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Phenomenological Properties of
Perceptual Presence: A Constructivist
Grounded Theory Approach
Aleš Oblak • University of Ljubljana, Slovenia • oblak.ales.93/at/gmail.com
Asena Boyadzhieva • University of Vienna, Austria • a51808039/at/unet.univie.ac.at
Jure Bon • University of Ljubljana, Slovenia • jbon/at/psih-klinika.si

> Context • Perceptual presence is the experience wherein veridical objects are experienced as belonging to an
observer-independent world. > Problem • Experimental investigations of perceptual presence are rare. It may be
that the standard conceptualizations of perceptual presence are not suitable for experimental operationalization.
> Method • Using the framework of constructivist grounded theory, three observational perspectives (engaged, near-
ecological, and receptive) are employed to discern method-invariant phenomenological properties of perceptual pres-
ence. Inductive coding is used as a main analytical instrument. > Results • Four phenomenological properties of per-
ceptual presence are constructed: perceptually present objects (a) appear inexhaustible in the amount of modal detail
they contain; (b) are experienced as a particular arrangement of lived space; (c) allow for some and preclude other
bodily interactions; and (d) are marked by a specific feeling of coupling. > Implications • Descriptions of lived experi-
ence of perceptual presence, in particular the structure of lived space, may further allow for the design of experiments
that more precisely target individual properties of this phenomenon. > Constructivist content • Perceptual presence
is conceived of as one of the main properties of consciousness: it is the experience of objects as belonging to an observ-
er-independent world. Phenomenological properties contributing to how this sense of veridicality is constructed are
presented. > Key words • Perceptual presence, empirical phenomenology, grounded theory, artistic research, signal-
contingent experience sampling, contemplative research.

Introduction
« 1 »  One of the properties of experi-
ence is that the objects of perception are
not only present to us from the profile
that we are facing, but from the occluded
side as well. In Matthew Ratcliffe’s (2015)
words, objects are not merely sensori-
ally, but also perceptually present. What
is meant by this is that, in experience, the
objects contain more detail than is present
to our senses. They appear as three-dimen-
sional, voluminous (Wilkinson 2019), as
objects in space, as objects among objects
(Husserl 1997), and as belonging to what is
experienced as the observer-independent
world (Seth 2014), rather than our imagi-
nation (Sartre 2010). While some have
claimed that the objects of awareness must
physically exist for them to be perceptually
present (for review, see Noë 2012), others
have emphasized the contingent nature
of perceptual presence (PP), or its being
dependent on attitudes and dispositions
(Ratcliffe 2015).
« 2 »  PP has been of interest to mind
sciences ever since the problem was articu-
lated by Edmund Husserl (1997) in Thing
and Space. He primarily understood PP as
a matter of extension (i.e., how objects take
up space). Husserl argues that presence is es-
tablished by consciousness constructing an
empty spatial topology of an object, which
is then filled with sensory experience. Con-
versely, Martin Heidegger (1988) and Reiner
Mausfeld (2013) argue that PP is not a posi-
tive phenomenon. Rather, we behave as if we
experience the world as present. Only when
something goes wrong with presence, do we
become aware of it.
« 3 »  Samantha Matherne (2017) and
Ratcliffe (2015) take an interactive approach:
They argue that PP relates to a particular
manner of engagement with the world. A
similar position was adopted by Alva Noë
(2012), who claims that PP derives from our
skillful access to objects. Namely, the ob-
jects that are present to us are those objects
that we can access through our sensorimo-
tor awareness. In this way, even objects that
are spatially distant from the observer are to 295
some extent present. What is perceptually
present is that which can potentially be in-
teracted with, irrespective of the spatial dis-
tance between object and observer.
« 4 »  Despite interest in PP remaining
stable over the past century, experimental
investigations of this phenomenon in mind
sciences are rare (e.g., Suzuki et al. 2019). It
may be that the above-presented conceptu-
alizations of PP are not suited for operation-
alization in experiments. In recent years,
empirical approaches to gathering phenom-
enal data have proven useful in addressing
similar issues across cognitive science (Roy
et al. 1999). Our aim is to capitalize on these
developments in empirical phenomenol-
ogy and use the methods of constructiv-
ist grounded theory (Charmaz 2004) to

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construct more precise phenomenological
properties of PP. As PP is a phenomenon on
the experiential level of description, it may
be necessary to investigate its experience di-
rectly before valid experimental operation-
alization is tenable.
« 5 »  The present article refers to the fol-
lowing supplementary materials:
ƒ Supplementary materials A (SM-A):
Raw data, available at https://construc-
tivist.info/data/16/3/381-SM-A.pdf;
ƒ Supplementary materials B (SM-B): Ex-
tended research designs (wherein the
methodology of each phase is described
in detail), available at https://construc-
tivist.info/data/16/3/381-SM-B.pdf;
ƒ Supplementary materials C (SM-C):
The annotated codebook (Nelson 2017),
available at https://constructivist.info/
data/16/3/381-SM-C.pdf.
Starting assumptions
« 6 »  We adopted two assumptions.
First, it has been proposed that the content
of subjective reports is co-determined by the
way we inquire into experience (Kordeš &
Demšar 2018). It may be that different meth-
ods prompt us to attend to different aspects
of our experience (Heimann 2020). This
relativistic nature of subjective reports has
been thought of both as a feature (Kordeš
& Demšar 2021) and a bug (Sparrow 2014)
of phenomenology. Since these discussions
are ongoing (for an overview, see Zahavi
2016), we conservatively aim at discern-
ing properties that remain invariant across
methods. We are not claiming that only
method-invariant phenomena are valid. We
are merely focusing on the most commonly
detected aspects of experience. Participants
in experiments have to be able to link the
demands of the task to mental behaviors
they are familiar with from their daily lives
(Morrison et al. 2019). Therefore, it stands
to reason that the most common aspects of
experience would be the most conducive to
experimental operationalization.
« 7 »  Second, there are a number of
non-overlapping conceptions of PP (Cor-
win & Erickson-Davis 2020). In this article,
PP refers to the presence of the world to an
observer (i.e., objecthood; Pacherie 1999),
rather than the presence of an observer in
the world (i.e., immersion; Seth, Suzuki &
Critchley 2012). Additionally, the overall
approach of the study is based on Bernard
Pachoud’s (1999: 211) proposal on investi-
gating PP “in a quasi-experimental way by
controlling, even manipulating the physi-
cal parameters of the situation” and gather-
ing associated descriptions of experience.
Consequently, we examine the phenomeno-
logical properties of the object of awareness,
rather than (mental) actions whereby pres-
ence is revealed to an individual (Wilkinson
2019). Further, as stated above, when we use
the term world, we are referring to what Anil
Seth (2014) refers to as subjective veridical-
ity: the experience of objects as belonging to
an observer-independent world.
Limitations
« 8 »  Throughout the study, we attempt-
ed to ground a conception of PP in both
empirically gathered data and philosophical
considerations that might make it logically
consistent. Taking seriously the observation
that depending on how we choose to gather
phenomenal data, the data itself changes, we
aimed at constructing experiential catego-
ries that point towards method-invariant
phenomenological properties of PP. How-
ever, it is impossible to make the claim that
PP – as conceived in this article – amounts
to an invariant structure of consciousness.
For example, we focused on PP as accessible
primarily through visual experience. While
this perspective is somewhat expanded by
Phase 2, our scope nonetheless remained
overtly visual (refer to the analysis in Section
2.4 in SM-B, to see how our methods biased
participants towards sensory experience).
