Abstract
The term “minimal phenomenal selfhood” (MPS) describes the basic, pre-reflective experience of being a self (Blanke and Metzinger, 2009). Theoretical accounts of the minimal self have long recognized the importance and the ambivalence of the body as both part of the physical world, and the enabling condition for being in this world (Gallagher, 2005a; Grafton, 2009). A recent account of MPS (Metzinger, 2004a) centers on the consideration that minimal selfhood emerges as the result of basic self-modeling mechanisms, thereby being founded on pre-reflective bodily processes. The free energy principle (FEP; Friston, 2010) is a novel unified theory of cortical function built upon the imperative that self-organizing systems entail hierarchical generative models of the causes of their sensory input, which are optimized by minimizing free energy as an approximation of the log-likelihood of the model. The implementation of the FEP via predictive coding mechanisms and in particular the active inference principle emphasizes the role of embodiment for predictive self-modeling, which has been appreciated in recent publications. In this review, we provide an overview of these conceptions and illustrate thereby the potential power of the FEP in explaining the mechanisms underlying minimal selfhood and its key constituents, multisensory integration, interoception, agency, perspective, and the experience of mineness. We conclude that the conceptualization of MPS can be well mapped onto a hierarchical generative model furnished by the FEP and may constitute the basis for higher-level, cognitive forms of self-referral, as well as the understanding of other minds.
Highlights
The free energy principle (FEP; Friston, 2010) is a novel unified theory of cortical function built upon the imperative that self-organizing systems entail hierarchical generative models of the causes of their sensory input, which are optimized by minimizing free energy as an approximation of the log-likelihood of the model
The aspects of the minimal self that these approaches formalize in the FEP all follow as consequences from this embodied self-modeling (Metzinger, 2004a; Hohwy, 2007; Friston, 2011): The body predicts and integrates multisensory information in a way that no other physical object does (Hohwy, 2007, 2010; Apps and Tsakiris, 2013), it is the only source of internally generated input (Seth et al, 2011; Critchley and Seth, 2012), it is crucial for interaction with the environment and a sense of agency (Kilner et al, 2007; Frith, 2007; Friston et al, 2011)
In this review, we have summarized proposals from different authors, all emphasizing the concept of hierarchical generative models to explain processes underlying the bodily foundations of minimal phenomenal selfhood (MPS), including its fundamental constituents such as multisensory integration, the sense of agency, the experience of mineness, perspectivity, and its phenomenal transparency
Summary
Reviewed by: Jakob Hohwy, Monash University, Australia Matthew Apps, University of Oxford, UK. The term “minimal phenomenal selfhood” (MPS) describes the basic, pre-reflective experience of being a self (Blanke and Metzinger, 2009). A recent account of MPS (Metzinger, 2004a) centers on the consideration that minimal selfhood emerges as the result of basic self-modeling mechanisms, thereby being founded on pre-reflective bodily processes. The implementation of the FEP via predictive coding mechanisms and in particular the active inference principle emphasizes the role of embodiment for predictive self-modeling, which has been appreciated in recent publications. We conclude that the conceptualization of MPS can be well mapped onto a hierarchical generative model furnished by the FEP and may constitute the basis for higher-level, cognitive forms of self-referral, as well as the understanding of other minds
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