They feel like their bodies are just the mechanical thing that carries them around. They don’t think of the systemic impact of things that affect their body and consequently, their brain and mental states. E.g. gut health plays a major role in mental health, but this is not an intuitive concept for many people.
Some have argued this is an outcome of Judeo-Christian thinking, e.g. my soul is not of this world, this body isn’t my best body, my soul passes on when I die, etc. These ideas are deeply ingrained from an early age, during the time in which one is forming their concept of self.
For me it is more in the middle of my chest. This is considered odd in the western world but it is not unheard of. I am not my mind, I am not my ego, I am but a wave in the universe, it comes - it goes it will pass - enjoy it for a while.
That's a reasonable belief, but some people do not feel that way.
If I had my foot amputated am i still me? If i had my mind transplanted into a different body am I still me? etc. I doubt there are any good answers that are more logical than "I feel this to be true".
> I don't understand your reference to the western world
Some religions believe that people have a soul that is separate from the body, which contains a person's essence (And say, goes up to heaven when they die or otherwise continues on after death). Even among people who don't buy that, it sets the stage (even perhaps just subconciously) for other dualist beliefs where the body is separate from your "essence" (however you want to define that)
I’m not sure there’s any clear answer to this as it touches on so many known and unknown unknowns. But, the assertion is that there most people (especially in western intellectual traditions) would consider wherever their brain is to be them (see also the concept of “brain in a vat” etc). This may or may not be true for you specifically.
“And let me make it quite clear that when Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral /…/this new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, /…/ It is not merely the spreading of an idea; it is more like evolution–a biological or super-biological fact. There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.”
(Screwtape gives advice to use a “body doesn’t matter” philosophy as a way of making the human distracted or ineffective) “At the very least, they can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget, what you must always remember, that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls. It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”
And to your point, it has permeated Christianity more broadly, and arguably western thinking even broader still. I left the church in my teens. My conception of self didn’t shift until decades later after many years of intentional deconstruction. It’s a powerful illusion.
They also saw their bodies as created by god, and thoughts/emotions as having metaphysical sources and consequences. Setting aside any specific doctrinal positions, the broader claims and beliefs of the church push one to think of themselves in some rather odd ways.
If certain thoughts and feelings are temptations from the devil, actually believing this explanation short circuits the systemic explanations for those thoughts/feelings, and leaves one to conclude that the body must not have anything to do with it.
I believe the Christian worldview involving a creator god more broadly points people in this direction not necessarily because of specific claims, but as a downstream effect of the broader philosophy.
> thoughts/emotions as having metaphysical sources
Maybe this is a Protestant or a reformed thing? Yes, the devil is a temptor, but pretty much every sect agrees that there is no way for man to redeem himself but through faith. It is our nature to sin, and thus we are perfectly capable of it without the devil's help.
If not, then I wouldn't use the embodiment/integration argument to define where "you" is, as the brain can learn to turn just about anything into extra limbs or senses, if you use it frequently enough.
If you keep going down the rabbit hole of looking for “you”, the only consistent answer that comes up is that there is no single or stable center, and that the boundaries of “you” are not so easy to find. Going deeper still points to the feeling of “I” being nothing but a useful illusion, and most importantly, just another feeling that you experience alongside other feelings like happiness or anger.
Some would argue that your whole world is you, and that our internal states and experience of the world are inseparable from the environment and people around us.
This is not a metaphysical claim, but a more broad statement about the systemic factors that influence what it’s like to be you.
I'm in agreement with that; in a way, it's a superset of the point I was making. What is or isn't "you" feels variable, fluid. An experienced driver might find that, when driving, their sense of self extends to encompass the car. I definitely felt this when getting into "state of flow" while playing some first-person videogames. The ideas of "state of flow", "immersion", "becoming one with something", all seem to point to, or in some cases be a case of, the fluidity of the sense of self.
> Going deeper still points to the feeling of “I” being nothing but a useful illusion, and most importantly, just another feeling that you experience alongside other feelings like happiness or anger.
Useful illusions is all we have. As for "just another feeling", I can entertain that thought, and I find it curious, but I haven't really experienced this frame of mind/perception yet. Or maybe I did, but I didn't realize it, so I don't have the memory associated with the phrases you used?
> This is not a metaphysical claim, but a more broad statement about the systemic factors that influence what it’s like to be you.
I appreciate you going for the more "materialistic"/non-spiritual take. I'm not denying the variety and richness of experiencing the world and one's self in it. I was just taken aback at both broad dismissal of "brain / body separation" and it being justified entirely by spiritual and experiential reasons. My point about driving meshes with my other comments (including this one) like this: we know the "sense of you" can be extended to and beyond the body. But if, instead of extending it, you try to contract it, then without crossing into metaphysics, you'll stop at the brain. This is what I believe makes the brain/body distinction meaningful: not what you can make part of yourself, but that which you can't take away.
