Being a Beast Machine: An Interoceptive Basis for Conscious Selfhood

The experience of self is, at least for human beings, central to all conscious experiences. In this chapter, I explore the view that the most basic experiences of selfhood—those associated with ‘being a body’—are grounded in control-oriented predictions about interoceptive signals. This perspective illuminates the potential neurocognitive basis of several aspects of self-related phenomenology, both in everyday life and in psychiatric conditions such as depersonalisation disorder. I set out opportunities and challenges for this view, and close with a discussion of what can be said about the relations that connect life, mind, and consciousness.