Visceral Self

Returning to this idea that the concept of a personal 'self' might take its structure from the organisational logic of the physical body as realised through its sensory modalities, I'm thinking here about the idea of a 'core'. It feels intuitively correct that our personal self has some kind of a core to it, perhaps corresponding to a 'real' self or more metaphysically to some kind of contentless 'soul' or 'spirit' which forms the axis of our identity,. Maybe the part of physical sensory experience from which this is derived is the body's in-built processes of self-protection which prioritise central visceral functions at the expense of more peripheral exteroceptive aspects of the body. When under violent attack we curl up around the middle of our bodies, protecting the core functions of the body even if that means losing ears and skin in the attack. When extreme cold attacks the body the body responds by re-routing the blood supply from the extremities to the core, again preserving the really important core functions and sacrificing the less core elements of the physical self, the fingers and toes.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• cognition
• cognitive
• poetics
• embodied
• embodiment
• self
• sensory
• modality
• mode
• identity
• viscera
• core
• narrative
• Antonio
• Damasio
• Thomas
• Metzinger
• psychology

[almafarag]

this is funny, almost strange, yesterday I planned on making a video about the notion of the core of the self, but have not made it yet, my take is totally different, though, yet what you say may (or may not) shed some light on why certain phenomena that are more complex than we realize are treated as evident, for instance, we tend to treat our identities in terms of our bodily extensions

(where are the boundaries bw our phenomenological and the more virtual or abstract or symbolic experiences?)

[conferencereport]

I'd like to see that video if you decide to make it.

[almafarag]

I won't be around for a day or two, but I'll definitely do it then, by the way, your clarification on the question of "Knowledge" really helps to clear the way from unnecessary semantic by-passes, (perhaps the issue of "meaning" is also closely relevant there)