Accueil
https://www.academia.edu/40811155/Out_of_Body_Experiences_as_the_Origin_of_the_Concept_of_a_Soul_
"What is folk-phenomenology? Just like folk-psychology, generally it is a naive, prescientific way of speaking about the contents of our own minds – folk-phenomenology is a way of referring specifically to the contents of conscious experience, as experienced from the first-person perspective. It generates no or little theoretical progress [...] and is characterized by an almost all-pervading naive realism.
However, in everyday life, folk-phenomenology works remarkably well –at least it seems to. All of us are experienced folk-phenomenologists, because all of us are used to self-ascribe certain phenomenal properties when reporting the content of our phenomenal states to our fellow human beings. In non-scientific contexts, we all know what we mean by a “soul”: Our soul is the innermost and essential part of ourselves ; it is the prime candidate for the “true self”; it is the phenomenal locus of identity ; it bears a deep relation to the emotional layers of our self-model, to the emotional core of our personality. For many of us it is something of which we secretly hope that it may survive physical death, because it is not identical to our body. Folk-phenomenology follows Cartesian intuitions, and the deeper reason for this fact may be that its ontology is mirrored in the representational architecture of the human self-model." (p.58)
"Could there be an integrated kind of bodily self-consciousness, maybe a mobile body fully available for volitional control, or a paralyzed body which in its entirety is a phenomenal confabulation – in short, a hallucinated and bodily self at the same time ? Is it conceivable that something like a “globalized phantom-limb experience”, the experience of a phantom body could emerge in a human subject ? The answer is yes. There is a well-known class of phenomenal states in which the experiencing person undergoes the untranscendable and highly realistic conscious experience of leaving his or her physical body, usually in the form of an ethereal double, and moving outside of it.
These states correspond to a class (or at least a strong cluster) of intimately related phenomenal models of reality characterized by a visual representation of one’s own body from a perceptually impossible, externalized third-person perspective (e.g., lying on a bed or the road below oneself) plus a second representation of one’s own body, typically (but not in all cases) freely hovering above or floating in space. This second body-model is the locus of the phenomenal self. It forms the “true” focus of one’s phenomenal experience and also functions as an integrated representation of all kinesthetic qualia and all non-visual forms of proprioception. Such experiences are called out-of-body experiences or OBEs. Let us take a closer look at this highly interesting class of phenomenal states.
OBEs frequently occur spontaneously while falling asleep, following severe accidents, or during surgical operations. At present it is not clear whether the concept of an OBE possesses one clearly delineated set of necessary and sufficient conditions. The concept of an OBE may in the future turn out to be a cluster concept constituted by a whole range of diverging (possibly overlapping) subsets of phenomenological constraints, each forming a set of sufficient, but not necessary, conditions. On the other hand the OBE clearly is something like a phenomenological prototype. There is a core to the phenomenon, as can be seen from the simple fact that many readers will have already heard about in one way or another." (p.59)
"One can offer a representationalist analysis of OBEs by introducing the concept of a “phenomenal self-model” [...] A PSM is an integrated, conscious representation of the organism as a whole, including not only its spatial features, but also those of its own psychological properties to which it has access. An important feature of the human PSM is that it is almost entirely transparent. This means that we, as the organisms activating the PSM in their own central nervous system, cannot recognize it as a model: We become naive realists with regard to its content, the transparent representational content of the PSM is simply what we experience and later refer to as “our” conscious self.
Given this conceptual background, we can analyze OBEs a class of deviant self-models. On the level of conscious self-representation a prototypical feature of this class of deviant phenomenal self-models seems to be the coexistence of (a) a more or less veridical representation of the bodily self, from an external visual perspective, which does not function as the center of the global model of reality, and (b) a second self-model, which according to subjective experience largely integrates proprioceptive perceptions although, interestingly, weight sensations only to a lesser degree – and which possesses special properties of shape and form that may or may not be veridical. Both models of the experiencing system are located within the same spatial frame of reference (this is why they are out -of -body-experiences). This frame of reference is egocentric." (pp.59-60)
"The concept of a PMIR refers to the phenomenological observation that human beings do not only represent, but that they also co-represent the representational relation itself –and often consciously experience this very fact while doing so. Therefore, the PMIR is here conceived of as a conscious mental model, and its content is an ongoing, episodic subject–object-relation. Here are four different examples, in terms of typical phenomenological descriptions of the class of phenomenal states at issue: “I am someone, who is currently visually attending to the color of the book in my hands,” “I am someone currently grasping the content of the sentence I am reading,” “I am someone currently hearing the sound of the refrigerator behind me,” “I am someone now deciding to get up and get some more juice.” The central defining characteristic of phenomenal models of the intentionality-relation is that they depict a certain relationship as currently holding between the system as a whole, as transparently represented to itself, and an object-component. Such relationships can be perceptual, attentional, cognitive, or volitional. The content of consciousness never is a mere object, it always is a relation. Phenomenologically, a PMIR typically creates the experience of a self in the act of knowing, of a self in the act of perceiving, or of a willing self in the act of intending and acting." (note 1 p.60)
"The first interesting point seems to be that the second self-model always forms the subject-component of what I have elsewhere called the “phenomenal model of the intentionality-relation” [...] The PMIR itself – the first-person perspective as consciously experienced, the ongoing relationship between subject and object as itself phenomenally represented – is almost invariably portrayed as of a perceptual, i.e., visual, nature. Phenomenologically, you simply see yourself. If, for instance, after a severe accident, you find yourself floating above the scene viewing your injured body lying on the road beside your car, there is a perceived self (the “object-component“, which, technically speaking, is only a system-model, but not a subject - model), invariably formed by a more or less accurate visual representation of your body from an exteriorized perspective, and a perceiving self (the “subject-component”, the phenomenal self-model or PSM, i.e., the current self - or subject-model), hovering above the scene.