It is therefore likely that the relative impor-
tance we ascribe to spatial experience is an
artefact of what has been termed the hege-
mony of vision (Levin 1993) and visual epis-
temology (Bleichmar 2012): the assumption
that vision is epistemically superordinate to
other sensory modalities. As such we make
no claim to be addressing, for example, the
problem of PP in auditory experience.
« 9 »  Further, as we note in SM-B (Sec-
tions 1.3 and 2.3.1), the data acquisition
took place during the Covid-19 lockdown.
It seems plausible that adapting to quaran-
tine life brought spatial experience to the
forefront of awareness in not only the par-
ticipants, but the researchers, as well. It may
very well be that the spatial experiences
constructed within this study are non-nor-
mative, that is, they reflect a particular his-
torical situation (experience of quarantine
in 2020 Central Europe).
« 10 »  The present study should there-
fore be read as an early foray into the empiri-
cal phenomenology of PP. In order to more
fully understand how PP appears in lived,
sensuous experience, additional methods
(e.g., experimental phenomenology, Alber-
tazzi 2019), aspects of experience (e.g., the
presence of others), and the context of in-
quiry (e.g., religious places) are to be inves-
tigated.
Methodological
considerations
« 11 »  The study consists of examining
PP from three observational perspectives
(engaged, near-ecological, and receptive).
Here, we present the overall direction of the
study. Detailed research designs for each in-
dividual phase as well as the analysis proce-
dure are presented in SM-B.
« 12 »  We gathered data from partici-
pants who were (a) trained in methods of
empirical phenomenology; and (b) low on
the suggestibility trait. It has been shown
that individuals exert significant control
over their own experience (Dienes, Palfi &
Lush 2020). This so-called phenomenologi-
cal control has been linked to a number of
cognitive phenomena being constructed as
demand characteristics (Lifshitz et al. 2013;
Lush 2020; Lush et al. 2020). To control for
the possibility that participants unwittingly
constructed aspects of their experience
(Gozli 2020), their level of phenomeno-
logical control was determined using the
Sussex-Waterloo Scale of Hypnotizability
(SWASH; Lush et al. 2018). We determined
suggestibility based on the data provided by
Pete Lush and colleagues (2018) where the
average SWASH score is 2.67 on a scale from
1.0 to 5.0 (N = 418, SD = 1.23). We defined
low-suggestible participants as falling in the
range between 1.44 and 2.67; moderately
suggestible as falling in the range between
2.67 and 3.9; and highly suggestible as scor-
ing 3.9 or higher.
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« 13 »  In Phase 1 (coded as PPPP-I), we
drew on naturalistic-laboratory neurosci-
ence (Matusz et al. 2018): rather than relying
on psychological tasks, an everyday activity
that relies on our phenomenon of investiga-
tion was operationalized (Hutchins 1993) –
a drawing task. It has been proposed (Haun
et al. 2017) and demonstrated (Valenzuela-
Moguillansky 2013) that drawing can be
used for gathering subjective reports. Ad-
ditionally, artistic practice provides a par-
ticular kind of understanding of perceived
objects (Anderson 2017; Dupré 2015). This
perspective is highly engaged, attentive, and
tied to a constant stream of mental acts and
gestures (Oblak 2020).
« 14 »  During each session, 12 partici-
pants were asked to observe and draw one
of six stimuli. The stimuli differed on a theo-
retical basis in their manner of presentation.
The stimuli were:
ƒ a physically existing, three-dimensional,
graspable object (an apple);
ƒ an imaginary object (a pear);
ƒ a digitally presented, two-dimensional
object (a hand);
ƒ a physically existing background (sky);
ƒ a physically existing predictable process
(a stream of water); and
ƒ a physically existing unpredictable pro-
cess (smoke and/or flame).
« 15 »  It has been noted that accounts
of cognitive phenomena obtained from a
laboratory setting differ from accounts ob-
tained in a naturalistic setting (Hurlburt et
al. 2016). To this effect, Phase 2 (coded as
PPPP-II) consisted of a near-ecological in-
vestigation of experience.1 On six to eight
days, 9 participants were prompted five to
seven times per day (depending on their
availability) via their phones to note down
their experience. After the prompt, they
specified their experience with an open-
ended questionnaire that was based on rel-
evant findings from Phase 1. The question-
naire consisted of the following items:
1 |  We use the term near-ecological because
we directed participants towards primarily ob-
serving experience as it was present to their con-
sciousness in the visual mode. Based on analysis
presented in SM-B, Subsection 2.4., we have rea-
son to believe that this methodological choice bi-
ased their reports towards sensory awareness.
Phenomenological Properties of Perceptual Presence Aleš Oblak et al.
ƒ description of context;
ƒ the most salient aspect of experience;
ƒ what is experienced in the visual field;
ƒ what is experienced in mental space;
ƒ how mental space is experienced;
ƒ associations;
ƒ empathic experiences;
ƒ anomalous aspects of experience;
ƒ the experience of PP.
Up to 24 hours after sampling, a debriefing
interview was held on relevant samples.2
« 16 »  Finally, the most common obser-
vational perspective for investigating experi-
ence, today, is a contemplative one. In this ap-
proach, an individual’s experience is observed
with open attention, in a mindful, and non-
judgmental manner (Depraz 2019; Kordeš
et al. 2019; Markič & Kordeš 2016). As this
approach represents the opposite approach to
Phase 1 (where we can observe a continuous
stream of analytic gestures), Phase 3 (coded
as PPPP-III) employs a meditative perspec-
tive. During each session, 8 participants were
asked to observe a different object with a re-
ceptive attitude, open attention, and without
performing any mental gestures upon the
objects. The types of objects were the same
as in Phase 1. At a random moment (for the
precise parameters of randomization, see
Section 3.3 in SM-B), the participants were
stopped by the researcher and asked to report
on what was present in their experience im-
mediately before the prompt.
« 17 »  The interviews in all phases were
based on the method of empathy used in the
field of descriptive psychopathology (Oye-
bode 2008). Throughout the interview pro-
cess, the interviewer attempted to empathize
with the participant’s experience (i.e., the
interviewer used questions to attune them-
selves to the experience of the participant).
Both open- and closed-form questions were
used to inquire into experience. The inter-
viewer guided the participant away from de-
scriptions of folk-psychological theories, sci-
entific theories about the mind, beliefs about
experience, and generalities. The interviewer
guided the participants towards subjective
reports grounded in sensory experience,
bodily feelings, mental gestures (operation-
2 |  The interviews were conducted either in
English or Slovene. Whenever Slovene interviews
are referenced, the relevant passages are trans-
lated into English.
ally defined as changes in the lived world fol-
lowing subjective perception of something
that participant does rather than something
happening to them), and attitudes. Summary
statements were used to check whether the
researcher’s understanding of the partici-
pant’s experience was accurate.
« 18 »  Phase 3 interviews were conduct-
ed using open-form questions only. The in-
terviews began with an overview of the par-
ticipant’s experience. Then, each modality of
the participant’s experience (visual, auditory,
bodily, affective, social, and spatial) was ex-
plored in detail. This constraint ensured that
only experiential categories that could be
observed anew in Phase 3 (i.e., without the
interviewers explicitly inquiring into them)
were discussed.
