You know roughly where your body is at all times, but where in it is your “self”?
Your center of mass is around the solar plexus, yet that doesn’t seem to universally be where people feel the center of their self to be. Most people feel they “are” right behind their eyes, probably in the brain.
Sometimes people have out-of-body experiences, completely changing their anchor for a while.
When pointing at themselves, people tend to point a thumb at their chest or face. Do they feel differently about it, or is it just convenience?
Are you a body with a head full of thinking goop and sensors on top, or are you a head sitting on a body?
And wherever you feel you are, have you felt different at any time? Can you change it?
Personally, I can’t separate the feeling of self from my vision, so “I” am directly behind my eyeballs and I can’t change it.
You are mostly your brain, which extends to the rest of your body.
The thing about OOB cases is that the human brain is really good at faking information, or just generating it out of thin air.
In fact it never stops doing that, unless it is allowed to completely die.
If a person is resurrected, the brain generates “filler” information for the duration you were “out”.
For some, that is seeing an “afterlife”.
There is no universally specified “afterlife”, it’s based entirely on culture, and what the person has grown to believe in, even if they don’t believe it anymore.
Good Dog
I enjoyed their write up, but honestly, was kind of put off by your response there.
Username jokes can be low-hanging fruit, but I thought that one was fairly wholesome.
Oh, shit lol. Just realized. Was having an existential moment
“If a person is resurrected” then they are Jesus, or proof that there is an after-life, and miracles do happen. On the other hand, people are resuscitated all the time by modern medicine.
Shh now, don’t tell them about necromancy.
Oh man, this reminds me of a really cool PBS Nova mini series on the brain and how it’s basically very flawed at perception and how we ingest the world around us. Extremely fascinating.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/series/your-brain/
That’s valid and objectively sound. The area closest to the most detailed sensory input and processing ability makes sense as the center.
Though if people feel strongly that they are somewhere else, it’d be really intdresting to hear about.