Bodyless Presence: Reconsidering the Minimal Self in Immersive Video
Pith reviewed 2026-05-07 14:45 UTC · model grok-4.3
The pith
In immersive video the minimal self is a spatially located viewpoint with body schema backgrounded rather than a subject of agency or ownership.
A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.
Core claim
Immersive video generates a sense of being there without providing a corresponding body, while allowing only limited sensorimotor contingency through head rotation. From a phenomenological standpoint, presence in immersive video is reinterpreted not as bodily extension or ownership of an avatar, but as a form of self-experience in which self-location becomes relatively dominant under conditions of reduced body schema availability. This condition is termed a self-location-dominant state. In this state the user cannot actively intervene in the recorded environment, so stable agency or ownership is difficult to establish. Nevertheless events such as viewpoint motion, impact, and direct address
What carries the argument
self-location-dominant state, the condition in which self-location becomes the primary aspect of self-experience because body schema availability is reduced by limited sensorimotor contingency and absent agency.
If this is right
- Events such as impacts or direct address are experienced as occurring at the position of the self rather than as neutral visual changes.
- Self-location functions as the central analytic axis for theorizing self-experience in immersive media that lack embodiment.
- Presence research can be extended to cases that separate spatial location from bodily ownership or agency.
- The minimal self can be redescribed without primary reliance on agency or ownership when body schema is backgrounded.
Where Pith is reading between the lines
- The same emphasis on self-location might apply to passive 360-degree live streams or certain forms of remote observation.
- Content creators could test whether stable viewpoint motion and direct address strengthen presence more reliably than adding body representations.
- Empirical measures of presence could separate ratings of self-location from ratings of body ownership to check the proposed dominance relation.
- The approach could inform studies of self-experience in other low-agency environments such as certain augmented-reality overlays.
Load-bearing premise
Immersive video's limited sensorimotor contingency and lack of agency reliably background the body schema while elevating self-location as the dominant feature of the minimal self.
What would settle it
An experiment in which participants view immersive video yet report that depicted events feel like changes inside an image rather than events concerning their own spatial position.
read the original abstract
Immersive video, namely 180-degree and 360-degree video designed to be viewed through head-mounted displays, constitutes an important boundary case between interactive VR and conventional two-dimensional video viewing for reconsidering self-experience in XR. In immersive video, the user can select the direction of the viewpoint through head rotation, while being unable to actively change the recorded environment through walking, approaching, grasping, or manipulating. In many cases, no explicit body or avatar corresponding to the user is provided. This paper reinterprets presence in immersive video not as bodily extension or body ownership of an avatar, but as a form of self-experience in which self-location becomes relatively dominant under conditions of reduced body schema availability. This paper calls this condition a self-location-dominant state. In this state, viewpoint-directed agency is retained, whereas environment-directed agency and body ownership are constrained. Nevertheless, events such as viewpoint motion, impact, contact, and direct address may be experienced not merely as changes within an image, but as events concerning the viewpoint position at which the self is located. This paper examines this structure by connecting research on presence, the sense of embodiment, bodily self-consciousness, and the minimal self. The minimal self in immersive video is thereby redescribed not primarily in terms of agency or ownership, but in terms of viewpoint-based self-location established under conditions in which the contribution of the body schema is reduced. This perspective provides a basis for theorising self-experience in non-interactive immersive media and for reconsidering the relation between body, viewpoint, and presence in XR.
Editorial analysis
A structured set of objections, weighed in public.
Referee Report
Summary. The paper claims that immersive video (180°/360° video via HMDs) forms a boundary case between interactive VR and 2D video. Due to limited sensorimotor contingency (head rotation only) and absent agency/ownership, it induces a 'self-location-dominant state' in which presence is reinterpreted phenomenologically as self-experience where self-location at the viewpoint becomes dominant while the body schema is backgrounded. The minimal self is thus redescribed not as a subject of agency or ownership but as spatially located at a viewpoint; this supplies self-location as a central analytic axis connecting presence, embodiment, and minimal-self research.
