 17, 19–21, 23 sensory system, 6 Separate/separateness, xx, 3–5, 7, 8, 17, 30, 33, 34, 41, 61, 62, 65–67, 73, 75, 80, 92, 94, 99, 101 Shape, xviii, 3, 5, 9, 11, 16, 18, 28, 42, 50, 92, 95, 102, 111, 120 Sight, xvi, 4, 12, 15, 20, 22, 24, 62, 66, 105, 116, 133 Silence, 22, 63, 81, 132 Situation, xx, 2, 6, 9, 11, 18, 24, 31, 32, 35, 40, 42–45, 48, 49, 51, 53, 55–59, 66, 68, 70, 72, 73n22, 81, 83, 85, 91, 92, 102, 103, 106, 109, 111, 116, 121 situated, xx, 49, 117 Skill, 19, 24 Skin, 35 Sleep half asleep, 52 lack of sleep, 39, 40 slept, 40 Smell, 15, 62, 120, 122, 133, 135 Snapshot, 84 Solitary confinement, 40, 41, 44, 46, 48, 54, 55, 57, 111 Sound, xix, 30, 64–68, 71, 77–80, 121, 133 Space Newtonian space, 5 space-time, 9, 109 tactile space, 22 Speech, 24 States of mind, 106

154 Index

Stories, xvi, xvii, 53, 72, 79, 83, 84, 96, 129, 132 Stream, 54, 75, 105–113, 125 Stress, 15, 21, 39, 46, 51, 57, 69, 80, 92, 115, 130, 132 Structure dual structure, 13–14, 44–49, 67, 70–76, 80, 81, 93, 98, 109 metaphysical structure, 13, 14, 47 structure of consciousness, xxi, 68, 70, 85, 89–105, 112 structure of the self, 98–99 structure of thought, 80 subject-object structure, 48, 67, 72, 74–76, 79, 94 touching-touched structure, 75 Struggle, xix, 41, 57, 59, 122 Stutter, xvii–xx Style, xx, 12, 18, 21, 26, 27, 57, 116 Subject subject-object dichotomy, 1, 6–8 subject-object structure, 48, 67, 72, 74–76, 79, 94 Subjectivity center of subjectivity, 7, 67 sense of subjectivity, 47, 49, 91 Surface, 17, 20, 23, 79 Survival, 40, 41, 58, 91 Synaesthesia, 39 System proprioceptive system, 17 sensory system, 6 system of expectations, 16n2, 42, 52 T

Tactile tactile fields, 22 tactile space, 22 Technology, 2, 24–27, 60 Temporal field, 97, 98 Temporal horizon, 96, 102, 105 Temporality, 52, 111, 113 Then-and-there, 84, 85, 135

Thought first order thought, 79 fragments of thoughts, 113 logical thought, 34, 57 rational thought, 55 realistic thought, 57, 59 second order thoughts, 79, 106 structure of thought, 80 train of thought, 54 Threat, 54–56, 58, 59 Threshold, 21, 24, 52, 75–77, 80, 97 Thrown thrown into, xvii, xx, 7–9, 35, 40, 48, 52, 66, 67, 72, 78, 92, 97, 98, 101, 106, 107, 111–113, 116, 117, 121 thrown out, 42, 50 thrust into the world, 41 Time arrow of time, 40n2, 43, 53 pass time, 40, 52, 53, 132 sense of time timeless, 9, 40, 40n2, 44–49, 72, 81, 83, 112 timeless, xvii, 72 Tool external tool, 60 transparent tool, 48 Top-down, 6, 14, 15, 18, 27, 29, 32, 70 top-down processes, 6, 18 Torture, xvii, 44, 46, 48, 51 Touch touched, 4, 13, 61, 75, 105 touches itself, 4 touching, 4, 13, 22, 26, 47, 60–62, 75, 131 touching-being touched, 4, 61, 75, 105 touching oneself, 47 touching-touched structure, 4, 75 Toward, xv, xviii, xx, 9, 17, 46, 48, 51, 52, 60, 63, 67, 69–71, 102, 123, 125, 131, 135

 Index 

Transparent, xix, 27, 48, 60, 116 transparent tool, 48 Trauma, 39, 40, 43, 45, 45n8, 47n12, 48, 57, 74, 125, 130, 132 Trust losing trust, 42 loss of trust, 42 trusted, xvi Truth, 8, 125 Tuned, 9, 21, 55 U

Unconscious, 21, 52, 92 Uncover, 2, 5, 23 Unification, 39, 72 Unified, 6, 66, 101, 116 unified field, 6, 66, 101, 116 V

Vacuum, 9, 44, 53–56, 58, 59 Verbal, 75–79, 81 Victim, 43, 45, 56, 125 Viewpoint, 2, 3, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 23, 29, 43, 45, 65, 71, 83–85, 122 Violence, 46 Vision visible, 5, 7, 8, 12, 14, 15, 19, 67, 91, 116, 120 visual, 21, 22, 30, 62, 65, 66, 79, 85, 131 Void, xvii

155

W

Waking, 40, 41, 43, 107 Western philosophy, 116 Witness, 8, 74 Womb, xx, 11, 35, 69 Word, xv–xix, 3, 6, 8, 20, 21, 23–26, 28, 32, 33, 36, 42, 54, 55, 57, 60n21, 64, 67, 70, 72, 74–83, 85, 89, 91, 94, 96, 101, 104, 106, 108, 120–122, 132, 134 World bodily-world, 35, 132 dead world, xvii embodied world, 8, 34, 48, 89–91, 112 fragmented world, xvii, 125 lifeworld, 8 objective world, 6, 9, 116 our world, 8, 94, 96 present in the world, 1, 12, 13, 33, 35, 41, 44, 52, 89, 91, 105, 112, 116, 121, 125 representation of the world, 6, 29 social world, xx world in-itself, 6, 75, 76 Wound, 46 Y

Yom Kippur War, 39 Z

Zahavi, Dan, xxi, 3, 90