Both self-models are integrated into one overall global model of reality, which is centered on the second self-model. The second self-model can either be one of a full blown agent, i.e., endowed with the characteristic form of phenomenal content generating the subjective experience of agency [...] or only what Irwin [...] has aptly called a “passive, generalized somaesthetic image of a static floating self”. However, before entering into a brief representationalist analysis of OBEs, let us first take a quick detour and look at some more frequent, real-world phenomenological cases." (pp.60-61)
"Have you ever had the following experience ? The bus to the train station had already been late. And now you have even queued up in a line at the wrong ticket counter! Nevertheless you manage to reach your train just in time, finding an empty compartment and, completely exhausted, drop into the seat. In a slightly unfocused and detached state of mind you are now observing the passengers sitting in the train on the other side of the platform. Suddenly you feel how your own train starts to move, very slowly at first, but accompanied by a continuous acceleration, which you can feel in your own body. Two or three seconds later, with the same degree of suddenness, your bodily sensation disappears and you become aware that it actually is the other train, which has now started to slowly leave the train station [...]
Such an experience is a very rudimentary form of an OBE, a hallucinated bodily self. The center of your global model of reality was briefly filled by a kinesthetic and proprioceptive hallucination, a non-veridical model of the weight and acceleration of your body, erroneously activated by your brain. The dominating visual model of your environment, largely formed by the input offered through the “picture frame“ of the train window, was underdetermined. In the special input configuration driving your visual system it allowed for two coherent interpretations: either it is the other train, or it is the train in which you are sitting, which has just started to move. The visual model of reality allowed for two equally consistent interpretations. At the same time there was a state of general physical and emotional arousal, accompanied by an unconscious state of expectancy about what is very likely going to happen next, and very soon." (p.61)
"The information-processing system, which you are, selected one of the two possible interpretations in accordance with constraints imposed by a preexisting internal context and, as a system that always tries to maximize overall coherence, “decided” to simultaneously activate a suitable self-model, one that can be integrated into the new phenomenal model of the world without causing any major problems. Unfortunately, the chosen model of the world was wrong. Therefore, the activation of the accompanying kinesthetic-proprioceptive self-model led the system into a very brief hallucinatory episode. Since transparent models of reality and the self are always fully interpreted and intranscendable for the system currently operating under them, a hallucinated bodily self ensued. Its content was the content of a phenomenal self-simulation, activated by an erroneous automatism leading the system astray, while not being recognized as such. A possibility was depicted as a reality. As the dominant visual model of reality is being updated, this briefly “deviating” form of self-modeling leading to the subjective experience of a real body being slowly accelerated is immediately terminated – and with a mild degree of irritation or amusement you recognize that you have just fooled yourself." (pp.61-62)
"This may count as the minimal case of a phenomenal self-simulation fulfilling no proper function for the system – in this case leading to a partially empty, illusory experience of the body as a whole and in motion. It does not satisfy the adaptivity-constraint (it has no function for the system as a whole [...]) and its most striking neurophenomenological feature is the internal emulation of kinesthetic “motion” qualia, of a form of sensory content we normally take to be strictly stimulus-correlated. [...] The solution to this problem is to acknowledge that visual kinesthetic information, generally richer than mechanical kinesthetic information, can overrule the second type in cases of conflict, because vision “is not only an exteroceptive sense, as is classically assumed, it is also an autonomous kinesthetic sense.” (Lishman and Lee 1973, p. 294). What is still missing in this introductory case study is a stable, exteriorized visual perspective of the physical body." (p.62)
"The prevalence of OBEs ranges from 10% in the general population to 25% in students, with extremely high incidences in particular subpopulations like, to take just one example, 42% in schizophrenics [...] However, it would be false to assume that OBEs typically occur in people suffering from severe psychiatric disorders or neurological deficits. Quite the contrary, most OBE-reports come from ordinary people in everyday life situations." (p.64)
"The classic OBE contains two self-models, one visually represented from an external perspective and one forming the center of the phenomenal world from which the first-person perspective originates. The representational integration of both components into one single conscious experience is achieved by the PMIR as introduced above. The representational and functional analysis of OBEs is difficult and challenging since there are many related phenomena, for example autoscopic phenomena during epileptic seizures in which only the first criterion is fulfilled.
Devinsky et al. (1998, p. 1080) differentiated between autoscopy in the form of a complex hallucinatory perception of one’s own body as being external with “the subject’s consciousness ... usually perceived within his body” and a second type, the classic OBE, including the feeling of leaving one’s body and viewing it from another vantage point. The incidence of autoscopic seizures is possibly higher than previously recognized, Devinsky et al. (1998, p. 1085) found a 6.3% incidence in their patient population." (p.65)
"Seizures involving no motor symptoms or loss of consciousness and not being recognized by the patient may actually be more frequent than commonly thought. One important feature of OBEs is that the phenomenal representation of the perceiving, acting self is confabulatory, while the representation of the remaining physical body from an external perspective is generally accurate. For instance, OBEs during seizures often clearly depict convulsive movements and automatisms very accurately, from a viewpoint above the body. For many people who have actually lived through these phenomenal states this is an argument against the possibility of their hallucinatory nature." (p.66)
"However, it has to be noted that in the second self-model forming the object-component of the consciously modeled subject-object relationship, veridical content and confabulatory content are frequently integrated into a single whole. One patient noted that his body, perceived from an external perspective, was dressed in the same clothes he was wearing, but curiously he always had combed hair even when he knew his hair was uncombed before the onset of the episode [...] Another telling phenomenological difference is that some patients visually experience their body seen from above as not transparent and actually casting a shadow [...] For some patients the double will be transparent, but slightly smaller than life size [...] while for other patients the seen body appears solid, but does not cast a shadow [...]