Analysis
« 19 »  The recordings of the interviews
were transcribed (available in SM-A). Sam-
ples that do not constitute valid subjective
reports, data from suggestible individuals,
and leading questions were removed. Phase
1 yielded 90 admissible samples (on aver-
age, 12.85 per participant). We obtained 33
admissible samples of the forward-facing
perspective, 28 admissible samples of the
occluded perspective, and 29 admissible
samples of the internal perspective. Phase
2 yielded 266 valid experience samples (on
average, 38 per participant). 36 follow-up
interviews were performed (on average,
5.14 per participant). 133 valid samples con- 297
tained discernible properties of PP. Phase 3
yielded 35 admissible samples of experience.
« 20 »  Data were analyzed according to
constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz
2004). The main analytic tool was coding
(i.e., assigning descriptive tags to sections of
raw text). Inductive coding was employed,
meaning that categories emerged from the
data. Induced categories were grouped to-
gether based on their descriptive similari-
ties (Flick 2009), as well as insights from the
extant literature (Zahavi 2018).3 This two-
3 | Interestingly, phenomenal data support
disparate and, sometimes, incompatible concep-
tions of PP (e.g., as will be seen below, the data
support both the taken-for-grantedness of PP and
its interactive aspects). It may be that different
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way approach (i.e., inducing novel proper-
ties from the data, while deducing existing
properties from theory) was chosen so as
to demonstrate where empirical phenom-
enological approaches confirm or reevaluate
existing ideas. Only categories that appeared
in all three phases of the study were consid-
ered admissible (cf. Section 4 in SM-B for
detailed examples of the coding process).
« 21 »  The data acquisition and analy-
sis took place simultaneously (Flick 2009).
As analysis yielded new insights, interview
questions were modified in order to ad-
dress working hypotheses and elaborate
on or discard provisional categories. Most
notably, initially, our strategy was to outline
a descriptive model of visual phenomenol-
ogy and use it to extrapolate properties of
PP. This approach is reflected in question-
naire items according to which experience
was sampled in Phase 2. However, it became
apparent that properties of PP are directly
observable, and so our overall approach
changed (cf. Section 5 in the annotated co-
debook SM-C for abandoned categories).
« 22 »  Experiential categories were or-
ganized in the annotated codebook (SM-C).
All categories were defined according to:
ƒ a name;
ƒ a description;
ƒ subcategories;
ƒ relevant examples; and
ƒ additional considerations (e.g., specific
differences between similar categories).
« 23 »  A saturation grid was used to de-
termine whether enough data were gathered.
Saturation grid refers to a tabulation where
columns represent participants, and rows
represent experiential categories. First and
second occurrences of categories are noted
in the cells. The saturation grid demonstrates
a convergence towards a point where no new
categories emerge, and additional interviews
are therefore unnecessary. We modified the
saturation-grid approach by rank order-
ing participants according to their SWASH
scores. We reached saturation with the least
suggestible participant of Phase 2.
thinkers attended to different parts of their own
experience when investigating this phenomenon.
Thus, our findings may, occasionally, trespass on
many schools of thought that are not consistent
with one another.
Findings
« 24 »  We attempted to further the
understanding of PP by inducing its phe-
nomenological properties from subjective
reports. As discussed above, the method of
investigating experience co-determines the
resulting subjective reports. For this reason,
we used the three observational perspec-
tives represented by the phases of the study:
engaged, near-ecological, and receptive. We
aimed to induce experiential categories de-
scribing phenomenological properties of PP
that remain invariant across observational
perspectives. Further, in order to validate
the experiential categories, we tied them to
extant concepts from the phenomenological
and psychological literature.4 In line with
constructivist grounded theory, in the fol-
lowing sections, the presentation of our cat-
egories is intertwined with extant concepts
in order to facilitate a better understanding.
« 25 »  As a result of our data, we dif-
ferentiate between localized and general-
ized phenomenological properties of PP
(i.e., whether presence is experienced as
pertaining to a single object or the over-
all atmosphere of experience). Among the
former, we constructed modal properties
(i.e., present in isolated sensory modalities)
and transmodal properties (i.e., properties
that are constructed from multiple modali-
ties, but are not present in any). In terms
of modal properties, we focus on the visual
modality, since in Phases 1 and 3, the stimuli
were visually presented, although haptic and
auditory properties were observed, as well.
The aspect of visual experience most clearly
associated with PP is what we call the fractal
structure of detail.
« 26 »  Transmodal properties of PP
contain two types of experience: affordance
awareness, which can only be localized, and
structure of lived space, which can be both
localized and generalized. Affordance aware-
ness refers to the experience of what types of
4 |  Following constructivist grounded theory
(Charmaz 2004) as well as extant discussion on
the epistemological issues associated with how
best to write about others’ experience (Linger
2010), we present our findings as a combination
of results and how they tie to the extant literature.
For a theory-free presentation of the results, see
SM-C.
bodily engagement are possible and impos-
sible with a specific object. Structure of lived
space refers to the experience of how space
is organized in one’s consciousness. The sec-
ond generalized property of PP is affective
resonance. It describes whether, in experi-
ence, an individual is able to engage with
objects such that their self is experienced
as a combination of self and object, rather
than a sharply perceivable I-it distinction.
The taxonomy of phenomenological prop-
erties of PP is schematically represented in
Figure  1 (arrows represent the direction of
abstraction).
« 27 »  In the following sections, we
present the experiential categories that were
constructed in the three phases of the study
as the phenomenological properties of PP.
Fractal structure of detail
« 28 »  The modal properties of PP in the
case of the visual domain reduce to the frac-
tal structure of detail. This is the observation
that the level of visual detail of subjectively
veridical objects appears to be inexhaust-
ible. No matter how closely one attends to
the skin of an apple, for example, one can
find more detail: new ways one shade of
color transits into another one, new details
in texture, or one can focus on new aspects
of the apple altogether (e.g., color, illumi-
nation, shape). Even if all the detail is ap-
parently obtained from the object, it is still
possible to shift it, giving a new perspective
on it.
« 29 »  It is also possible to imagine ad-
ditional properties in an imaginary object.
However, to do this, the observer must
reimagine the object as more detailed. In
consequence, the detail is not discovered in
the object; it is constructed (for the same
conclusion, see Sartre 2010). Consider the
following example, comparing subjectively
veridical apples and the memory of apples.
The memory appeared to the participant as
imagery:
PPPP-I-06-03: The [subjectively veridical]
objects are somehow more whole.
They carry more meaning. So, if I com-
pare them to a memory, I can poke the
memory, and approximate fragments
of a shopping bag appear. And now I
have to dig into it more, and a second
apple appears. And if I dig further,
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Localized (properties
of perceptual presence)
Modal
Affordance
Visual
awareness
Fractal structure
Affordances
of detail
there is the shelf. I have to invest addi-
tional things into the imagery in order
for details to appear. (Our translation)5
« 30 »  We use the word fractal, be-
cause the objects immediately appear fully
detailed. They are “sharp” (PPPP-I-12-01),
“crisp” (PPPP-II-08-D02-S02) and they
“pop” (PPPP-I-06-03). The fractal nature is
apparent even before novel detail is unrav-
eled. Our data therefore corroborate Noë’s
(2012: 93f) theoretical discussion on PP:
“The detail seems to be ‘out there’ in the
world, not ‘in here’ in my mind […] It is all
there for me, but not all there as seen. It is
all there as available to me, as ready to be
seen.” He continues: “Experience is fractal
in this sense. […] No experienced quality is
so simple that it can be taken in all at once.
The world is structured and complex and
5 
| For a clarification on how individual
samples are traced with codes, see SM-A, Subsec-
tion 1.1.
Phenomenological Properties of Perceptual Presence Aleš Oblak et al.
