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Are We Our Brains?
Author(s) -
Burwood Stephen
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
philosophical investigations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.172
H-Index - 14
eISSN - 1467-9205
pISSN - 0190-0536
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9205.2008.01366.x
Subject(s) - embodied cognition , identity (music) , personal identity , psychology of self , key (lock) , self , psychology , epistemology , aesthetics , social psychology , philosophy , ecology , biology
My aim in this paper is to destabilise the brain‐is‐self thesis, something that is now regarded in some quarters as philosophical commonsense. My contention is that it is the epithelial body that enters into the formation of our sense of self and that largely bears the burden of personal identity as well as playing the key role in grounding our psychological ascriptions. Lacking any sensorimotor or social presence of its own, the brain by itself cannot “underlie” selfhood, but only as part of the whole living human being. If the minded individual is embodied, this must mean more than being embrained.