It may be relevant that even in spontaneous OBEs, clearly occurring in non-pathological contexts, the non-veridical or self-contradictory nature of particular forms experiential content may very well be cognitively available, not only after, but during the experience. Remember the report by Waelti [...] quoted above: “Actually, had the movement unfolded in my normal body, my head would have had to collide with the edge of my bedside table.” Phenomenal kinesthetics and the underlying spatial frame of reference seem to be slightly dissociated in this case. This very fact itself is in turn available for cognitive processing, and for the formation of autobiographical memory. As Alvarado (1997, p. 16) remarks, little systematic work has been conducted about the phenomenology of the experience [...] The content of OBEs certainly is globally available for attention and cognitive access. Volitional availability, however, is a highly variable component of the experience.
Many OBEs are dominated by a sense of passively floating. The two self-models that are active during an OBE are embedded into a coherent global state, into a single multi-modal scene forming an integrated model of reality. They are also activated within a window of presence, that is, the experience has no phenomenological characteristics of recollection or future planning –an OBE is something that is happening now. In fact, a considerable subset of OBEs is accompanied by the subjective experience of “hyperpresence” or “hyperrealism”, particularly in those cases where a blending into or additional episode of religious ecstasy are reported. The phenomenal reality as modeled in the OBE certainly is a convolved and dynamic reality [...] OBEs are also first-person states: They clearly unfold under a single and unified first-person perspective generated by a PMIR. What makes them unique is that the object-component of the PMIR is formed by a self-model which is not a subject -model. You see your own body, and you recognize it as your own, but presently it is not the body as subject, the body as the locus of knowledge and of lived, conscious experience." (pp.66-67)
"Of course, numerous exceptions exist in the colorful reports and the folklore about this kind of bodily self-consciousness. But the conceptually most interesting feature of OBEs arguably is that they are accompanied by situations in which the subject- as well as the object-component of a phenomenal model of the subject-object-relationship is taken by a model of the self: you see your own body lying on the bed below you. Interestingly, this does not lead to a multi- or decentered overall state of consciousness. Only one of the currently active self-models functions as the “locus of identification”. Typically, it is only the ethereal double hovering above, which is represented as the attentional subject, as the currently thinking self, and as the agent deliberately moving through space [...] It is interesting to note how OBEs, phenomenologically, are not states of disembodiment. On the contrary, there always seems to be a spatially located phenomenal self, even if its embodiment is reduced to a pure spatial point of visuo-attentional agency.
In general it seems safe to say that prototypical OBEs are fully transparent states. The model of reality generated during the experience is not experienced as a model, although in experienced subjects and practitioners this fact may well be cognitively available during the episode. It is precisely the transparency of OBEs, which has led generations of experiencers and theoreticians in many cultures and for many centuries in the past to naive-realistic interpretations of this deviant form of phenomenal self-modeling. However, many OBE subjects also report a “dreamlike quality, as if being awake in a dream”. Among general dream variables like the prevalence of flying dreams, vividness, dream recall etc., the occurrence of lucid dreams is the most consistent predictor of OBEs [...] Blackmore (1986) found that subjects reporting deliberate, as compared with spontaneous, OBEs have a better ability to control and terminate dream content and more frequent flying dreams. An important hypothesis, yet to be empirically substantiated, therefore is that OBEs are just an additionally constrained subset of lucid dreams." (pp.67-68)
"In short, one may predict that a more systematic approach to the phenomenology of OBEs will yield different degrees of global transparency and opacity accompanying the experience. Moreover, the interrelated-ness of this feature with other high-level variables should be investigated. For instance, OBEs can be functionally characterized as offline-activated states, because they typically occur when the body is asleep, paralyzed after an accident or under anesthesia. In these situations, globally available somatosensory input will be minimal. The PSM loses an important source of presentational content, driving and functionally anchoring it in internal stimulus sources under normal circumstances. Irwin (1985, pp. 308) has presented a theory of OBEs in which the notion of being“out of touch with somatic processes” plays a decisive role, either in terms of functional loss of input or in terms of attentional unavailability through habituation. An interesting question, finally, is if OBEs satisfy the adaptivity-constraint: Can there be a teleofunctionalist analysis of OBEs ? What function could this type of experience have for the organism as a whole ? Here is a speculative proposal by Devinsky et al. (1998, p. 1088):
There are several possible benefits that dissociative phenomena, such as autoscopy, may confer. For example, when a prey is likely to be caught by its predator, feigning death may be of survival value. Also, accounts from survivors of near-death experiences in combat or mountaineering suggest that the mental clarity associated with dissociation may allow subjects to perform remarkable rescue maneuvers that might not otherwise be possible. Therefore, dissociation may be a neural mechanism that allows one to remain calm in the midst of near-death trauma.
It is not at all inconceivable that there are physically or emotionally stressful situations, in which an information-processing system is forced to introduce a “representational division of labor” by distributing different representational functions into two or more distinct self-models (in what was previously called “multiple personality disorder” [...]) The OBE may be an instance of transient functional modularization, of a purposeful separation of levels of representational content in the PSM.
