Embodied mineness and background agency: a neurophenomenological approach to the minimal self

The minimal self, often described as the pre-reflective sense that experience is 'mine,' is not neutral about the body but is fundamentally embodied and agential. Evidence from multisensory integration and interoceptive processing shows that neurocognitive mechanisms for bodily ownership and presence span brain and body, grounding the quality of mineness. Phenomenologically, the lived body manifests as an absolute 'here' inseparable from a practical, outward orientation toward the world. This orientation corresponds to background agency: a passive, pre-reflective bodily self-awareness captured by the 'I can.' Enactive and dynamical approaches suggest that processes underlying background agency and bodily ownership are entangled and co-emergent, giving rise to minimal selfhood as an embodied and agential subjectivity.

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Abstract

Abstract The phenomenological concept of minimal selfhood (understood as the pre-reflective dimension of ‘for-me-ness’ or ‘mineness’ that is constitutive of the first-personal character of experience) is often treated as so formal and abstract that it remains neutral regarding embodiment. This paper challenges that view through a neurophenomenological approach that circulates between empirical evidence and phenomenological analysis to argue that minimal selfhood is fundamentally an embodied and agential phenomenon. At the empirical level, evidence from multisensory integration and interoceptive processing reveals that the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the sense of bodily ownership and presence span across brain and body, grounding the pre-reflective quality of mineness. At the phenomenological level, the lived body is pre-reflectively self-manifest as the zero-point of orientation or an absolute ‘here’ that I argue is inseparable from a practical, outward orientation toward the world. This practical orientation corresponds to what I call background agency: a passive, pre-reflective form of bodily self-awareness that is captured by the phenomenological concept of the ‘I can’, which denotes a form of self-manifestation related to the capacity of engaging in action. Drawing on enactive and dynamical approaches to cognition, I further argue that the neurocognitive processes underlying background agency are entangled with those responsible for bodily ownership and mineness, suggesting that these two structures are co-emergent, giving rise to minimal selfhood. The ‘me’ of for-me-ness, I conclude, is an embodied and agential subjectivity.