arXiv.org
January 28, 2026
E. J. Bekkers, Anna Ciaunica
Imagine an Artificial Intelligence (AI) that perfectly mimics human emotion and begs for its continued existence. Is it morally permissible to unplug it? What if limited resources force a choice between unplugging such a pleading AI or a silent pre-term infant? We term this the unplugging paradox. This paper critically examines the deeply ingrained physicalist assumptions-specifically...
Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland)
August 12, 2025
Veronika Alekseeva, Anna Ciaunica
From the moment we are born, and even before, in the womb, and until our last breath, our bodies move all the time. Adaptive behaviors necessarily depend not only on the successful integration of multisensory bodily signals but also on how we move our bodies in the world. This paper considers the notion of embodied selfhood through the perspective of dynamic and rhymical coupling between bodily...
Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006)
June 1, 2025
Francesca Ferroni, Edoardo Arcuri, Martina Ardizzi et al.
7 citations
Perception of one's own body in time and space is a fundamental aspect of self-consciousness. It scaffolds our subjective experience of being present, in the here and now, a vital condition for our survival and well-being. Depersonalisation (DP) is characterised by a distressing feeling of being "spaced out," detached from one's self, as well as atypical "flat" time perception. Using an...
arXiv Preprint Archive
September 22, 2024
Michael Timothy Bennett, Sean Welsh, Anna Ciaunica
We tackle the hard problem of consciousness taking the naturally selected, embodied organism as our starting point. We provide a formalism describing how biological systems self-organise to hierarchically interpret unlabelled sensory information according to valence. Such interpretations imply behavioural policies which are differentiated from each other only by the qualitative aspect of...
Philosophical Perspectives on Psychedelic Psychiatry
September 13, 2024
Anna Ciaunica, Adam Safron
Abstract This chapter examines the feeling of ‘losing’ the sense of familiarity with one’s self and body in depersonalization and psychedelic experiences through an ‘active inference’ lens. It is suggested that psychedelic-induced experiences may involve a stance with radically altered prior expectations, providing opportunities for flexibly modulating self- and world models. Specifically,...
Scientific Reports
March 13, 2024
Matt P D Gwyther, Bigna Lenggenhager, Jennifer Windt et al.
3 citations
Depersonalisation (DP) is characterized by fundamental alterations to the sense of self that include feelings of detachment and estrangement from one's body. We conducted an online study in healthy participants (n = 514) with DP traits to investigate and quantify the subjective experience of body and self during waking and dreaming, as the vast majority of previous studies focussed on waking...
March 30, 2023
Valeria Becattini, Anna Ciaunica
preprint
Deep contemplative states such as meditative states alter the subjective experience of being a self distinct from the world and others to a point that the individual may report ‘selfless’ states. In this paper, we propose a shift in focus on homeostatic bodily self-regulation underlying selfless experiences. We suggest that during reported phenomena of ‘self-loss’ or ‘pure consciousness’, the...
Consciousness and Cognition
April 28, 2022
Anna Ciaunica, Anil K. Seth, Jakub Limanowski et al.
76 citations
This paper considers the phenomenology of depersonalisation disorder, in relation to predictive processing and its associated pathophysiology. To do this, we first establish a few mechanistic tenets of predictive processing that are necessary to talk about phenomenal transparency, mental action, and self as subject. We briefly review the important role of 'predicting precision' and how this...
March 13, 2022
Anna Ciaunica, Adam Safron
8 citations
preprint
Across times and cultures, humans constantly and intentionally tried to ‘lose’ or to ‘escape’ their familiar, ordinary self, to ‘self-detach’ and to radically change the ways of perceiving oneself and the world. In this paper we explore the contrast between the feeling of ‘losing’ the sense of familiarity with one’s self and body in Depersonalisation experiences (DP) and psychedelics (with some...
Scientific Reports
March 10, 2022
Anna Ciaunica, Luke McEllin, Julian Kiverstein et al.
Depersonalisation is a common dissociative experience characterised by distressing feelings of being detached or 'estranged' from one's self and body and/or the world. The COVID-19 pandemic forcing millions of people to socially distance themselves from others and to change their lifestyle habits. We have conducted an online study of 622 participants worldwide to investigate the relationship...
Consciousness and Cognition
May 1, 2021
Anna Ciaunica, Axel Constant, Hubert Preissl et al.
99 citations
The idea that our perceptions in the here and now are influenced by prior events and experiences has recently received substantial support and attention from the proponents of the Predictive Processing (PP) and Active Inference framework in philosophy and computational neuroscience. In this paper we look at how perceptual experiences get off the ground from the outset, in utero. One basic yet...
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
June 6, 2020
Anna Ciaunica, J. C. Charlton, Harry Farmer
78 citations
Abstract There has recently been a resurgence of philosophical and scientific interest in the foundations of self-consciousness, with particular focus on its altered, anomalous forms. This paper looks at the altered forms of self-awareness in Depersonalization Disorder (DPD), a condition in which people feel detached from their self, their body and the world (Derealisation). Building upon the...
Lara Maister, Anna Ciaunica
preprint
Depersonalization is a condition that makes people feel detached from one’s self, body and others. The representation of one’s own face is a salient bodily aspect of self-awareness and identity, and empirical evidence suggests that individuals with depersonalization disorder experience disrupted perception of their faces when viewing themselves in photographs or in the mirror, which has been...
Veronika Alekseeva, Anna Ciaunica
preprint
From the moment we are born, and even before, in the womb, and until our last breath, our bodies move all the time. Adaptive behaviors necessarily depend not only on successful integration of multisensory bodily signals but also on how we move our body in the world. This paper considers the notion of embodied selfhood through the perspective of dynamic and rhythmic coupling between bodily...
Anna Ciaunica, Julia Ayache, Patrick Haggard et al.
preprint
The sense of agency, i.e. the subjective feeling of voluntarily controlling one’s bodily actions is profoundly altered in Depersonalisation (DP henceforth), a condition that makes people feel detached from one’s self and body. The intentional binding (IB henceforth) effect has been proposed as an influential implicit measure of the sense of agency. IB refers to the phenomenon of perceived...
Anna Ciaunica
preprint
This chapter addresses the problem of conscious subjective experiences from a developmental perspective. The aim is to argue that tackling the nature of conscious experiences from the priviledged standpoint of adult (mostly) visual perception is misleading. Instead, I claim, the realy interesting question is : how do we open the doors of bodily sensory experiences at the dawn of our conscious...