For instance, if cut off from somatosensory input, or if flooded with stressful signals and information threatening the overall integrity of the self-model as such, it may be advantageous to integrate the ongoing conscious representation of higher cognitive functions like attention, conceptual thought and volitional selection processes into a separate model of the self. This may allow for a high degree of integrated processing, that is, for “mental clarity,” by functionally encapsulating and thereby modularizing different functions like proprioception or attention and cognition in order to preserve at least some of these functions in a life-threatening situation. Almost all necessary system-related information is still glob-ally available, and higher-order processes like attention and cognition can still operate on it as it is presented in an integrated manner. But its distribution across specific subregions in phenomenal space as a whole has now dramatically changed. Only one of the two self-models is truly “situated” in the overall scene, integrated into an internally simulated behavioral space. Only one of them is immediately embodied and virtually self-present in the sense described. As it is fully transparent, it is a full-blown phenomenal self instantiating the phenomenal property of selfhood for the system. Frequently, both self-models integrated within a single OBE are constituted by spatial as well as non-spatial mental content." (pp.68-69)
"Interestingly, the bodily self-model forming the object-component in this type of first-person experience never changes much in its spatial properties. The physical body viewed from an external perspective is very rarely distorted or changed in shape and size. However, the subject-component of the intentionality-relation modeled in these states may vary greatly (note how just the opposite principle holds for ordinary waking states). Some OBE subjects see or feel themselves in a weightless replica of their original body, others experience themselves as being in no body at all or in a kind of indeterminate form, such as a ball of light or an energy pattern [...] or even as “pure consciousness”." (pp.69-70)
"This may indicate that spatial content is not strictly necessary in realizing the function fulfilled by the second self-model for the system as a whole. In other words, those higher functions such as attention, cognition and agency, which are integrated by the “dissociated” self, now are only weakly embodied functions. In order to be carried out they do not need the integration into a spatially characterized, explicit body image. Arguably, attentional and cognitive agency can functionally be decoupled from the process of autonomic self-regulation and the spatial self-representation necessary for generating motor behavior. Conceptually, this is an important insight about the human mind. As it is plausible to assume that also non-cognitive creatures like animals could undergo the type of fully disembodied OBEs described above, we may conclude that attentional agency actually is one of the essential core properties underlying the conscious experience of selfhood. Spatial self-representation and cognitive self-reference are not necessary for selfhood.
However, the prototypical OBE clearly takes place in an egocentric frame of reference possessing a spatial, bodily self-model as its origin. In this context, it may also be interesting to note that certain technological setups in virtual reality (VR) experiments – so-called second-person VR and telepresence systems [...] – seem to achieve precisely the same effect, by creating the conscious experience of viewing one’s own body as embedded into and interacting with a virtual world or the experience that there is a “real you” not currently inhabiting your body. Such technical systems offer an additional functional module (a graphic image or a robot body) through which subjects can control their own behavior. Participants in VR experiments of this type frequently describe their phenomenology simply as being an out-of-body experience, even if they have never had a natural OBE before (Heeter 1992). If it could be empirically confirmed that the spatiality of the attentional and cognitive self-model hovering above the self-as-object-component in the OBE-model of reality is not a strictly necessary condition, this would support the functional modularization hypothesis proposed here." (p.70)
"It is surprising to see how theoreticians exploring virtual environments today not only employ phenomenological notions like “presence” or “sit-uatedness”, but have already coined a terminological notion for what, under the self-model theory of subjectivity, would be the spatial partition of the PSM modeling motor properties of the organism: the “virtual body” [...] A virtual body is a part of an extended virtual environment, a dynamic and high-dimensional tool that can be used to control a robot at a distance, employing the virtual body as an interface. However, these authors also point out how the issue of “identification” is crucial in the context of teleoperator systems controlling distant robots, and how users of a virtual environment may actually reject their virtual body –just as some neuropsychological patients do [...] Most illustrative, however, is the notion of a “slave robot”: To achieve telepresence, an operator has to rely on a high correlation between his own movements as sensed “directly” and the actions of the slave robot; and he ideally has to achieve an identification between his own body and that of the slave robot.
A virtual body, like a PSM, is an advanced interface to functionally appropriate and control a body. Virtual body and physical body may be separated by thousands of miles, and the interface used will (hopefully) only be episodically transparent. In the PSM-case, Mother Nature has solved all major interface problems millions of years ago, including a virtual body and extensive internal user modeling: Target system and simulating system are identical; and conscious subjectivity is the case in which a single organism has learned to enslave itself. This does not turn the system into a slave robot, but into an increasingly autonomous agent. Autonomy is conscious self-control, and an OBE is a situation in which self-control has been divided into different functional modules." (pp.70-71)
"From a systematic point of view, thorough analyses of deviant phenomenal models of the self are of highest relevance for their psychological characterization. However, the quantity and quality of available scientific research is low. It is particularly low for OBEs, and also for neurophenomenological state-classes of related interest such as dissociative identity disorders (DID) or lucid dreams. It is hard to find empirical work that lives up to the methodological or conceptual standards of current cognitive neuroscience or analytical philosophy of mind." (p.71)
"Irwin proposes a model involving a shift in attentional processing during episodes of weakened somatosensory input and a kinesthetic completion of the somaesthetic body image mediated by a visual model of the environment, constructed from memory sources [...] As somaesthetic input is lost, other presentational subformats –like vision and kinesthesia– become more dominant and take its role in stabilizing the PSM. As Alvarado (2000, p. 203) points out, Irwin’s model has received support from studies relating absorption and visuospatial abilities to the OBE and positively correlating synaesthesia-like items from a specific absorption scale to OBE frequency.
Palmera nalyses OBEs as compensatory processes after events threaten the integrity of the overall self-model by causing fundamental changes in the body schema [...] For Palmer, OBEs are just one of many routes the system can take to rescue its threatened phenomenal identity, to preserve the overall coherence of the self-model. As Alvarado (2000, p. 202) puts it, in Palmer’s view the “OBE, then, is an attempt to prevent the jeopardy to one’s identity from reaching awareness and precipitating a crisis.”." (p.72)
-Thomas Metzinger, « Out-of-Body Experiences as the Origin of the Concept of a “Soul” », Mind Matter, 2005, vol. 3, p. 57-84.
