The Illusion of the Self

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The self is at the heart of when people talk about felt present in particular. There's another person in the tent with me or on the ropes or in the room, he says. The experiments fall back for really nice illustrations of what I call the presence which is like a story that I love to tell us. A German neurologist has devised an experiment where they induced these experiences by getting them to do strange movements and put their finger around this round aperture. You can see more from his paper here.

Shermer and Alderson-Day discuss the psychologist’s journey to understand the phenomenon of sensed-presence: the disturbing feeling that someone or something is there when we are alone. Using contemporary psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and philosophy, Alderson-Day attempts to understand how this experience is possible. Is it a hallucination, a change in the brain, or something else? The journey to understand takes us to meet explorers, mediums, and robots, and step through real, imagined, and virtual worlds.

Ben Alderson-Day is an Associate Professor in Psychology and a Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing at Durham University. A specialist in atypical cognition and mental health, his work spans cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, philosophy, and child development. His new book is Presence: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other.