03.05.2023 | Philosophische Fakultät, Philosophisches Seminar

Ego Dissolution as a test for theories of self-awareness

Abstract:

What, if anything, are we aware of when we report feelings of self awareness? Popular  answers are (i) Nothing. The self is a fictional/narrative construct with no real referent. It is a “Centre of Narrative Gravity”(ii) Something. Autobiographies narrate the experience of a unified persisting entity (iii)A perceived object. The self is represented by the brain in the same way as perceptual objects by a process of feature binding. (iv) A target of homeostatic regulation.

Each of these views has a metaphysical and a neuro cognitive version. Here I focus on the neurocognitive version that fits best with Active Inference theory. When we focus on  neurocognitive mechanisms (iv) is the best candidate. However this requires us to  think of interoception as a regulatory process (active inference) that postulates the self as a centre of interoceptive gravity rather than an object to which bodily features are bound.

I use the phenomenon of ego dissolution in psychedelic experience to clarify this idea. Ego Dissolution is not a case of “unbinding” but of entropy.