Significance. If the redescription holds, the paper supplies a useful conceptual distinction for theorizing self-experience in XR that separates immersive video from both full-embodiment VR and passive viewing. By foregrounding self-location under reduced contingency, it could stimulate new measurement approaches and design heuristics in HCI for presence without bodily agency. The contribution is primarily interpretive and bridging rather than empirical or formal.
major comments (2)
- Abstract: The inference that 'limited sensorimotor contingency' plus absent agency reliably backgrounds the body schema (leaving self-location dominant) is asserted from a phenomenological standpoint without intermediate steps, an explicit mechanism, or counterexample handling—e.g., why this does not instead produce overall attenuation of presence or retention of vestibular/proprioceptive anchors supplied by the HMD itself. This link is load-bearing for the 'self-location-dominant state' and the subsequent redescription of the minimal self.
- Abstract: The proposed state is introduced via concepts drawn from the same phenomenological tradition cited in the paper; the manuscript does not supply independent criteria, falsifiable predictions, or empirical grounding that would distinguish the claim from a reframing that follows directly from the chosen premises rather than from additional evidence.
minor comments (2)
- The abstract would benefit from an explicit roadmap of the paper's sections so readers can locate where the phenomenological argument is developed and where connections to prior presence/embodiment literature are made.
- Concrete examples of 'viewpoint motion, impact, and direct address' from specific immersive-video titles would help illustrate the claimed shift from image-internal events to self-position events.
Simulated Author's Rebuttal
We thank the referee for the careful reading and constructive critique of our manuscript. The comments highlight important points about the phenomenological grounding of our central claim, and we have revised the abstract and added clarifying sections to strengthen the argument while preserving the paper's interpretive character.
read point-by-point responses
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Referee: [—] Abstract: The inference that 'limited sensorimotor contingency' plus absent agency reliably backgrounds the body schema (leaving self-location dominant) is asserted from a phenomenological standpoint without intermediate steps, an explicit mechanism, or counterexample handling—e.g., why this does not instead produce overall attenuation of presence or retention of vestibular/proprioceptive anchors supplied by the HMD itself. This link is load-bearing for the 'self-location-dominant state' and the subsequent redescription of the minimal self.
Authors: We accept that the original abstract presented this inference too concisely. The revised version and a new subsection in the introduction now spell out the intermediate phenomenological steps: drawing on Slater's sensorimotor contingency framework and distinctions between body schema and peripersonal space, we explain how head-only rotation without agency produces a narrowed field of self-experience in which visual self-location at the viewpoint becomes salient while proprioceptive and vestibular signals from the HMD are backgrounded rather than foregrounded. We address the counterexample of possible attenuation by referencing existing immersive-video studies in which participants report strong 'being-there' sensations despite absent bodies, and we discuss cases of failed presence (e.g., low-resolution footage) as boundary conditions that support rather than undermine the claim. These additions make the mechanism explicit without introducing new empirical data. revision: yes
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Referee: [—] Abstract: The proposed state is introduced via concepts drawn from the same phenomenological tradition cited in the paper; the manuscript does not supply independent criteria, falsifiable predictions, or empirical grounding that would distinguish the claim from a reframing that follows directly from the chosen premises rather than from additional evidence.
Authors: The manuscript is a conceptual contribution whose purpose is to redescribe self-experience in immersive video by foregrounding self-location as an analytic axis. We therefore do not claim independent empirical criteria or new falsifiable predictions as primary outputs. However, to respond to the concern, we have added a short section on implications that outlines how the self-location-dominant state could be operationalized (e.g., via adapted presence questionnaires that isolate spatial self-location items and behavioral measures of viewpoint-centered attention). This supplies a bridge to future empirical work while keeping the core argument within its phenomenological scope. revision: partial
Circularity Check
No significant circularity in phenomenological reinterpretation
full rationale
The paper presents an interpretive redescription of the minimal self and presence in immersive video, drawing on phenomenological analysis of limited sensorimotor contingency and absent agency. It explicitly names a 'self-location-dominant state' as the proposed condition and concludes that the minimal self is redescribed as spatially located at a viewpoint with body schema backgrounded. No equations, fitted parameters, or predictions are involved. The text does not invoke self-cited uniqueness theorems, smuggle ansatzes via prior author work, or rename known results as new unifications. The central claim follows from the described boundary conditions of immersive video rather than reducing to its inputs by construction. The derivation chain remains self-contained as a conceptual proposal connecting existing research strands.
Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger
axioms (1)
- domain assumption Phenomenological analysis can validly reinterpret self-experience in immersive video as self-location dominant when body schema is reduced
invented entities (1)
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self-location-dominant state
no independent evidence
discussion (0)
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