Phenomenological properties
of perceptual presence
Generalized(properties
of perceptual presence)
Transmodal Transmodal
Structure of
lived space
Continuum from
Obduracies
solidity to permeance
Figure 1 • Phenomenological properties of PP.
it always outstrips what can be taken in a
glance” (ibid: 95).
« 31 »  New detail can be unraveled in
any number of ways, ranging from chang-
ing the position of the object, or observing it
under a different illumination, to changing
one’s attentional attitude towards it. As one
participant describes:
PPPP-I-06-06: There was a readiness in the
background to perform the gesture of
drawing. And because of this gesture,
different things became emphasized.
[…] The world began to punctuate itself
in a different way. Different things in
the world stood out.
« 32 »  The discovery of new detail is
commonly accompanied by a feeling of cu-
riosity or interest. One participant in Phase
2, for example, was observing an insect she
had picked from her dog, wondering wheth-
er it was a tick. She performed a number of
attentional and imaginary micro-gestures,
attempting to discern the species:
Affective
resonance
Resonance Dissonance
PPPP-II-01-D05-S01: At the forefront of my
awareness was my visual impression
of the animal. […] I felt like it pushed
my interest in the animal. […] The
center of my visual field is the insect.
I’m focusing on it (with my eyes) and
it’s very three-dimensional (some 299
parts are even shiny). […] I feel like
my mental space is on the insect. My
expectation of it being a tick is located
on my finger at the insect’s location.
I visually imagined a tick there, but
when I investigated it closer, I found
a mismatch between my expectation
and the reality.
« 33 »  Conversely, failing to find a new
method of uncovering more detail may lead
to boredom. The detail is still experientially
there, but there is no longer any motivation
to unravel it.
« 34 »  A similar dynamics has been ob-
served in discussions on the epistemology
of natural history. Diana Bleichmar (2012)
reports on how botanists of 18th century
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Spain posited two ways of observing the nat-
ural world: the spectacular and the natural-
ist’s gaze. The former is a naïve enjoyment in
the spectacle of nature, whereas the latter re-
fers to systematically discovering the struc-
ture of the natural world. This discovery,
the naturalists claimed, requires training in
how to look (for phenomenology of visual
taxonomy, see Albertazzi et al. 2017). The
necessity of top-down knowledge for un-
raveling details was detected clearly in this
study. One participant – herself a trained
seamstress – reports on the detail she per-
ceives when observing a piece of fabric:
PPPP-II-07-D04-S01: I was checking the weft
and the […] drawn line to double check
that it is straight. And my cutting line
is on the [drawn] line. […] You can mi-
cro-analyze the line, because the pencil
line is never thin enough, the scissors
are never thin enough. […] There is a
huge gap in my understanding of the
fabric, of how it behaves, and how I
want it to behave […] There is a [pause]
like, a desire. Being pulled forward for
knowledge.
« 35 »  Notice how her being able to proj-
ect the ideas of warp and weft – the length-
wise and the transverse weaves – onto the
strings reveals novel details. This phenom-
enon is referred to as conceptualism, the idea
that visual properties can only enter a per-
son’s conscious awareness if she possesses
their conceptual understanding (Connolly
2011). The apparent paradox for concep-
tualism is that even in the absence of con-
cepts, we can perceive that objects contain
detail (Evans 1982). This paradox supports
Noë’s (2012) claim that PP is associated with
skillful access to an object. While the object
appears to us as detailed, we require concep-
tual or sensorimotor understanding of the
object to unravel those details.6
6 |  In Varieties of Presence, Noë (2012) con-
ceptualizes PP as an amodal property of con-
sciousness. Our phenomenal data suggest that
perceptual presence is reflected in modal (im-
mediately felt clearness, crispness, and richness of
objects of perception) and – as will be seen below
– transmodal aspects of experience (i.e., the par-
ticular spatial sense that is built up from all avail-
able modalities as well as conceptual knowledge).
« 36 »  The experiential category of frac-
tal structure of detail corresponds to the no-
tion of vividness. Vividness is the observa-
tion that bottom-up percepts are sensorially,
semantically, and conceptually rich in detail.
By comparison, in visual imagery, these
details are lacking (Kosslyn 1994; Kosslyn
et al. 1999). Our subjective reports differ
slightly from this conception of vividness.
Specifically, while sensorial experience is
fractally structured in subjectively veridical
objects and processes, in our data, concep-
tual knowledge about them is limited. It is
mental imagery that possesses a richer detail
of conceptual knowledge: the longer an indi-
vidual attends to it, more and more contents
become apparent to her.
« 37 »  To recapitulate this section: frac-
tal structure of detail is a modal experience,
wherein the details of subjectively veridical
objects appear inexhaustible. This property
initially makes the objects appear clear and
crisp. Subsequent actions bring those details
into focus. However, an object appearing
to one’s consciousness as possessing fractal
structure of detail is not sufficient for it to be
perceptually present. Rather, having fractal
structure of detail seems to be the property
of “sensorially” present objects (Ratcliffe
2015). To account for perceptual, rather
than merely sensorial presence, additional
aspects of experience need to be discussed,
namely the structure of lived space, affor-
dance awareness, and affective resonance.
Structure of lived space
« 38 »  The second experiential category
we found is the structure of lived space. It re-
fers to how space is organized in and around
an object of perception. Specifically, lived
space appears as an interplay between perme-
ance and solidity. Space that is experienced as
permeable (e.g., unattended, empty space) ap-
pears fully traversable. By comparison, space
that is experienced as solid contains some
density, something that pushes back against
the observer. It is less traversable or may be
impossible to traverse altogether (e.g., PPPP-
I-06-03: “There was a small spatial feeling as
to where it is located. […] I could very spa-
The relationship between PP and amodal proper-
ties of consciousness, such as symbolic structures,
remains to be addressed in future empirical and
theoretical work.
tially feel where the apple is located. […] As if
the space here is a bit thicker. It is just a spa-
tial thing. And I felt a feeling of slight touch
on my forehead.”) In the study, the strongest
reported experience of solidity is that of one’s
own body, when experienced as Körper,
i.e., the body when attended to as an object
among objects (Colombetti & Ratcliffe 2012):
PPPP-III-01-01: There is a solid mass that I
occupy and that solid mass continues,
and where my butt is, it continues in
the bench that I sat on, and the bench
continues in the hill and in front of
me is the garden and then there is the
whole valley. And I’m just a mass that
has a point of view and I’m just kind
of, this thing is part of that structure
of the world – there is [nothing] other
than me being able to move it around,
this solid thing in a specific way, it feels
like it is the same; there is a continuity.
« 39 »  This report reflects Maurice Mer-
leau-Ponty’s observation that we are “not a
‘hole in Being’ […] but […] a fold, a wrin-
kle that can be straightened out” (Merleau-
Ponty 2012: 223). The metaphor of the fold
in the fabric of the world corresponds with
the structure of lived space as observed in this
study. The solid body can thus be transformed
into something permeable, its opacity de-
pending on “how” the body is being attended
to. The continuity from solidity to permeance
extends to objects uncovered in perception.
In the following example, a participant de-
scribes how the spatial fullness of solidity as
subjectively experienced gives way to perme-
ance at the edge of the observed object:
PPPP-I-12-03: The space that I was describ-
ing before, the fullness. It goes beyond
that. It continues across the object and
then goes forward into this boundless-
ness. At some level it stops, because I
am no longer paying attention to it. My
attention does not go that far. So, that
is the point where the fullness ends.
(Our translation)
« 40 »  Solidity of space is then the ex-
perience of empty space that is attended to.
