6533b82cfe1ef96bd128fb53

RESEARCH PRODUCT

The embodied consciousness

subject

description

Consciousness is a polysemous concept including among others self-awareness (of his body ...), the awareness of the environment around us, the awareness of the other or even narrative awareness (a kind of inner monologue that can be part of more extended temporalities). To this list could be added the consciousness attached to each sensory organ in which visual perception would be overrepresented. Compared to the consciousness linked to vestibular sensory signals or proprioception (if however these can generate separate consciousnesses), "visual awareness" lends itself more easily to introspection. In Occident, all these consciousnesses generally refer to a knowledge of self by duplication of personality where the actor is spectator of his own life: one of the two throws himself out of the other then turns around and redirects his attention to the other himself to learn about his perceptions. Overlooking himself, the individual is disconnected from the world as soon as his intention is to know oneself as an object detached from itself. Mindful awareness, reflexive posture which takes off from reality, is a knowledge overhanging oneself; it is a meta consciousness which consists in perceiving the body at the third person perspective, as a second layer of pleasure or fear after emotion.The hypothesis supported here is that of a link between action and consciousness which is enriched by as the body structure as goal oriented behavior become more complex, a combination only possible over the long term scale of phylogenetic and ontogenetic temporalities. Without any concerns about such assimilation from one to the other which transforms them into varied matters but united in a homogeneous whole, leads to perpetuate a dualism which serves our understanding of consciousness and gives false hope to the most optimistic who promise the imminent advent of an artificial consciousness devoid of bodily anchoring.