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Present After Presence: Subtraction, Givenness, and the Structure of Being-There
Koichi Toida
TL;DR
Presence research has often treated embodiment, agency, and co-presence as supports for being-there, leaving open what remains when these conditions are weakened. This paper uses subtraction to examine here and now, and argues that for-me-ness is the first-personal condition within which either articulation can be experienced.
Problem
Presence research often treats embodiment, agency, and co-presence as factors that enhance being-there, while their status as supports or constitutive conditions remains to be distinguished.
Source: §I · p. 1Method
The paper uses immersive media as dissociation apparatuses to loosen conditions that ordinarily co-occur, then distinguishes stabilising conditions, resilient articulations, and first-personal givenness.
Source: §I · p. 2, §VI · p. 7Results
Subtraction exposes the resilience of here when bodily supports weaken and of now when co-presence, reciprocity, and real-time simultaneity weaken.
Source: §III · p. 4, §IV · p. 5, §VII · p. 8Takeaways & Limitations
Here and now articulate Presence spatially and temporally, while for-me-ness names the first-personal givenness within which either can be lived.
Source: §VII · p. 8Empirical survival of here and now does not establish their necessity, and immersive media do not provide experimental evidence for for-me-ness.
Source: §III · p. 4, §IV · p. 5, §VI · p. 7
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
Presence research has often proceeded by addition, treating immersion, embodiment, agency, ownership, co-presence, reciprocity, and temporal simultaneity as conditions that stabilise the sense of being there. Yet immersive video suggests that several of these conditions can be weakened without eliminating Presence. Building on Bodyless Presence and Bodyless Presentness, this paper asks what is disclosed when such conditions are progressively subtracted. I distinguish three levels that should not be conflated: stabilising conditions that strengthen or support Presence; empirically resilient articulation-forms through which Presence is lived as here and now; and a transcendental limit-condition concerning the first-personal givenness of experience. Subtraction provides evidence for the resilience of here and now, but empirical resilience does not by itself establish constitutivity or transcendental necessity. I argue, on phenomenological rather than experimental grounds, that for-me-ness names the limit-condition within which any such spatial or temporal articulation can be experienced at all. The paper bridges operational Presence research with Husserlian givenness, Leibhaftigkeit, and image consciousness; rereads Bodyless Presence as exposing the resilience of here; rereads Bodyless Presentness as exposing the resilience of now; and develops a stratified account of Presence through Zahavi's pre-reflective self-awareness while taking Derrida's critique of self-presence seriously. It concludes by proposing immersive media as dissociation apparatuses for loosening conditions ordinarily coupled within experiential there-ness.
I. INTRODUCTION: Present After Presence
Presence research has largely asked which factors enhance mediated being-there, while this paper asks what remains disclosed when those supports are weakened. It distinguishes stabilising conditions, resilient here-and-now articulations, and for-me-ness as the first-personal limit-condition of experience.
I. INTRODUCTION: Present After Presence
- Presence research has often treated immersion, embodiment, agency, ownership, interaction, and co-presence as factors that strengthen being-there, risking their elevation into constitutive conditions.The paper distinguishes system-side immersion from user-side Presence and notes that content-related dimensions can be experimentally manipulated.Source: §I · p. 1
- Rather than adding conditions to enhance Presence, the paper asks which factors stabilise it and which are implicated in its possibility.Subtraction is not meant to show that embodiment, agency, co-presence, or reciprocity are unimportant.Source: §I · p. 1
- Bodyless Presence describes immersive video in which self-location remains comparatively foregrounded as agency, ownership, and body-schema availability are attenuated (Toida, 2026a).Bodyless Presentness examines whether another can be experienced as existing “here and now” despite weakened co-presence, simultaneity, and reciprocity (Toida, 2026b).Source: §I · pp. 1–2
- The paper rereads Bodyless Presence as exposing the resilience of here and Bodyless Presentness as exposing the resilience of now, rather than adding further Presence components.Together, these cases point toward a residual structure of givenness.Source: §I · p. 2
- Presence is framed as first-personal givenness articulated spatially as here and temporally as now, with stabilisers, resilient articulations, and for-me-ness at distinct analytical levels.Here and now persist under subtraction empirically; phenomenological reflection, rather than that survival, motivates the claim that first-personal givenness is their condition of appearance.Source: §I · p. 2
- For-me-ness marks the limit of subtraction because removing it would eliminate the first-personal field in which a modified experience could appear as here or now.This does not restore pure self-presence: experience remains temporally differentiated and mediated (p05).Source: §I · p. 2
II. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND: Operational Presence, Leibhaftigkeit, and Image Consciousness
The paper bridges operational Presence research and phenomenology without treating their concepts as equivalent. It uses mediated experience to examine how representation, spatial situatedness, and temporal currentness can vary independently.
II. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND: Operational Presence, Leibhaftigkeit, and Image Consciousness
- XR Presence names a psychological experience of being situated in a mediated environment, while Husserlian phenomenology analyses modes in which objects and events are given.The argument does not identify these vocabularies or treat one as an operationalisation of the other.Source: §II · p. 2
- The methodological bridge uses mediated boundary cases to examine how representational status, bodily possibility, spatial situatedness, and temporal currentness can vary separately.XR measures provide empirical access to some disturbances, while phenomenological concepts describe the experiential relation that changes.Source: §II · pp. 2–3
- Live, recorded, or simulated formats do not determine intentional mode; media can instead reorganise the relation between representation and experiential currentness.A live video may remain a represented object, while a recorded environment may function as the field in which the user is situated.Source: §II · p. 3
- In immersive XR, the carrier and image-object may recede as the depicted environment becomes an inhabited field, but this does not establish full Leibhaftigkeit.Immersive media partially decouple conditions ordinarily fused within experiential there-ness; they do not duplicate originary perception or show that the lived body is irrelevant.Source: §II · p. 3
- The paper describes for-me, here, and now as its own analytic distinctions, using media to weaken some supports of there-ness for phenomenological analysis.Immersive media do not reveal the entirety of Leibhaftigkeit.Source: §II · p. 3
III. FIRST SUBTRACTION: The Resilience of Here
Immersive video can preserve a lived viewpoint even when bodily and interactive supports are attenuated. The paper interprets this as the empirical resilience of here, not proof that embodiment is unnecessary or that here is a necessary condition of Presence.
III. FIRST SUBTRACTION: The Resilience of Here
- In immersive video, users may feel situated at the recorded viewpoint despite restricted locomotion, little interaction, weak ownership, and no stable visible virtual body.Events may be experienced as occurring around them or concerning their position, rather than merely before them.Source: §III · p. 3
- Bodyless Presence names a configuration where body-schema availability, agency, and ownership are attenuated while self-location becomes comparatively dominant.It does not mean that the user has no body or that the body schema disappears.Source: §III · p. 3
- Immersive video loosens the ordinary bodily support for here while preserving viewpoint, orientation, stereoscopic depth, and head-contingent looking.This partial decoupling makes the spatial articulation of Presence visible without amounting to pure disembodied existence.Source: §III · pp. 3–4
- A lived here is an orientational centre for near and far, reachable and unreachable, and remains bodily implicated even without a visible avatar or free locomotion.Bodyless Presence describes dissociation between bodily situatedness and some of its ordinary visual and action-related supports.Source: §III · pp. 3–4
- In a study manipulating filming distance in 180° stereoscopic live-action performance, high- and low-Presence conditions differed across Spatial Presence, Self-Location, Possible Actions, Social Presence, and Observability.The near-distance condition positioned viewers in a different pseudo-interpersonal configuration; filming distance functioned as a design variable for here.Source: §III · p. 4
- Here may remain recognisable when bodily stabilisers are attenuated, but this empirical resilience does not prove necessity or make body, agency, and ownership irrelevant.Self-location remains a useful local description of immersive video, not the final ground or a general theory of Presence.Source: §III · p. 4
IV. SECOND SUBTRACTION: The Resilience of Now
The second subtraction rereads Bodyless Presentness as revealing the resilience of now: mediated events may feel currently unfolding despite weakened simultaneity and reciprocity. This currentness is not objective liveness, and its resilience does not establish that now is constitutive of Presence.
