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Updated: Oct 11, 2025

Observing the Transformation of Bodily Self-consciousness in the Squeeze-machine Experiment
Published on: March 8, 2019
Environment-Related and Body-Related Components of the Minimal Self
Marvin Liesner1, Wilfried Kunde1
1Department of Cognitive Psychology, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany.
Abstract:
Perceptual changes that an agent produces by efferent activity can become part of the agent's minimal self. Yet, in human agents, efferent activities produce perceptual changes in various sensory modalities and in various temporal and spatial proximities. Some of these changes occur at the "biological" body, and they are to some extent conveyed by "private" sensory signals, whereas other changes occur in the environment of that biological body and are conveyed by "public" sensory signals. We discuss commonalties and differences of these signals for generating selfhood. We argue that despite considerable functional overlap of these sensory signals in generating self-experience, there are reasons to tell them apart in theorizing and empirical research about development of the self.
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