"What is folk-phenomenology? Just like folk-psychology, generally it is a naive, prescientific way of speaking about the contents of our own minds – folk-phenomenology is a way of referring specifically to the contents of conscious experience, as experienced from the first-person perspective. It generates no or little theoretical progress [...] and is characterized by an almost all-pervading naive realism.
However, in everyday life, folk-phenomenology works remarkably well –at least it seems to. All of us are experienced folk-phenomenologists, because all of us are used to self-ascribe certain phenomenal properties when reporting the content of our phenomenal states to our fellow human beings. In non-scientific contexts, we all know what we mean by a “soul”: Our soul is the innermost and essential part of ourselves ; it is the prime candidate for the “true self”; it is the phenomenal locus of identity ; it bears a deep relation to the emotional layers of our self-model, to the emotional core of our personality. For many of us it is something of which we secretly hope that it may survive physical death, because it is not identical to our body. Folk-phenomenology follows Cartesian intuitions, and the deeper reason for this fact may be that its ontology is mirrored in the representational architecture of the human self-model." (p.58)
"Could there be an integrated kind of bodily self-consciousness, maybe a mobile body fully available for volitional control, or a paralyzed body which in its entirety is a phenomenal confabulation – in short, a hallucinated and bodily self at the same time ? Is it conceivable that something like a “globalized phantom-limb experience”, the experience of a phantom body could emerge in a human subject ? The answer is yes. There is a well-known class of phenomenal states in which the experiencing person undergoes the untranscendable and highly realistic conscious experience of leaving his or her physical body, usually in the form of an ethereal double, and moving outside of it.
These states correspond to a class (or at least a strong cluster) of intimately related phenomenal models of reality characterized by a visual representation of one’s own body from a perceptually impossible, externalized third-person perspective (e.g., lying on a bed or the road below oneself) plus a second representation of one’s own body, typically (but not in all cases) freely hovering above or floating in space. This second body-model is the locus of the phenomenal self. It forms the “true” focus of one’s phenomenal experience and also functions as an integrated representation of all kinesthetic qualia and all non-visual forms of proprioception. Such experiences are called out-of-body experiences or OBEs. Let us take a closer look at this highly interesting class of phenomenal states.
OBEs frequently occur spontaneously while falling asleep, following severe accidents, or during surgical operations. At present it is not clear whether the concept of an OBE possesses one clearly delineated set of necessary and sufficient conditions. The concept of an OBE may in the future turn out to be a cluster concept constituted by a whole range of diverging (possibly overlapping) subsets of phenomenological constraints, each forming a set of sufficient, but not necessary, conditions. On the other hand the OBE clearly is something like a phenomenological prototype. There is a core to the phenomenon, as can be seen from the simple fact that many readers will have already heard about in one way or another." (p.59)
"One can offer a representationalist analysis of OBEs by introducing the concept of a “phenomenal self-model” [...] A PSM is an integrated, conscious representation of the organism as a whole, including not only its spatial features, but also those of its own psychological properties to which it has access. An important feature of the human PSM is that it is almost entirely transparent. This means that we, as the organisms activating the PSM in their own central nervous system, cannot recognize it as a model: We become naive realists with regard to its content, the transparent representational content of the PSM is simply what we experience and later refer to as “our” conscious self.
Given this conceptual background, we can analyze OBEs a class of deviant self-models. On the level of conscious self-representation a prototypical feature of this class of deviant phenomenal self-models seems to be the coexistence of (a) a more or less veridical representation of the bodily self, from an external visual perspective, which does not function as the center of the global model of reality, and (b) a second self-model, which according to subjective experience largely integrates proprioceptive perceptions although, interestingly, weight sensations only to a lesser degree – and which possesses special properties of shape and form that may or may not be veridical. Both models of the experiencing system are located within the same spatial frame of reference (this is why they are out -of -body-experiences). This frame of reference is egocentric." (pp.59-60)
"The concept of a PMIR refers to the phenomenological observation that human beings do not only represent, but that they also co-represent the representational relation itself –and often consciously experience this very fact while doing so. Therefore, the PMIR is here conceived of as a conscious mental model, and its content is an ongoing, episodic subject–object-relation. Here are four different examples, in terms of typical phenomenological descriptions of the class of phenomenal states at issue: “I am someone, who is currently visually attending to the color of the book in my hands,” “I am someone currently grasping the content of the sentence I am reading,” “I am someone currently hearing the sound of the refrigerator behind me,” “I am someone now deciding to get up and get some more juice.” The central defining characteristic of phenomenal models of the intentionality-relation is that they depict a certain relationship as currently holding between the system as a whole, as transparently represented to itself, and an object-component. Such relationships can be perceptual, attentional, cognitive, or volitional. The content of consciousness never is a mere object, it always is a relation. Phenomenologically, a PMIR typically creates the experience of a self in the act of knowing, of a self in the act of perceiving, or of a willing self in the act of intending and acting." (note 1 p.60)
"The first interesting point seems to be that the second self-model always forms the subject-component of what I have elsewhere called the “phenomenal model of the intentionality-relation” [...] The PMIR itself – the first-person perspective as consciously experienced, the ongoing relationship between subject and object as itself phenomenally represented – is almost invariably portrayed as of a perceptual, i.e., visual, nature. Phenomenologically, you simply see yourself. If, for instance, after a severe accident, you find yourself floating above the scene viewing your injured body lying on the road beside your car, there is a perceived self (the “object-component“, which, technically speaking, is only a system-model, but not a subject - model), invariably formed by a more or less accurate visual representation of your body from an exteriorized perspective, and a perceiving self (the “subject-component”, the phenomenal self-model or PSM, i.e., the current self - or subject-model), hovering above the scene.
