Embodied mind
Is the self lost in dementia?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
If personhood is primarily bodily selfhood and implicit memory, dementia disturbs reflective meta-perspective without erasing the self-as-subject.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Other — Phenomenological argument that basal bodily selfhood persists despite reflective losses in dementia
- N
- Philosophical phenomenology; not an empirical sample
- Population
- Personhood and selfhood accounts applied to people living with dementia
- Outcome
- Dementia disturbs reflective meta-perspective without erasing the self-as-subject
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
Key findings
Dementia disturbs decentering and meta-perspective, but large ranges of implicit/body memory can remain even late. Continuity of a basal feeling of self should block talk of a total loss of self. Founding the self only in others’ discourse misses first-person awareness. A purely rational concept of person stigmatises people with severe cognitive deficits.
Methodology
The author opposes a cognitivist picture of dementia (loss of self as loss of memory and reflection) to a phenomenology of the body. Drawing on body-memory traditions (Maine de Biran, Bergson), they distinguish self-as-object from self-as-subject and criticise purely externalist or discursive accounts of remaining personhood.
Limitations
This is a philosophical reconstruction, not a new clinical cohort. It does not measure residual body memory in a sample, and it does not deny that dementia is devastating for reflective capacities.
How this study connects
Role on claims
Each row is a claim on a concept or method page where this paper supports, challenges, or qualifies the statement. Roles are hand-checked — not a model guess.
If personhood is primarily bodily selfhood and implicit memory, dementia can disturb reflective perspective without erasing the self-as-subject.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Applied to personal identity, the method has been used to distinguish self-as-object from self-as-subject in dementia, arguing that implicit body memory and a basal feeling of self can remain even when reflective meta-perspective is disturbed, and to assess memory-modification technologies on a narrative account of the self, where deleting factual content threatens authenticity but stripping sensory vividness often does not.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Across the set, the output is an argument rather than a dataset. The papers describe themselves as essays, reconstructions or legal-philosophical analyses; none produces a clinical score, a cohort or a trial, and several say so explicitly in their limits.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Where the self is grounded. The dementia paper founds personhood in bodily selfhood and implicit memory and criticises purely discursive accounts, while the two neuroethics papers found practical identity in a self-told narrative whose accuracy and coherence can be damaged by editing memory or by misleading information. Both are phenomenological, but they locate the threat to identity in different places.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Open questions
Tensions this paper is part of
From concept pages' “where studies disagree.” Disagreement means the same question; scope means different assays, populations, or outcomes.
Where the self is grounded. The dementia paper founds personhood in bodily selfhood and implicit memory and criticises purely discursive accounts, while the two neuroethics papers found practical identity in a self-told narrative whose accuracy and coherence can be damaged by editing memory or by misleading information. Both are phenomenological, but they locate the threat to identity in different places.
- Supports · When does memory editing threaten authenticity?
- Supports · Can brain data help us tell who we are?
Related papers in this topic
Same topic cluster — not a recommendation engine.