IV. SECOND SUBTRACTION: The Resilience of Now
- Bodyless Presentness exposes the resilience of now: an event can appear as currently unfolding even when it is known to be recorded or asynchronous.The residual is temporal currentness, not other-presentness itself.Source: §IV · pp. 4–5
- Currentness means an event's place in the ongoing stream of experience, not clock time or mere liveness.Objective simultaneity and experiential currentness are distinct.Source: §IV · pp. 4–5
- Husserl's living present includes retention and protention, allowing objectively past events to be experienced as unfolding now.The present is temporally thick, not a punctual instant.Source: §IV · p. 5
- The claim concerns mediated-event currentness within temporal experience, not the longitudinal self-givenness of consciousness.Objective liveness is not necessary for an event to be lived as currently unfolding within first-personal flow.Source: §IV · p. 5
- Recorded immersive scenes may function as present experience through stereoscopy, spatial audio, head-contingent looking, viewpoint proximity, and event continuity.This is a dissociation between technical recordedness and experiential currentness, not simple deception.Source: §IV · p. 5
- Temporal stabilisers such as liveness, reciprocity, latency reduction, and synchronous interaction support currentness, but their attenuation does not prove that now is necessary for Presence.This subtraction is more programmatic than the spatial one; the paper calls for direct tests of liveness, delay, replay, and temporal framing.Source: §IV · p. 5
V. THE LIMIT OF SUBTRACTION: For-Me-Ness, Here, and Now
The paper distinguishes variable stabilisers, resilient here-and-now articulations, and for-me-ness as a phenomenological condition of their being given. Empirical subtraction can disclose resilience, but cannot establish transcendental necessity.
V. THE LIMIT OF SUBTRACTION: For-Me-Ness, Here, and Now
- Empirical subtraction can show that a support is dispensable in a configuration or that an articulation persists, but cannot establish that what persists is transcendentally necessary.The procedure's empirical order of disclosure runs opposite to the proposed phenomenological order of foundation.Source: §V · p. 5
- For-me-ness is proposed as the limit-condition because every subtraction already occurs within someone's experience, not because it survives every possible experiment.Removing first-personal givenness would remove the experiential field in which subtraction appears as variation.Source: §V · p. 5
- For-me-ness is pre-reflective first-personal givenness, not reflective self-consciousness, objectified self-perception, reflective ownership judgment, or bodily ownership.The experience is already lived from a first-personal perspective rather than inferred to belong to a self.Source: §V · p. 6
- The claim is deliberately minimal: experience need not involve a substantial self, transparent ego, or objectified inner subject, only non-anonymous givenness.The paper locates the disagreement with self-model and higher-order accounts at the level of experiential givenness, not cognitive architecture.Source: §V · p. 6
- For-me-ness is not pure self-presence: even experience marked by retention, trace, and delay remains lived from somewhere.The first-personal character is described as a dative structure within which mediation and temporal differentiation can appear.Source: §V · p. 6
- Immersive media provide boundary cases of mediated, delayed, trace-structured experience that remains first-personally given, without restoring pure presence.Zahavi's pre-reflective self-awareness remains useful while Derrida's critique of self-identity without difference is retained.Source: §V · pp. 6–7
- Here is spatial orientation within a world-horizon, and now is a temporally thick present; neither is a physical coordinate or punctual instant.The earlier concepts are local models of how Presence is spatially or socially stabilized, not residual limit-conditions.Source: §V · p. 7
- Embodiment, agency, co-presence, reciprocity, and simultaneity stabilize Presence; here and now may remain articulated when these supports are weakened, while for-me-ness is proposed as their condition of givenness.These are distinct claims about support, resilience, and the condition of possibility of experience.Source: §V · pp. 6–7
VI. METHODOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS: Immersive Media as Dissociation Apparatuses
The paper proposes immersive media as dissociation apparatuses that loosen conditions ordinarily coupled in being-there. This supports experimental investigation of here and now, but not empirical proof of for-me-ness.