Both self-models are integrated into one overall global model of reality, which is centered on the second self-model. The second self-model can either be one of a full blown agent, i.e., endowed with the characteristic form of phenomenal content generating the subjective experience of agency [...] or only what Irwin [...] has aptly called a “passive, generalized somaesthetic image of a static floating self”. However, before entering into a brief representationalist analysis of OBEs, let us first take a quick detour and look at some more frequent, real-world phenomenological cases." (pp.60-61)
"Have you ever had the following experience ? The bus to the train station had already been late. And now you have even queued up in a line at the wrong ticket counter! Nevertheless you manage to reach your train just in time, finding an empty compartment and, completely exhausted, drop into the seat. In a slightly unfocused and detached state of mind you are now observing the passengers sitting in the train on the other side of the platform. Suddenly you feel how your own train starts to move, very slowly at first, but accompanied by a continuous acceleration, which you can feel in your own body. Two or three seconds later, with the same degree of suddenness, your bodily sensation disappears and you become aware that it actually is the other train, which has now started to slowly leave the train station [...]
Such an experience is a very rudimentary form of an OBE, a hallucinated bodily self. The center of your global model of reality was briefly filled by a kinesthetic and proprioceptive hallucination, a non-veridical model of the weight and acceleration of your body, erroneously activated by your brain. The dominating visual model of your environment, largely formed by the input offered through the “picture frame“ of the train window, was underdetermined. In the special input configuration driving your visual system it allowed for two coherent interpretations: either it is the other train, or it is the train in which you are sitting, which has just started to move. The visual model of reality allowed for two equally consistent interpretations. At the same time there was a state of general physical and emotional arousal, accompanied by an unconscious state of expectancy about what is very likely going to happen next, and very soon." (p.61)
"The information-processing system, which you are, selected one of the two possible interpretations in accordance with constraints imposed by a preexisting internal context and, as a system that always tries to maximize overall coherence, “decided” to simultaneously activate a suitable self-model, one that can be integrated into the new phenomenal model of the world without causing any major problems. Unfortunately, the chosen model of the world was wrong. Therefore, the activation of the accompanying kinesthetic-proprioceptive self-model led the system into a very brief hallucinatory episode. Since transparent models of reality and the self are always fully interpreted and intranscendable for the system currently operating under them, a hallucinated bodily self ensued. Its content was the content of a phenomenal self-simulation, activated by an erroneous automatism leading the system astray, while not being recognized as such. A possibility was depicted as a reality. As the dominant visual model of reality is being updated, this briefly “deviating” form of self-modeling leading to the subjective experience of a real body being slowly accelerated is immediately terminated – and with a mild degree of irritation or amusement you recognize that you have just fooled yourself." (pp.61-62)
"This may count as the minimal case of a phenomenal self-simulation fulfilling no proper function for the system – in this case leading to a partially empty, illusory experience of the body as a whole and in motion. It does not satisfy the adaptivity-constraint (it has no function for the system as a whole [...]) and its most striking neurophenomenological feature is the internal emulation of kinesthetic “motion” qualia, of a form of sensory content we normally take to be strictly stimulus-correlated. [...] The solution to this problem is to acknowledge that visual kinesthetic information, generally richer than mechanical kinesthetic information, can overrule the second type in cases of conflict, because vision “is not only an exteroceptive sense, as is classically assumed, it is also an autonomous kinesthetic sense.” (Lishman and Lee 1973, p. 294). What is still missing in this introductory case study is a stable, exteriorized visual perspective of the physical body." (p.62)
"The prevalence of OBEs ranges from 10% in the general population to 25% in students, with extremely high incidences in particular subpopulations like, to take just one example, 42% in schizophrenics [...] However, it would be false to assume that OBEs typically occur in people suffering from severe psychiatric disorders or neurological deficits. Quite the contrary, most OBE-reports come from ordinary people in everyday life situations." (p.64)
"The classic OBE contains two self-models, one visually represented from an external perspective and one forming the center of the phenomenal world from which the first-person perspective originates. The representational integration of both components into one single conscious experience is achieved by the PMIR as introduced above. The representational and functional analysis of OBEs is difficult and challenging since there are many related phenomena, for example autoscopic phenomena during epileptic seizures in which only the first criterion is fulfilled.
Devinsky et al. (1998, p. 1080) differentiated between autoscopy in the form of a complex hallucinatory perception of one’s own body as being external with “the subject’s consciousness ... usually perceived within his body” and a second type, the classic OBE, including the feeling of leaving one’s body and viewing it from another vantage point. The incidence of autoscopic seizures is possibly higher than previously recognized, Devinsky et al. (1998, p. 1085) found a 6.3% incidence in their patient population." (p.65)
"Seizures involving no motor symptoms or loss of consciousness and not being recognized by the patient may actually be more frequent than commonly thought. One important feature of OBEs is that the phenomenal representation of the perceiving, acting self is confabulatory, while the representation of the remaining physical body from an external perspective is generally accurate. For instance, OBEs during seizures often clearly depict convulsive movements and automatisms very accurately, from a viewpoint above the body. For many people who have actually lived through these phenomenal states this is an argument against the possibility of their hallucinatory nature." (p.66)
"However, it has to be noted that in the second self-model forming the object-component of the consciously modeled subject-object relationship, veridical content and confabulatory content are frequently integrated into a single whole. One patient noted that his body, perceived from an external perspective, was dressed in the same clothes he was wearing, but curiously he always had combed hair even when he knew his hair was uncombed before the onset of the episode [...] Another telling phenomenological difference is that some patients visually experience their body seen from above as not transparent and actually casting a shadow [...] For some patients the double will be transparent, but slightly smaller than life size [...] while for other patients the seen body appears solid, but does not cast a shadow [...]
