Consciousness as ‘Feeling in the Body’

Abstract

The neurobiology of consciousness faces two problems: the problem of how the movie-in-the-brain is generated, and the problem of how the brain also generates the sense that there is an owner and observer for that movie. In The Feeling of What Happens, neurobiologist Antonio Damasio suggests that central to human consciousness, and to the problem of how people know what people know, is the experience of bodily feeling. Ewe-speaking people have traditionally inhabited the land that is now southeastern Ghana as well as southern Togo, and Ewes are close in ethnolinguistic terms to Fon-speaking people in Benin. Seselelame is an ideal illustration of a culturally elaborated form in which many Anlo people attend to and interpret their own bodies while simultaneously orienting themselves to the bodies of those around them. In the history of psychology, speculations about how the brain works have often been influenced by the technology of the day.

Topics & Concepts