69
G. Riva, M.T. Anguera, B.K. Wiederhold and F. Mantovani (Eds.)
From Communication to Presence: Cognition, Emotions and Culture towards the
Ultimate Communicative Experience. Festschrift in honor of Luigi Anolli
IOS Press, Amsterdam, 2006, (c) All rights reserved - http://www.emergingcommunication.com
For this reason, the presence-as-feeling - the non mediated (prereflexive) perception
that an intention is being enacted successfully - is not separated by the experience of
the subject but it is related to the quality of our actions. It corresponds to what
Heidegger [1] defined “the interrupted moment of our habitual standard, comfortable
being-in-the-world”. In fact, a higher level of presence-as-feeling is experienced by
the self as a better quality of action and experience [103, 104].
Further, the self becomes aware of the presence-as-feeling separated by our being-
in-the-world when its level is modified. More in detail, the self perceives directly
only the variations in the level of presence-as-feeling: breakdowns and optimal
experiences.
On one side we have optimal experiences. According to Csikszentmihalyi [105,
106], individuals preferentially engage in opportunities for action associated with a
positive, complex and rewarding state of consciousness, defined “optimal
experience” or “flow”. Here we argue that flow is the result of the link between the
highest level of presence-as-feeling, with a positive emotional state. In fact, it is also
possible to experience high levels of presence in negative emotional states: e.g. in the
battlefield during an attack from the enemy.
On the other side we have breakdowns. Winograd and Flores [6] refer to presence
disruptions as breakdowns: when, during an action, an object or an environment
becomes part of our consciousness then a breakdown has occurred. Why do we
experience these breakdowns? Our hypothesis is that breakdowns are a sophisticated
evolutionary tool used to control the quality of experience: the more the breakdown,
the less is the level of presence-as-feeling, the less is the quality of experience, and
the less is the possibility of surviving in the environment.
At this point we can argue that is the feeling of presence that provides to the self a
feedback about the status of its activity: the self perceives the variations in the feeling
of presence and tunes its activity accordingly. Specifically, the self tries to overcome
any breakdown in its activity and searches for engaging and rewarding activities
(optimal experiences).
3.5.2.1 The Layers of Presence
Even if presence is a unitary feeling, the recent neuropsychological research has
shown that, on the process side, it can be divided in three different
layers/subprocesses (for a broader and more in-depth description see [91] and the
next chapter by Waterworth and Waterworth), phylogenetically different, and strictly
related to the evolution of self [107]:
- proto presence (self vs. non self);
- core presence (self vs. present external world);
- and extended presence (self relative to present external world).
More precisely we can define “proto presence” the process of internal/external
separation related to the level of perception-action coupling (self vs. non-self). The
more the organism is able to couple correctly perceptions and movements, the more
it differentiates itself from the external world, thus increasing its probability of
surviving.
“Core presence” can be described as the activity of selective attention made by the
self on perceptions (self vs. present external world): the more the organism is able to
focus on its sensorial experience by leaving in the background the remaining neural