It may be relevant that even in spontaneous OBEs, clearly occurring in non-pathological contexts, the non-veridical or self-contradictory nature of particular forms experiential content may very well be cognitively available, not only after, but during the experience. Remember the report by Waelti [...] quoted above: “Actually, had the movement unfolded in my normal body, my head would have had to collide with the edge of my bedside table.” Phenomenal kinesthetics and the underlying spatial frame of reference seem to be slightly dissociated in this case. This very fact itself is in turn available for cognitive processing, and for the formation of autobiographical memory. As Alvarado (1997, p. 16) remarks, little systematic work has been conducted about the phenomenology of the experience [...] The content of OBEs certainly is globally available for attention and cognitive access. Volitional availability, however, is a highly variable component of the experience.
Many OBEs are dominated by a sense of passively floating. The two self-models that are active during an OBE are embedded into a coherent global state, into a single multi-modal scene forming an integrated model of reality. They are also activated within a window of presence, that is, the experience has no phenomenological characteristics of recollection or future planning –an OBE is something that is happening now. In fact, a considerable subset of OBEs is accompanied by the subjective experience of “hyperpresence” or “hyperrealism”, particularly in those cases where a blending into or additional episode of religious ecstasy are reported. The phenomenal reality as modeled in the OBE certainly is a convolved and dynamic reality [...] OBEs are also first-person states: They clearly unfold under a single and unified first-person perspective generated by a PMIR. What makes them unique is that the object-component of the PMIR is formed by a self-model which is not a subject -model. You see your own body, and you recognize it as your own, but presently it is not the body as subject, the body as the locus of knowledge and of lived, conscious experience." (pp.66-67)
"Of course, numerous exceptions exist in the colorful reports and the folklore about this kind of bodily self-consciousness. But the conceptually most interesting feature of OBEs arguably is that they are accompanied by situations in which the subject- as well as the object-component of a phenomenal model of the subject-object-relationship is taken by a model of the self: you see your own body lying on the bed below you. Interestingly, this does not lead to a multi- or decentered overall state of consciousness. Only one of the currently active self-models functions as the “locus of identification”. Typically, it is only the ethereal double hovering above, which is represented as the attentional subject, as the currently thinking self, and as the agent deliberately moving through space [...] It is interesting to note how OBEs, phenomenologically, are not states of disembodiment. On the contrary, there always seems to be a spatially located phenomenal self, even if its embodiment is reduced to a pure spatial point of visuo-attentional agency.
In general it seems safe to say that prototypical OBEs are fully transparent states. The model of reality generated during the experience is not experienced as a model, although in experienced subjects and practitioners this fact may well be cognitively available during the episode. It is precisely the transparency of OBEs, which has led generations of experiencers and theoreticians in many cultures and for many centuries in the past to naive-realistic interpretations of this deviant form of phenomenal self-modeling. However, many OBE subjects also report a “dreamlike quality, as if being awake in a dream”. Among general dream variables like the prevalence of flying dreams, vividness, dream recall etc., the occurrence of lucid dreams is the most consistent predictor of OBEs [...] Blackmore (1986) found that subjects reporting deliberate, as compared with spontaneous, OBEs have a better ability to control and terminate dream content and more frequent flying dreams. An important hypothesis, yet to be empirically substantiated, therefore is that OBEs are just an additionally constrained subset of lucid dreams." (pp.67-68)
"In short, one may predict that a more systematic approach to the phenomenology of OBEs will yield different degrees of global transparency and opacity accompanying the experience. Moreover, the interrelated-ness of this feature with other high-level variables should be investigated. For instance, OBEs can be functionally characterized as offline-activated states, because they typically occur when the body is asleep, paralyzed after an accident or under anesthesia. In these situations, globally available somatosensory input will be minimal. The PSM loses an important source of presentational content, driving and functionally anchoring it in internal stimulus sources under normal circumstances. Irwin (1985, pp. 308) has presented a theory of OBEs in which the notion of being“out of touch with somatic processes” plays a decisive role, either in terms of functional loss of input or in terms of attentional unavailability through habituation. An interesting question, finally, is if OBEs satisfy the adaptivity-constraint: Can there be a teleofunctionalist analysis of OBEs ? What function could this type of experience have for the organism as a whole ? Here is a speculative proposal by Devinsky et al. (1998, p. 1088):
There are several possible benefits that dissociative phenomena, such as autoscopy, may confer. For example, when a prey is likely to be caught by its predator, feigning death may be of survival value. Also, accounts from survivors of near-death experiences in combat or mountaineering suggest that the mental clarity associated with dissociation may allow subjects to perform remarkable rescue maneuvers that might not otherwise be possible. Therefore, dissociation may be a neural mechanism that allows one to remain calm in the midst of near-death trauma.
It is not at all inconceivable that there are physically or emotionally stressful situations, in which an information-processing system is forced to introduce a “representational division of labor” by distributing different representational functions into two or more distinct self-models (in what was previously called “multiple personality disorder” [...]) The OBE may be an instance of transient functional modularization, of a purposeful separation of levels of representational content in the PSM.
