The studies from multiple reaches of science and religion that concerned themselves with our understanding of the edges of ourselves I can’t help but find frightening. When we are placed next to a mirror, limbs that were not there suddenly reappear. Our ability to integrate alien objects, even static ones, into our understanding of ourselves is implausibly real. When we accept things so easily that are not us as us what does that mean for the reality of our understanding of our inner selves: our memories, our organs. In studies the illusion must be complete, but perhaps our bodies are the most complete of illusions.
Mirror therapy: as treatment for phantom limbs
“in so far as we conceive of human beings as intentional agents because they generate and respond to mental representations, then we re obliged to ‘split’ them (internally) into two; the one who ‘has’ the representations (perceptions, ideas, etc.) and the one who interprets them. What I derive from this is the cognitive naturalness of the idea of the mind (or soul, spirit, etc.) as a homunculus; that is, like a person but contained within a person. That is to say, a predictable consequence of our (possibly innate) propensity to attribute ‘intentional psychology’ to humans, animals, etc. is attributing a homunculus-like form to this ‘interpreter’ lodged within the other, when the other is being attributed with an intentional psychology. That is to say, if we are to attempt to ‘depict’ the physical realization of the other’s possession of an intentional psychology, the natural way to do this is to make a duplicate of the other in homuncular form (a representation of the inner person who interprets the other’s representations) and lodge that homunculus inside the other’s body.” (Gell 131)
