Grief’s impact on sensorimotor expectations: an account of non-veridical bereavement experiences

Abstract

The philosophy of grief has directed little attention to bereavement’s impact on perceptual experience. However, misperceptions, hallucinations and other anomalous experiences are strikingly common following the death of a loved one. Such experiences range from misperceiving a stranger to be the deceased, to phantom sights, sounds and smells, to nebulous quasi-sensory experiences of the loved one’s presence. This paper draws upon the enactive sensorimotor theory of perception to offer a phenomenologically sensitive and empirically informed account of these experiences. It argues that they can be understood as deriving from disruption to both sensorimotor expectations and perceived opportunities for action, stemming from the upheaval of bereavement. Different facets of the enactive sensorimotor approach can help to explain different types of post-bereavement perceptual experience. Post-bereavement misperceptions can be accounted for through the way that alterations to sensorimotor expectations can result in atypical ‘amodal completion’, while bereavement hallucinations can be understood as ‘appearances’ that fail to form part of the usual patterns of sensorimotor contingency. Quasi-sensory experiences of the presence of the deceased can be understood as resulting from changes to perceived affordances. This paper aims to demonstrate the explanatory value of key aspects of the sensorimotor approach by highlighting how they can help to explain the phenomenology of post-bereavement experiences. However, it also illuminates certain areas in which the sensorimotor approach ought to be supplemented, especially if it is to account for tight connections between perception, affect, and intersubjectivity that are salient in grief.

Grief, Continuing Bonds, and Unreciprocated Love

“…Continuing bonds theorists also frequently appeal to first‐person reports that tell us that bereaved people often feel a sense of continued connection to the dead. Subjects may, for example, feel as though they are still in contact with the dead or that the deceased is still in some way present (e.g., Valentine 2008; Castelnovo et al 2015; Steffen and Coyle 2017; Ratcliffe 2020; Millar 2021). Steffen and Coyle (2017, 373) recount one participant in their research saying, “Sometimes I feel that he's here or something.…”

Communing with the Dead Online: Chatbots, Grief, and Continuing Bonds

“…our emotions and their regulative connections with others, our experience of time, our sense of self, and our habitual ways of perceiving and engaging with everyday projects and felt possibilities (e.g. Fuchs, 2018;Ingerslev, 2020;Mehmel, 2021;Millar, 2021;Ratcliffe and Byrne, 2021). Likewise, although he does not adopt an explicitly phenomenological perspective, Michael Cholbi (2020) considers a phenomenological puzzle: why do we feel it is important to grieve, and indeed want to grieve, despite its painful character?…”

“…The bodily disturbance Lewis and others describe implies some related alterations of experience that have drawn the attention of phenomenologists: a breakdown of the habitual world distinctive of a life once shared with the dead, as well as a sense of temporality that helps organize, and maintain our sense of rootedness in, this habitual world (Ratcliffe, 2017;Mehmel, 2021;Millar, 2021). Much of the life we share with others consists of doing things together.…”

“…Again, this disruption can occur at a local synchronic level via a disruption of our 'perceptual field' (ibid.) or 'sensorimotor skills' (Millar, 2021) disturbances that may, in turn, generate certain anomalous experiences that often accompany grief. For instance, in the early stage of grieving, individuals may habitually search for the deceased: they may scan the room for them when they walk in the door after work; repeatedly glance at their recliner, still contoured to fit their body after many years, while watching TV; or spontaneously reach for them in bed.…”

“…Others report visual, auditory, or tactile hallucinations of the dead (Grimby, 1993;Sacks, 2012). As Millar (2021) argues persuasively, these experiences arise from thwarted sensorimotor anticipations we have about inhabiting a shared world with someone no longer present.…”