One participant describes the experience
of empty space that separates her from the
apple:
 Enaction
PPPP-I-10-02: The rest of the world disap-
peared. […] [W]hen I think of the mo-
ment when I experienced it, I cannot
think of anything else but me and the
apple. It was just the two of us. […] It’s
like, erm, there is no force, like, pulling
the apple and me together or pushing
us apart. It is just there. The borders of
the apple are very clear and my body’s
borders are very clear and I can clearly
experience that we are separate and
there is no kind of force between us in
any direction.
« 41 »  However, the experiences of
permeance and solidity do not simply cor-
respond to empty space and physically ex-
isting objects. Space of attention (i.e., the
space between the observer and the object
of perception) and mental imagery may be
experienced as solid. They are less solid than
concretely existing objects, but solid none-
theless. Consider the following report in
which the participant compares the experi-
ence of permeance and solidity as they per-
tain to the mental image of a pear and the
objects in front of him, respectively:
PPPP-I-06-01: The imagery feels soft and
misty. Yes, it is much more malleable.
It gives out a warm, fuzzy feeling. If I
close my eyes and my attention travels
across the stuff on the desk in front of
me, the wall behind my computer; they
are cold and hard objects. Whereas the
imagery feels like a cloud. And I have
to touch them in a different way […]
If I make a gesture in my mind that
pushes against the laptop or the wall,
nothing happens. But if I push the
imagery, it deforms. As if something
passes through it. (Our translation)
« 42 »  The experience of non-physical
entities having solidity can be seen in the fol-
lowing example. The participant is attending
to the sky that surrounds her. She brings the
empty space separating her from the sky to
the foreground, and attends to it as an entity
of its own:
PPPP-I-12-06: I feel the air as this density in
front of me. As if the air, or rather, the
space around, suddenly obtains this
quality of density. And this density is
Phenomenological Properties of Perceptual Presence Aleš Oblak et al.
all around me. In space. And every-
thing extends beyond to my left and
right. [pause] But yeah, this feeling of
density. As if it is a bit more present. As
if it is almost heavier. But not heavy in
the sense where it is difficult to grab.
It has this honey-like quality. Viscous.
This dense feeling is all around me.
(Our translation)
The structure of lived space thus connects an
individual to her experiential environment.
« 43 »  By contrast, some unpredictable
processes (e.g., smoke) may be permeable
(but not completely so), as in the follow-
ing: “[The fire] is just a bit of color and this
thickness. That is what it is actually: air that
is a little bit thicker and colored” (PPPP-
I-02-04). However, especially when thema-
tized, there is some solidity to unpredictable
processes, as well. Consider the following
experience of attending to smoke: “It was
no longer just the movement of the smoke,
but I noticed that the smoke got these het-
erogeneous properties. So, at some points,
or rather, at the curves, it moves, there’s
more of it. It’s thicker, more solid” (PPPP-
I-06-05).
« 44 »  Objects can be therefore thought
of as being experienced on a spectrum from
permeable to solid. This spectrum includes
imaginary objects, as well. In other words,
imaginary objects are still perceptually pres-
ent in the sense that they are associated with
the experience of the structure of lived space,
which is well documented in the extant phe-
nomenological literature (e.g., Klüver 1966;
Fuchs 2005, 2007; Albertazzi 2015; Espirito
Santo 2015; Trigg 2017).
« 45 »  How does the observation of the
structure of lived space address our inquiry
into PP? We primarily have to interpret
our findings through the lens of Husserlian
phenomenology. Husserl (1997) claims that
objects of perception are formed through
a particular constitution of space. To con-
sciousness, first, there is the presence of
extension in space, which is then filled with
sensory qualities, such as color and illu-
mination. We can posit that PP of objects
amounts to a subset of lived space arranging
itself as relatively solid. Objects that reach a
certain level of solidity are experienced as
perceptually (and not merely sensorially)
present.
« 46 »  Further, as mentioned above, the
structure of lived space is transmodal; i.e., not
present in any one sensory modality, but syn-
thesized from all of them. We compare this
to Merleau-Ponty, who writes how expecta-
tions of sensory changes relative to move-
ment are the constituents of space as it ap-
pears to consciousness:
“ My body is geared into the world when my
perception provides me with the most varied and
the most clearly articulated spectacle possible, and
when my motor intentions, as they unfold, receive
the responses they anticipate from the world.
(Merleau-Ponty 2012: 263)
”
We argue that the structure of lived space
amounts to a felt experience of space con-
tingent on the totality of sensory and motor
experience that is present to one’s conscious-
ness.
« 47 »  At this point, it is worth asking
whether these are sufficient conditions for
an object to be experienced as perceptually
present. Is it enough that we satisfy the tech-
nical condition of fractal structure of detail
and the felt condition of the structure of lived
space? While this very well may be the case,
we observed two additional properties of PP:
affordance awareness and affective resonance.
Affordance awareness
« 48 »  To illustrate affordance awareness,
let us consider a longer excerpt from the in-
terviews. The participant is focusing on how
an apple casts its shadow on the table. In that
shadow, he is able to recognize the entire 301
room: “[I]t’s not just a shadow, it’s not just
the desk being darker, but the entire set-up
of the room is implied in the way that dark-
ening happens” (PPPP-III-01-05). He then
carefully attends to the shape of the apple,
revealing a sense of space that the apple oc-
cupies, and a dip where the stem protrudes
from the body of the apple:
PPPP-III-01-05: [N]ow that I am focusing
on the shadows, the space that I am
touching, though, in my attention
doesn’t correspond to the space where
I thought that the apple was when I
looked at it as, you know, an apple. […]
I was looking to the shadowy bit there
and I made a mental note that now
that I am focusing on the shadows the
https://constructivist.info/16/3/295.oblak
 dip seems deeper than it did when I
passed it with my attention earlier.
« 49 »  Then, the participant experiences
a discrepancy: the shape of the apple con-
veyed by the shadows is different from the
shape conveyed by its spatial structure. The
participant wishes to resolve this conflict
with touch:7
PPPP-III-01-05: I didn’t understand what I
was looking at and that was the desire
to touch it, right? I felt this: my left arm
twitched and that happened a bunch
of times throughout the process, like I
need more information to make sense
of it, I need to; and this I-need-more-
COGNITIVE SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS IN Enaction
information concretely was that I
need tactile information, that I need to
touch it and if I touch it, the experience
is gonna make sense. I’m gonna see
which of the two angles is the right
one. […] None of this desire that this
would give me more information, none
of that was explicitly present.
« 50 »  The second transmodal experien-
tial category that we observed pertains to the
awareness of possibilities and impossibilities
of bodily interactions with the environment:
PPPP-III-01-05: What was present was that
suddenly my entire left arm entered
my awareness. I was aware of the posi-
tion of the muscles, I was aware of my
fingers, I was aware of this bit under
302 my shoulder where I would expect
the biggest sense of muscle activity
to be felt if I reach for the apple. And
it wasn’t; it was quite subtle, it wasn’t
even muscular, it was more on the skin
– it was more haptic, more tactile. And
it was just that I became aware of this
thing here on this side of me, very faint,
very subtle.
« 51 »  The awareness of bodily inter-
actions with the environment may take
7 |  The desire to resolve perceptual ambigu-
ity with touch seems to be common in the experi-
ence of derealization as reported by Karl Jaspers
(1997). Thus, we can see association between the
categories affordance awareness and affective reso-
nance.
the form of a muscle tension (e.g., PPPP-
II-01-D01-S01: “Everything seems very
touchable. Like very 3D and I almost have a
bodily feeling that I could reach out and grab
them”). However, it is more commonly ex-
perienced as an intuitive awareness of forces
and directions in the world that would lead
to a bodily interaction with an object (e.g.,
PPPP-II-01-D03-S01: “I felt some sort of
pulling towards the stairs [I need to use them
to get to the room]”).
