Back to square one : the bodily roots of conscious experiences in early life
Ciaunica, Anna and Safron, Adam and Delafield-Butt, Jonathan (2021) Back to square one : the bodily roots of conscious experiences in early life. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2021 (2). niab037. ISSN 2057-2107 (https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niab037)
Preview |
Text.
Filename: Ciaunica_etal_NC_2021_the_bodily_roots_of_conscious_experiences_in_early_life.pdf
Final Published Version License: Download (395kB)| Preview |
Abstract
Most theoretical and empirical discussions about the nature of consciousness are typically couched in a way that endorses a tacit adult-centric and vision-based perspective. This paper defends the idea that consciousness science may be put on a fruitful track for its next phase by examining the nature of subjective experiences through a bottom-up developmental lens. We draw attention to the intrinsic link between consciousness, experiences and experiencing subjects, which are first and foremost embodied and situated organisms essentially concerned with self-preservation within a precarious environment. Our paper suggests that in order to understand what consciousness is, one should first tackle the fundamental question: how do embodied experiences arise from square one? We then highlight one key yet overlooked aspect of human consciousness studies, namely that the earliest and closest environment of an embodied experiencing subject is the body of another human experiencing subject. We present evidence speaking in favour of fairly sophisticated forms of early sensorimotor integration of bodily signals and self-generated actions already being established in utero. We conclude that these primitive and fundamentally relational and co-embodied roots of our early experiences may have crucial impact on the way human beings consciously experience the self, body and the world across their lifespan.
ORCID iDs
Ciaunica, Anna, Safron, Adam and Delafield-Butt, Jonathan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8881-8821;-
-
Item type: Article ID code: 78215 Dates: DateEvent20 November 2021Published20 November 2021Published Online21 September 2021AcceptedSubjects: Education Department: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HaSS) > Strathclyde Institute of Education > Education
Strategic Research Themes > Health and WellbeingDepositing user: Pure Administrator Date deposited: 19 Oct 2021 14:48 Last modified: 26 Nov 2024 07:59 URI: https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/78215