VI. METHODOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS: Immersive Media as Dissociation Apparatuses
- Immersive media can loosen or recombine embodiment, agency, ownership, co-presence, reciprocity, simultaneity, and spatial orientation, making them dissociation apparatuses.Their value lies in varying stabilising conditions, not simply producing stronger Presence.Source: §VI · p. 7
- Temporal perturbations of auditory feedback offer a methodological precedent: delay can test limits of sensorimotor coherence, but do not establish the paper's whole account.Earlier studies reported recalibration of subjective simultaneity within a limited delay range and ERP components associated with conscious delay detection and reduced agency.Source: §VI · p. 7
- Studies of here can vary body visibility, viewpoint-body congruence, locomotion, filming distance, viewpoint height, camera motion, and visual continuity while tracking self-location.The question is how the field becomes organized as a here, including disruption and recovery of self-location.Source: §VI · pp. 7–8
- Studies of now can vary liveness, latency, temporal framing, event continuity, and replay while measuring experiential currentness.The proposed comparisons include live versus recorded video with visual content held constant and recorded scenes framed as live, archival, replayed, fictional, or delayed.Source: §VI · pp. 7–8
- Measures should distinguish belief that an event is live from experiencing it as unfolding now, using reports, behavior, anticipation, gaze, physiology, and interviews.A recorded event may feel current, while a live event may fail to acquire currentness.Source: §VI · p. 8
- Here and now are intertwined rather than cleanly orthogonal, so the proposed method is patterned attenuation rather than independent component isolation.Tracking, latency, gaze, direct address, and interpersonal distance may affect multiple dimensions at once.Source: §VI · p. 8
- Experimental phenomenology asks how Presence is articulated, destabilized, and reconstituted, using media as technical situations for controlled variation rather than proof of transcendental claims.This approach complements rather than replaces phenomenological description, reduction, and eidetic variation.Source: §VI · p. 8
VII. CONCLUSION: After the Additive Model
The conclusion rejects a return to additive Presence: embodiment, agency, ownership, co-presence, reciprocity, and simultaneity can support or amplify experience without thereby being constitutive. Subtraction reveals resilient here/now articulations, while for-me-ness is argued phenomenologically as the first-personal condition that empirical survival alone cannot establish.
VII. CONCLUSION: After the Additive Model
- Embodiment, agency, ownership, co-presence, reciprocity, and simultaneity can strengthen Presence without being constitutive in the strongest sense.They can make Presence stronger, clearer, more socially validated, more action-oriented, and more durable.Source: §VII · p. 8
- Bodyless Presence exposes the resilience of here, while Bodyless Presentness exposes the resilience of now.Here and now articulate Presence spatially and temporally; for-me-ness names the first-personal givenness within which either can be lived.Source: §VII · p. 8
- Present After Presence names both what emerges after interrupting additive research and the experiential present after critiques of pure self-presence and punctual now.What remains is mediated, horizonal, temporally thick, first-personal givenness, not metaphysical presence restored.Source: §VII · p. 9
- The conclusion accepts Derrida’s critique of transparent self-presence while maintaining, with Zahavi, that minimal for-me-ness need not be eliminated.Experience need not be self-transparent in order to be first-personal.Source: §VII · p. 9
- Immersive media matter as subtraction devices that loosen the usual co-occurrence of body, space, time, action, and otherness.This loosening can make visible relations that everyday experience normally conceals.Source: §VII · p. 9
- Subtraction exposes the resilience of here and now, but the conclusion does not treat that resilience as proof of necessity.For-me-ness is argued on phenomenological grounds as the first-personal givenness presupposed by every experiential modification.Source: §VII · pp. 8–9