« 52 »  Following Charles Laughlin and
Jason Throop (2006), we tie these descrip-
tions to the concepts of affordance and obdu-
racy. Affordances refer to objects appearing
as instruments, as being available for bodily
use (Gibson 1979). For example, a hammer
affords hammering. Conversely, obduracy is
the “characteristic of reality to resist the will
and intentionality of the psyche” (Laughlin
& Throop 2006: 320, italics removed). That
is, obduracies refer to objects appearing to
the observer as precluding specific bodily
interactions. For example, a wall disallows
running through the space it occupies. We
can say that when observing objects, we
do not perceive them in themselves, but as
meanings (Binswanger 1963). Accordingly,
one participant compares his experience of
affordance awareness across observing a digi-
tally presented object, a subjectively veridical
object, and an imaginary object:
PPPP-I-06-02: Digital image of the hand does
not have the same feeling as, let’s say,
my pencil sharpener in front of me. But
I would not say that it doesn’t exist. I
wouldn’t say that it is not part of the
physical world. It is more physical than
it is imaginary. And it is closer to physi-
cal than it is to imaginary. But it doesn’t
have the same feeling as a physical
painting. […] It is again about these af-
fordances. About what I can do with it.
How I can manipulate it. […] It is some-
thing that might help my interaction
with the physical world, but it is still on
a separate layer. (Our translation)
« 53 »  There is some overlap between af-
fordance awareness and the structure of lived
space. Solidity of subjectively veridical ob-
jects interferes even with the freedom other-
wise offered by imaginary life. When draw-
ing, the participants commonly reached an
awareness of the occluded side of the stream
of water, by imagining themselves moving
to the far side of the sink and observing the
stream from there. However, they remained
aware of the solidity of the sink. Even during
a mental simulation, it felt like
PPPP-I-06-06: [s]queezing yourself in yourself
so that you fit in a tight space. […] Basi-
cally, it is an embodied feeling of trying
to make yourself small in a tight space.
But without the body. Only the feeling
of having to make yourself small and
squeeze yourself together remains.
(Our translation)
« 54 »  However, affordance awareness
and structure of lived space do not precisely
overlap. Consider the following report in
which the sky is experienced as solid and ob-
durate:
PPPP-I-05-05: The sky engulfs everything.
But I do not experience it as an object
or anything. […] I see it in there not
being a possibility of interacting with
it. I can’t do anything with it. It is not a
physical thing. I mean it is, but not to
me. (Our translation)
« 55 »  We can relate affordance aware-
ness as detected in this study (i.e., as a sense
of muscular activation or forces opening up
or closing in the world) with the notion of
affordance competition. According to this
view, upon observing an object, an agent’s
cognitive system continuously and in paral-
lel computes possible, partial actions that can
be performed on the object (Clark 2016).
Affective resonance
« 56 »  Affective resonance refers to the
experience of the overall atmosphere of ex-
perience intuitively feeling veridical. What is
meant by this is that objects appear obvious
and unremarkable. When something goes
wrong, however, (e.g., when an expected ob-
ject is absent), a disturbance is experienced
(dissonance). Commonly, the world starts to
feel strange or odd. In this way, affective reso-
nance is similar to the Heideggerian notion
of presence-as-absence: i.e., the state of being
immersed in the world, such that it appears
self-evident, requiring a specific intellectual
operation for the world to be actively present
 Enaction
(Heidegger 1988). Thus, affective resonance
is not something that we are aware of on a
moment-by-moment basis. It amounts to a
pre-reflective aspect of consciousness that
becomes apparent when systematically at-
tending to one’s lived experience or when a
disturbance of resonance occurs. Consider
the following paradigmatic example of dis-
sonance:
PPPP-II-09-D03-S07: I am sitting on the
balcony looking at the hills rising from
the valley. And I suddenly notice that
there is a wooden pole rising from the
hill. And this pole is definitely new. I am
looking at it, trying to figure out what
it is. […] [T]he pole was so salient, was
weird. Like, familiar things are not that
clearly present. […] The fact that this
became [an] object of observation and
it kind of impinged itself on my aware-
ness […] felt strange. [pause] I felt this
newness, this demanding my attention.
[Generality removed] The newness was
the property of the pole. You know, the
pole […] is white and it’s made of wood
and it’s new […] it’s the property of
something there.
« 57 »  Alternatively, one participant,
who spent time in the Mediterranean during
sampling, reports a persistent feeling of dis-
sonance associated with heat:
PPPP-II-03-D03-S07: It just feels like my brain
is not that sharp, like it is a bit slower
and I don’t realize things that fast. It
is just a bit slower. And if it is slower, I
don’t perceive things that fast, I don’t
get the feedback from visual percep-
tion or auditory perception that fast.
So, it feels more like a dream than
reality. […] But I would say there is a
slight delay from, let’s say, you talking
to me, and me responding. So, there is
a short delay. There is a longer delay
than usual. […] It is just like everything
is going through a viscous fluid to get
to me.
« 58 »  The experience of dissonance as
constructed in this study is consistent with
the phenomenology of feelings of non-ve-
ridicality reported in the extant literature.
Mausfeld, for example writes:
Phenomenological Properties of Perceptual Presence Aleš Oblak et al.
“ The impression of perceptual objects that are
phenomenologically vivid but perceived as ‘unre-
al’ can be accompanied by affective qualities, such
as puzzling, or by aesthetic impressions, such as
of ‘unreal beauty.’ An assignment of the attribute
‘unreal’ to a perceptual object seems to elicit an
active search for internal causal analyses by which
the impression of ‘unrealness’ can be defused.
(Mausfeld 2013: 113)
” ridicality, anomalous experience, normative
« 59 »  We see feelings of non-veridical-
ity as an object property in the former ex-
ample, and the affective dimension in the
latter. In particular, the affective dimension
has been thoroughly explored within phe-
nomenological studies of psychopathology
under the name delusional atmosphere. This
is an experiential state wherein everything
looks the same, but is laden with a feeling
of strangeness and uncertainty (Ratcliffe
2008). Further, the experience of suddenly
perceiving an unexpected object such that
it shakes the whole of the observer’s expe-
riential field has been recently linked to the
phenomenology of surprise. Michel Bitbol
(2019) puts forward three phenomenologi-
cal properties of a surprising event:
ƒ it takes up the whole field of experience;
ƒ the uniqueness of the event precludes
the possibility of relating it to other ex-
periences; and
ƒ the experience is immediate.
We can see how the surprising event (the
sudden perception of the white pole) con-
forms to these three properties.
« 60 »  Resonance refers to participants
experiencing a coupling with the object of
their perception. The observer and the ob-
served form a higher-order system (present
to consciousness through modulations of
attention, and sense of space and embodi-
ment). Consider the following:
PPPP-II-03-D02-S02: It was me and the com-
puter kind of as one. So, the interaction
was kind of there, in between. I wasn’t
doing all the work myself; it was also
the computer. So, the process wasn’t
just happening within me […] The
computer was part of me. […] So, the
computer was still the computer, okay.
But it was more like an, I don’t know, it
was more like an interaction. It was not
visual. So, I cannot describe it in a way
that I was merging with the computer
or [pause] it was just the feeling of
sharing the load of what was going on.
