What Is It Like to Have a Body?

What Is It Like to Have a Body?

Few issues in psychology are as fundamental or as elusive as the sense of one’s own body. Despite widespread recognition of the link between body and self, psychology has only recently developed methods for the scientific study of bodily awareness. Experimental manipulations of embodiment in healthy volunteers have allowed for important advances in knowledge. Synchronous multisensory inputs fro...

What it feels like to have a facial disfigurement.

The first time I realised that I looked different was when a boy called me “fat chin” at primary school. Thirty years later I still remember the burning shame and humiliation. I was born with cherubism, a rare genetic condition which is associated with variable degrees of abnormal bony overgrowth of the lower part of the face. I started to show signs of this when I was 4. Before then I looked l...

What Is It Like to Be a Brain Simulation?

We frame the question of what kind of subjective experience a brain simulation would have in contrast to a biological brain. We discuss the brain prosthesis thought experiment. Then, we identify finer questions relating to the original inquiry, and set out to answer them moving forward from both a general physicalist perspective, and pan-experientialism. We propose that the brain simulation is ...

What is it like to be a peahen?

What it is like to be a hospital nurse.