Embodiment, Intersubjectivity, and the Minimal Self

Project Information

MinimalSelf

Grant agreement ID: 701584

DOI

10.3030/701584

Project closed

EC signature date 3 March 2016

Start date 1 July 2016

End date 30 June 2018

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 166 156,80

EU contribution

€ 166 156,80

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAT WIEN
Austria

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MinimalSelf (Embodiment, Intersubjectivity, and the Minimal Self)

Reporting period: 2016-07-01 to 2018-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The project studied the most fundamental sense of self from a philosophical and interdisciplinary perspective. Its starting point was the concept of the “minimal self,” as recently employed by philosophers such as Gallagher and Zahavi, who suppose that the minimal self is given in every conscious experience before we reflect on the experience. In traditional and contemporary debates there is considerable confusion concerning how to conceive of the most fundamental sense of the self and its relation to subjectivity, consciousness, intersubjectivity, and the embodied person. The project showed that the minimal self is integral to conscious experience rather than merely formal, that it is an important constituent of the person as a whole, and that it can only relate to the world because it is part of an embodied being that is embedded in an intersubjective community.

How we conceive of the minimal self is at the heart of how we conceive of ourselves and others. If, for instance, there is ultimately no self but only brain activity, this not only has implications for the concept we have of ourselves and others, but also for the responsibility for our actions. Many people thus rightly feel confused by claims such as that brain science proves there is no self. The project made sense of the general intuition that there is a self by arguing that there is at least a minimal self, and that it is fundamental to other concepts of the self. The project found that consciousness is structured in such a way that it connects apparently contradictory concepts, such as that of the subject and that of the embodied self in the world. It was furthermore shown that a better appreciation of the complexity of consciousness is pivotal to our understanding of the possibilities in which technology can handle cognition.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project was divided into four work packages. The first engaged with the phenomenological tradition of philosophy, which provides the background for more recent conceptions of the minimal self. It was shown that Husserl’s method of avoiding the naturalistic reduction of consciousness and self brings to the fore the problem of the interrelationship between the self as a subject for the world and the intersubjectively experienced world.

The second work package applied the conceptual distinctions made in the first to contemporary accounts of the minimal self and related discussions. This revealed ambiguities in the debate and elucidated the tension between the claim that the minimal self is both a character of experience and, at the same time, a seemingly merely formal structure of experience. Formal accounts of the minimal self as well as recent proposals that conceive the minimal self as an object of experience were shown to be insufficient. Instead, the minimal self needs to be conceived as an experiential structure of consciousness.

The third work package investigated the implications of the conceptual and phenomenological clarifications of the previous parts for psychopathological disturbances of the self. On the one hand, this involved an investigation of the applicability of this concept to the understanding of psychopathological phenomena. On the other, the project investigated what psychiatric studies on basic disturbances of the self can tell us about the relation of the minimal self to the intersubjectively-shared world of embodied experience.

The fourth work package explored the consequences of the concept of the minimal self for debates of public interest. The project showed that the belief that there is no self is flawed, that philosophical questions about the most basic sense of the self are fundamental to the comprehension of human consciousness, and that scientific investigation can also contribute to questions concerning human identity. A further exploration focused on questions of the role of consciousness in relation to artificial intelligence.

The results delineated above and other results are distributed across five peer-reviewed articles and other publications. The results and work in progress were discussed in presentations at a number of international conferences. The project also involved the organization of the workshop “Perspectives on the Minimal Self” at the University of Vienna in 2018. Presentations were given by some of the best-known philosophers working on the topic. The workshop was open to the public and attracted a large number of international visitors. Another workshop with two major American scholars on the phenomenological investigation of subjectivity was organized at the University of Vienna in 2018.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project progressed beyond the state of the art in several seminal respects. It showed that the concept of self is much more fundamental to science and philosophy in general than commonly thought. Since the self comprises a perspective on the whole world, its investigation has far-reaching consequences for the understanding of the interrelationship between consciousness and the intersubjectively shared world.

The project revealed that the minimal self as a subject of conscious experience stands in a more difficult relation to the self as an embodied being in the world than usually thought. Going beyond interpretations that allege that the difference can easily be resolved, the project showed that it is already present in the dual directedness of consciousness. Furthermore, new light was thrown on Husserl’s late account of the confusions that stand in the way of a clear understanding of consciousness. Contrary to the prevailing interpretations, it was explained that to gain a clearer understanding of the self as a subject of experience, it is insufficient to refute reductive naturalism, and that a clear account of the relation between the self and the world is also required.

The results were applied to psychopathological phenomena. Since the minimal self is so fundamental to consciousness, it cannot completely disappear even in disturbed conscious experience. It has been argued that in psychopathological illness it can become “fragile,” however. Employing the concept of the minimal self as elaborated in the project, the prediction was made that self-disturbances should go hand in hand with disturbances of the experience of the intersubjective world and time, which was used to explain core observations in studies of schizophrenia.

In addition, the project led to an application to the question in how far technology can replicate or simulate human cognition. It showed that it is insufficient to think of cognition in terms of calculation, and that cognition rather requires a conscious subject. On the one hand, this is relevant for the development of future technology that processes and potentially “understands” meaning, while on the other it is relevant for debates of public interest concerning the possibilities of artificial intelligence, which is having an increasing impact on society and economy.

The project has further potential impacts on other issues of public interest. Understanding the most basic sense of the self is fundamental to questions such as the relation between ourselves as conscious beings and other humans, animals, and nature, the potentials of agency and freedom, and the possibilities of understanding others not only by finding oneself in the other but also by respecting others as genuinely different conscious beings.

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