« 61 »  Resonance, however, need not oc-
cur only in interaction with an instrument.
It may happen with any object. We can chart
a continuum from various forms of non-ve-
experience to heightened veridicality (Rat-
cliffe 2015). We suggest that the latter part
of this continuum consists of various forms
of coupling with the environment. This
idea has been proposed by Evan Thompson
(2007: 314), who writes that “experience is
the phenomenal flow of one’s body–envi-
ronment coupling. Furthermore, conscious-
ness here is […] a nonreflective attunement
to the interplay of action and milieu.” Note
the following participant, describing a con-
tinuity of layers of awareness through which
she is in contact with the object of her per-
ception:
PPPP-III-02-03: [E]verything was happening
more or less on the same plane even
though the layer I connected with my
eyes, the imaginary, so to speak, layer,
felt like it’s closer to me than reality.
[…] It’s really a matter of distance. It’s
just, if [pause] if the thing that I label
myself is the experiencer is happen-
ing on the level of my eyes and my
head and stuff, one layer feels like it’s
directly on my eyes and reality feels
more distant, more out there.
« 62 »  We propose that a sense of veridi- 303
cality of an object is grounded in dynamic
coupling between the observer and the ob-
served.
Discussion
« 63 »  As mentioned in the section
Starting assumptions, recent insights from
empirical phenomenology have shown that
the manner of investigating experience
(co)determines the outcome of investiga-
tion (Kordeš & Demšar 2021). As we point
out in Section 0.1 in SM-B, the neces-
sity of the multi-method structure of this
study emerged during the study itself. In
this section, we discuss empirical findings
that contributed to this methodological
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COGNITIVE SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS IN Enaction
304
move and that may inspire future studies.
Specifically, we will discuss what it means
to consider bodily feelings a description of
experience.
« 64 »  Many contemporary techniques
in first-person research accept the assump-
tion that cognition is embodied (Gaete Celis
2019). Embodied cognition holds that not
only is the human mind not separate from
the body (i.e., the doctrine of Cartesian du-
alism), but that the body itself plays, in par-
ticular in its interaction with the environ-
ment, an essential role in cognition (Wilson
2002). This assumption has had a number of
pragmatic implications in terms of the phe-
nomena of investigation that researchers fo-
cused on. The pragmatic turn, for instance, is
the line of research in cognitive science that
holds that embodied agents offload some of
the computational load onto their bodies
(Engel, Friston & Kragic 2016). For example,
we – as embodied individuals – are not able
to manipulate brittle objects without break-
ing them, because our cognitive systems
calculate their ductility. Rather, our hands
are soft and they conform to the shape of
objects. Alternatively, primarily in neurosci-
ence, the explanatory strategy of embodied
cognition is to find neural pathways that are
shared by control of motor action and cog-
nitive functions, such as working memory
(Wilson 2001).
« 65 »  In phenomenology, the assump-
tions of embodied cognition are reflected in
the choice of the black box. The black box,
according to Gregory Bateson (2000), is the
level of explanatory description that we – as
researchers – arbitrarily select (i.e., the level
to which we attempt to reduce phenomena
of inquiry in order to understand them). For
example, Christopher Heavey, Russell Hurl-
burt and Noelle Lefforge (2012) have shown
that many aspects of emotions, in experi-
ence, reduce to some form of bodily feelings.
« 66 »  Accordingly, our investigative
strategy was initially to find bodily feelings
(together with sensory experience, men-
tal gestures, and attitudes) that are associ-
ated with perceptual presence. Primarily in
Phase 1, we found a wealth of reports of how
bodily feelings (i.e., various pressures, tingly
sensations, and experiences of muscle acti-
vation) mirror how it would feel to manipu-
late the object of observation (what eventu-
ally formed part of the codes affordance and
obduracy). Observing a stream of water, one
participant reports:
PPPP-I-12-04: The whole sense of the water
flow, all of it, had this tactile compo-
nent as well. How it feels to touch the
water. […] This feeling of how it is to
touch the water is present in my body.
As if it is touching me in the form of
this softness and fluidity. The feeling
of fluidity, yes, as if something is softly
touching my skin. […] I didn’t experi-
ence it as if something concretely
touches me. (Our translation)
« 67 »  Staying on this level – the level of
bodily feelings – PP would appear as equiv-
alent to being aware of potential bodily in-
teractions with the environment. It would
be equivalent to sensorimotor predictions
and affordance competition as described
in the previous section. In order to discern
the structure of lived space, we had to make a
methodological move away from embodied
cognition towards enactivism. Incidentally,
the insight regarding the necessity of this
shift in focus took place in the very inter-
view cited above. The participant continued:
PPPP-I-12-04: I experienced [the water flow]
in a way that is not physical or mate-
rial. As if I could touch something and
it could touch me, but as if it is in a
different space. But it is still very real. It
is not as clearly in attendance or solid
as things actually are. (Our translation
and emphasis)
« 68 »  The enactive approach within
cognitive science and philosophy of mind
began with the work of Humberto Maturana
and Francisco Varela (1992). In The Tree of
Knowledge, they argue that cognition arises
through a dynamic interaction between
an embodied agent and her environment.
Stemming from this view, we can interpret
living systems as organizing themselves so
as to construct a sense of a stable world. This
stable world is such that it allows for the con-
tinuation of the organism’s self-organization
(i.e., the continued maintenance of their ho-
meostasis, their survival) (Foerster 1960).
In the intervening decades, enactivism was
further refined and evolved into many lines
of thinking (e.g., Noë 2004; De Jaegher & Di
Paolo 2007; Hutto & Myin 2013; Engel, Fris-
ton & Kragic 2016). We wish to focus specif-
ically on the role of phenomenology as put
forward by Thompson (2007) who, drawing
on the works of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty,
argues that scientific knowledge of the mind
should be constructed based on the direct
access we have to the world – that is, based
on experience of the world.
« 69 »  The accumulating empirical data,
together with an enactivist frame of think-
ing, demanded a pragmatic shift in the focus
of the investigation. We expanded our fo-
cus to include not only how bodily feelings
constituted what it felt like to be someone,
observing different objects in our study, but
how these bodily feelings constituted the
world that contained those objects (Jaspers
1997; Luhrmann 2020). In other words,
when participants experienced the per-
ceptual presence of objects through bodily
feelings, we did not treat these reports as a
black box, containing a phenomenological
account of PP. Rather, we continued our in-
vestigation, attempting to unfold it further,
yielding the experiential category structure
of lived space.
« 70 »  In the Critique of Pure Reason,
Immanuel Kant (1998) posits two forms of
intuition (i.e., structures of consciousness
that are always present), space and time.
Temporality has been investigated in depth
both by Husserl’s (1991) phenomenology,
and by neuroscience (Varela 1999). Spatial
consciousness, however, has not received
similar attention following Husserl’s (1997)
discussions in Thing and Space. The category
of the structure of lived space, which emerged
in the course of our investigation, sheds
light on the primacy of spatial conscious-
ness in the phenomenology of PP. While our
data does not point towards a hierarchical
organization, in which the structure of lived
space is a primary property, whereas fractal
structure of detail, affordance awareness, and
resonance are secondary, we believe that it
is worthwhile to direct future experimental
focus on this aspect of experience.
« 71 »  The structure of lived space is an
immediate, direct, and non-representational
felt experience of the topology of the world.
This experience arises with attentive and
embodied engagement with the world (Seth
2014; Noë 2012). Further, it is not solely de-
pendent on a sensorimotor interaction with
 Enaction
Phenomenological Properties of Perceptual Presence Aleš Oblak et al.

