Presence and agency
Introduced by Seth, Suzuki & Critchley (2011) and cited within Seth (2013), then substantively extended in Farb et al. (2015). Framed as the “two complementary senses” through which the embodied self is realized via ongoing interoceptive interaction — see embodied-selfhood.
Presence
Presence is thought to arise when interoceptive and/or exteroceptive prediction errors (PEs) are successfully minimized. In the original Seth et al. (2011) account, this minimization was attributed to active inference (overt or physiological). Farb et al. extend this: presence is also reachable through perceptual-inference — broadening the distribution of interoceptive priors (reducing their precision) so that relatively few visceral sensations are extreme enough to register as PE demanding a regulatory response. Successful iterations of perceptual inference are proposed to yield “effortless presence” (Sjölie 2014). Presence is framed as operating on a continuum of effort; extreme difficulty achieving it manifests clinically as depersonalization and derealization (linking to Seth 2013’s discussion of dissociative disorders — see embodied-selfhood).
Agency
Agency — a feeling of control over one’s actions, that one can act to produce results — is associated specifically with overt active inference: direct regulation of bodily sensation, or behavior change that indirectly shapes interoceptive state. Agency matters for a sense of responsibility for self-regulation (from breath monitoring to changing jobs).
The clinical double-edge of agency
Agency achieved through avoidance (e.g., withdrawal from a feared situation in anxiety) is reinforcing in the short term but prevents disconfirmation of the feared outcome — a form of active inference that is effective yet ultimately maladaptive. Catastrophic appraisals paired with active-inference “solutions” (a racing heart appraised as a heart attack → hospital visit; anticipatory rapid breathing appraised as incompetence → social withdrawal) entrench rather than resolve the underlying prediction errors. Farb et al. link this to appraisal theory (Scherer et al. 2001, agency at the heart of subjective well-being) and to contemplative accounts (Brown & Ryan 2003, presence at the heart of well-being) as two complementary lenses on the same predictive-coding substrate.