For instance, if cut off from somatosensory input, or if flooded with stressful signals and information threatening the overall integrity of the self-model as such, it may be advantageous to integrate the ongoing conscious representation of higher cognitive functions like attention, conceptual thought and volitional selection processes into a separate model of the self. This may allow for a high degree of integrated processing, that is, for “mental clarity,” by functionally encapsulating and thereby modularizing different functions like proprioception or attention and cognition in order to preserve at least some of these functions in a life-threatening situation. Almost all necessary system-related information is still glob-ally available, and higher-order processes like attention and cognition can still operate on it as it is presented in an integrated manner. But its distribution across specific subregions in phenomenal space as a whole has now dramatically changed. Only one of the two self-models is truly “situated” in the overall scene, integrated into an internally simulated behavioral space. Only one of them is immediately embodied and virtually self-present in the sense described. As it is fully transparent, it is a full-blown phenomenal self instantiating the phenomenal property of selfhood for the system. Frequently, both self-models integrated within a single OBE are constituted by spatial as well as non-spatial mental content." (pp.68-69)
"Interestingly, the bodily self-model forming the object-component in this type of first-person experience never changes much in its spatial properties. The physical body viewed from an external perspective is very rarely distorted or changed in shape and size. However, the subject-component of the intentionality-relation modeled in these states may vary greatly (note how just the opposite principle holds for ordinary waking states). Some OBE subjects see or feel themselves in a weightless replica of their original body, others experience themselves as being in no body at all or in a kind of indeterminate form, such as a ball of light or an energy pattern [...] or even as “pure consciousness”." (pp.69-70)
"This may indicate that spatial content is not strictly necessary in realizing the function fulfilled by the second self-model for the system as a whole. In other words, those higher functions such as attention, cognition and agency, which are integrated by the “dissociated” self, now are only weakly embodied functions. In order to be carried out they do not need the integration into a spatially characterized, explicit body image. Arguably, attentional and cognitive agency can functionally be decoupled from the process of autonomic self-regulation and the spatial self-representation necessary for generating motor behavior. Conceptually, this is an important insight about the human mind. As it is plausible to assume that also non-cognitive creatures like animals could undergo the type of fully disembodied OBEs described above, we may conclude that attentional agency actually is one of the essential core properties underlying the conscious experience of selfhood. Spatial self-representation and cognitive self-reference are not necessary for selfhood.
However, the prototypical OBE clearly takes place in an egocentric frame of reference possessing a spatial, bodily self-model as its origin. In this context, it may also be interesting to note that certain technological setups in virtual reality (VR) experiments – so-called second-person VR and telepresence systems [...] – seem to achieve precisely the same effect, by creating the conscious experience of viewing one’s own body as embedded into and interacting with a virtual world or the experience that there is a “real you” not currently inhabiting your body. Such technical systems offer an additional functional module (a graphic image or a robot body) through which subjects can control their own behavior. Participants in VR experiments of this type frequently describe their phenomenology simply as being an out-of-body experience, even if they have never had a natural OBE before (Heeter 1992). If it could be empirically confirmed that the spatiality of the attentional and cognitive self-model hovering above the self-as-object-component in the OBE-model of reality is not a strictly necessary condition, this would support the functional modularization hypothesis proposed here." (p.70)
"It is surprising to see how theoreticians exploring virtual environments today not only employ phenomenological notions like “presence” or “sit-uatedness”, but have already coined a terminological notion for what, under the self-model theory of subjectivity, would be the spatial partition of the PSM modeling motor properties of the organism: the “virtual body” [...] A virtual body is a part of an extended virtual environment, a dynamic and high-dimensional tool that can be used to control a robot at a distance, employing the virtual body as an interface. However, these authors also point out how the issue of “identification” is crucial in the context of teleoperator systems controlling distant robots, and how users of a virtual environment may actually reject their virtual body –just as some neuropsychological patients do [...] Most illustrative, however, is the notion of a “slave robot”: To achieve telepresence, an operator has to rely on a high correlation between his own movements as sensed “directly” and the actions of the slave robot; and he ideally has to achieve an identification between his own body and that of the slave robot.
A virtual body, like a PSM, is an advanced interface to functionally appropriate and control a body. Virtual body and physical body may be separated by thousands of miles, and the interface used will (hopefully) only be episodically transparent. In the PSM-case, Mother Nature has solved all major interface problems millions of years ago, including a virtual body and extensive internal user modeling: Target system and simulating system are identical; and conscious subjectivity is the case in which a single organism has learned to enslave itself. This does not turn the system into a slave robot, but into an increasingly autonomous agent. Autonomy is conscious self-control, and an OBE is a situation in which self-control has been divided into different functional modules." (pp.70-71)
"From a systematic point of view, thorough analyses of deviant phenomenal models of the self are of highest relevance for their psychological characterization. However, the quantity and quality of available scientific research is low. It is particularly low for OBEs, and also for neurophenomenological state-classes of related interest such as dissociative identity disorders (DID) or lucid dreams. It is hard to find empirical work that lives up to the methodological or conceptual standards of current cognitive neuroscience or analytical philosophy of mind." (p.71)
"Irwin proposes a model involving a shift in attentional processing during episodes of weakened somatosensory input and a kinesthetic completion of the somaesthetic body image mediated by a visual model of the environment, constructed from memory sources [...] As somaesthetic input is lost, other presentational subformats –like vision and kinesthesia– become more dominant and take its role in stabilizing the PSM. As Alvarado (2000, p. 203) points out, Irwin’s model has received support from studies relating absorption and visuospatial abilities to the OBE and positively correlating synaesthesia-like items from a specific absorption scale to OBE frequency.
Palmera nalyses OBEs as compensatory processes after events threaten the integrity of the overall self-model by causing fundamental changes in the body schema [...] For Palmer, OBEs are just one of many routes the system can take to rescue its threatened phenomenal identity, to preserve the overall coherence of the self-model. As Alvarado (2000, p. 202) puts it, in Palmer’s view the “OBE, then, is an attempt to prevent the jeopardy to one’s identity from reaching awareness and precipitating a crisis.”." (p.72)
-Thomas Metzinger, « Out-of-Body Experiences as the Origin of the Concept of a “Soul” », Mind Matter, 2005, vol. 3, p. 57-84.
Dernière édition par Johnathan R. Razorback le Jeu 18 Avr - 22:19, édité 6 fois