{ ALEŠ OBLAK
is a cognitive scientist at the University of Ljubljana, associated with the Center for Cognitive
Science and the University Psychiatric Clinic Ljubljana. He works on the intersection between
neuroscience, psychopathology, phenomenology, and anthropology. He primarily focuses on subjective
aspects of visuo-spatial working memory, and perceptual presence. In particular, he is working
on the neurophenomenology of subjective veridicality, integrating empirical phenomenology and
electroencephalography. This work includes investigating psychopathologies of presence (e.g., visual
hallucinations), idiosyncratic perception (e.g., synesthesia), and anomalous experiences of space.

{ ASENA BOYADZHIEVA
is a cognitive scientist at the University of Vienna. She has a background in medical and
pharmaceutical biotechnology. From 2018 to 2019 she was researching addiction, eating disorders, and
dopaminergic signaling at the University Medical Center Utrecht Brain Center. In 2019, she enrolled
in the Middle European Master’s Programme in Cognitive Science, where she has been investigating
the role of respiratory-entrained dynamics in self-regulatory processes. Her interest in mind-body
interactions is situated within the wider context of investigating how selfhood is constructed. Most
recently, she has been employing a phenomenological lens to investigate perceptual presence and
intersubjective space at the University of Ljubljana. With her research she aspires to contribute to
the development of an empirical neurophenomenology, which can synergize with clinical practice.

{ JURIJ BON
is a psychiatrist, working at the University Psychiatric Clinic Ljubljana. After completing his PhD
studies in biomedicine at the University of Ljubljana, he currently holds the position of Assistant
Professor at the Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ljubljana and
teaches at different undergraduate and postgraduate study programs at the Faculty of Medicine
and Department of Psychology at the University of Ljubljana. He treats patients with chronic
psychiatric disorders, e.g., treatment-resistant affective disorders and psychotic disorders. His
main research interests focus on developing diagnostic methods and individualized treatments
for psychiatric disorders, by combining descriptive and phenomenological psychopathology,
cognitive neuroscience methods and novel treatments like non-invasive brain stimulation.

305

objects that surround us, and thus accounts
for borderline cases such as the sense of exis-
tence of the sky (Seth 2015). It may very well
be that focusing on the world as it appears to
consciousness rather than the bodily feelings
as they appear to consciousness will offer a
way to experimentally operationalize PP.
Conclusion
« 72 »  This study used methods of first-
person research to attempt to discern phe-
nomenological properties of PP. Based on
subjective reports gathered from three ob-
servational perspectives, we propose that
objects that are perceptually present have, in
experience, the following properties:
ƒ Fractal structure of detail (i.e., the
amount of sensory experience that can
be obtained from veridical objects ap-
pears inexhaustible);
ƒ Structure of lived space (i.e., the objects
appear as occupying a particular part of
space; i.e., they appear to be relatively
denser than unattended space);
ƒ Affordance awareness: (i.e., the objects
explicitly allow or disallow specific
bodily interactions); and finally
ƒ Affective resonance (i.e., the objects af-
ford interaction such that higher-order
couplings between objects and observ-
ers are formed. When violated, this
interaction is experienced as strange-
ness).
« 73 »  To demonstrate the validity of
our findings, we tied our experiential cate-
gories to concepts from the extant phenom-
enological and psychological literature. It is
our hope that our insights will develop the
current understanding of PP and advance
experimental science of this phenomenon.
Specifically, we believe that the experiential
category structure of lived space may offer a
way forward in empirical, enactivist inves-
tigations of perceptual presence.

https://constructivist.info/16/3/295.oblak

COGNITIVE SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS IN Enaction
306
Funding
The authors declare that their research
was not funded.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no
competing interests.
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This target article is part of a bigger picture that encompasses several open peer commentaries and the response
to these commentaries. You can read these accompanying texts on the following pages (or, if you have only the target
article, follow the embedded link that takes you to the journal’s web page from which you can download these texts).
COGNITIVE SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS IN Enaction
Open Peer Commentaries
on Aleš Oblak et al.’s “Phenomenological Properties
of Perceptual Presence”
Fractality is an
Amodal Property
Oliver Lukitsch
University of Vienna, Austria
oliver.lukitsch/at/univie.ac.at
308
> Abstract • Oblak, Boyadzhieva, and Bon
claim that fractality is a modal property
of the experience of perceptual presence.
I will instead argue that the concept of
fractality implies amodality and that
modal sense data are neither necessary
nor sufficient for fractality.
« 1 »  It is refreshing to see the phenom-
enon of perceptual presence leave the realm
of armchair phenomenology and given the
treatment of a systematic first-person ac-
count. I do not have the phenomenological
tools to match this. Instead, I will make my
comments on what I consider to be con-
ceptual inconsistencies in the systematics
Aleš Oblak, Asena Boyadzhieva, and Jure
Bon develop in their target article. I will
enology and the Cognitive Sciences 19(1):
791–800.
Wilson M. (2001) The case for sensorimotor
coding in working memory. Psychonomic
Bulletin & Review 8(1): 44–57.
Wilson M. (2002) Six views on embodied cogni-
tion. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 9(4):
625–636.
Zahavi D. (2016) The end of what? Phenomenol-
ogy vs. speculative realism. International
also refer to introspection, but armchair
phenomenology is all that is on offer on my
end. Yet, combined, I hope they make for a
convincing argument. That is not to reject
the authors’ findings, but rather to suggest
an adaptation of their systematics of what I
consider a rich phenomenological account.
« 2 »  To outline my commentary: the
authors argue that the fractal character of
perceptual presence is a modal property
thereof. I will point out that this is not the
case. To support my claim, I will argue that
the concept of amodal fractality has the ad-
vantage of evading the pitfalls of a “qualia
theory” (Noë 2004) of perceptual presence.
I will further argue that the concept of frac-
tality (and its instantiation in the debate at
hand) entails amodality. Finally, I will claim
that modal sensory data are neither neces-
sary nor sufficient for fractality. To do so, I
will draw on the notion of non-positional
consciousness and the phenomenon of hori-
zonal hallucination.
« 3 »  Let me start with Oblak, Boy-
adzhieva, and Bon’s statement that the frac-
tal  character  of perceptual presence is
Journal of Philosophical Studies 26(3):
289–309.
Zahavi D. (2019) Getting it quite wrong: Van
Manen and Smith on phenomenology.
Qualitative Health Research 29(6): 900–907.
Received: 5 March 2021
Revised: 10 May 2021
Accepted: 15 May 2021
a  modal  property. Their account thus ex-
plicitly departs from Alva Noë’s account of
perceptual consciousness (Noë 2004), which
instead claims (a) that perceptual presence
has an ineliminable amodal element, but
also (b) that perceptual experience is amod-
ally fractal all the way in. Again, as opposed
to this, the authors state that their data sug-
gests that the fractality of PP is reflected in
both transmodal and modal aspects of ex-
perience.
« 4 »  Note that I focus on fractality,
here, not on perceptual presence more gen-
erally. So, I do not contest the claim that the
experience of perceptual presence necessar-
ily involves modal properties.
« 5 »  The meaning of fractality is that,
at any point in time, perceptual exploration
proceeds towards a hidden facet of the in-
tentional object. For Noë, our directedness
towards the hidden facet is essential. He ar-
gues that perceptual content is “virtual  all
the way in” (Noë 2004: 134). The embodied
exploration of the perceptual object never
rests, and the experience is precisely consti-
tuted by its temporally extensive profile. It