Sunday, October 7, 2012

Proprioception and Soul

Proprioception is often experienced as an awareness of an 'I' existing within one's body.  This experience is often interpreted as revealing the existence of a 'ghost within the machine', i. e. of the existence of an entity that is independent of the body.  Accordingly, it has often been adduced as evidence of the existence of an incorporeal substance, typically termed 'Soul', and, in some cases, as sufficient proof of the latter, i. e. that the existence of Soul is the exclusive adequate explanation of that experience.  So, insofar as Proprioception is constituted as an empirical cognition, i. e. as a cognition of physiological processes, it, at minimum, provides an alternative, explanation of the 'ghost in the machine', and, at maximum, disproves dualistic doctrines that are based on the stronger interpretation of the significance of that image.  Given that Proprioception, verified by contemporary Neuro-Psychology, continues to go generally unrecognized by Philosophical systems, both challenges to Dualism remain unmet.

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