Abstract:Abstract A vast array of experimental results has recently shown that there is something specific in the way we perceive the space immediately surrounding the body, also known as ‘peripersonal space’,...Abstract A vast array of experimental results has recently shown that there is something specific in the way we perceive the space immediately surrounding the body, also known as ‘peripersonal space’, by contrast with the perception of what lies farther away. However, we seem to have no conscious awareness of peripersonal space as being ‘special’ in any sense. Instead, we are presented with a continuous visual field without a phenomenological boundary between what is close and what is far. The computational peculiarities of peripersonal perception thus seem to have no phenomenological consequences. Here I will argue that, when you see an object in the immediate surroundings of your body, not only do you have a visual experience of the object (comparable to the experience you can have of further objects), but you also experience what you see as being here. This sense of here-ness can be conceived of as a specific type of sense of presence. To better understand it, I shall turn to illusions in virtual reality and to the feeling of disconnection in the psychiatric syndrome of depersonalization.Read More