A Necessary Deception
19
This is true also with somatosensory feeling, such as pain and the sense of
touch. If I have a pain in my toe, nerve fibers conduct signals to the brain
where it is coded as pain. Nonetheless, I feel the pain in my toe, not my head.
And if I have a toothache, the pain is felt in the tooth and not the brain. This
too is a necessary deception built into us, for when we’re hurt we need to know
where the injury is.
Distal attribution goes beyond feelings and sensations. A familiar example
is driving a car and having the absolute conviction that “I am the driver and
controller of the car” which thus becomes a kind of extension of myself. There
are situations where a machine operator controls a remote machine, and must
assume herself to be the agent in control of it. After a certain amount of practice,
the perceived distance between the operator and the machine vanishes, and it
is as if the machine were part of the body of the operator, even if it is actually
miles away, or deep underground. This type of experience is very common and
is another form of distal attribution.
An especially important example of attribution is the recognition of your
own body and its parts as belonging to you, and as being an aspect of your Self.
This is known as self-attribution. The idea that you are your body and mind
is not as self-evident as it would appear to be. The oneness of your body with
your sentient awareness is programmed in the brain. The existence of a Self
consisting of a body and a center of feeling is part of the world-model of every
creature.
Self-attribution is fragile and can easily break down or be misled. For example, there are psychiatric conditions such as depersonalization syndrome or
Cotard’s disease, in which patients no longer recognize their bodies as their
own and are adrift in a world without a physical anchor. Moreover, there are
situations in which normal people are easily fooled into believing that a body
part is not theirs. Demonstrations of such situations are routinely carried out
in university psychology labs. 6
In a typical demonstration, a subject’s right hand is hidden in a box out of
sight, while an identical dummy rubber hand is in plain sight where the real
hand ought to be. The experimenter taps on the subject’s hidden hand while at
the same time tapping on the dummy hand. The taps are in perfect synchrony.
Within a minute or two, the subject experiences the tapping to be arising from
the visible rubber hand. In an uncanny way, he assigns his own feeling to the
rubber hand and assimilates the artificial hand as part of his own body.
Even more remarkably, one can replace the rubber hand by the tabletop. If
the subject’s concealed hand and the tabletop are tapped in perfect synchrony,
then the subject soon starts to personally feel the taps at the table’s surface, as if
19
This is true also with somatosensory feeling, such as pain and the sense of
touch. If I have a pain in my toe, nerve fibers conduct signals to the brain
where it is coded as pain. Nonetheless, I feel the pain in my toe, not my head.
And if I have a toothache, the pain is felt in the tooth and not the brain. This
too is a necessary deception built into us, for when we’re hurt we need to know
where the injury is.
Distal attribution goes beyond feelings and sensations. A familiar example
is driving a car and having the absolute conviction that “I am the driver and
controller of the car” which thus becomes a kind of extension of myself. There
are situations where a machine operator controls a remote machine, and must
assume herself to be the agent in control of it. After a certain amount of practice,
the perceived distance between the operator and the machine vanishes, and it
is as if the machine were part of the body of the operator, even if it is actually
miles away, or deep underground. This type of experience is very common and
is another form of distal attribution.
An especially important example of attribution is the recognition of your
own body and its parts as belonging to you, and as being an aspect of your Self.
This is known as self-attribution. The idea that you are your body and mind
is not as self-evident as it would appear to be. The oneness of your body with
your sentient awareness is programmed in the brain. The existence of a Self
consisting of a body and a center of feeling is part of the world-model of every
creature.
Self-attribution is fragile and can easily break down or be misled. For example, there are psychiatric conditions such as depersonalization syndrome or
Cotard’s disease, in which patients no longer recognize their bodies as their
own and are adrift in a world without a physical anchor. Moreover, there are
situations in which normal people are easily fooled into believing that a body
part is not theirs. Demonstrations of such situations are routinely carried out
in university psychology labs. 6
In a typical demonstration, a subject’s right hand is hidden in a box out of
sight, while an identical dummy rubber hand is in plain sight where the real
hand ought to be. The experimenter taps on the subject’s hidden hand while at
the same time tapping on the dummy hand. The taps are in perfect synchrony.
Within a minute or two, the subject experiences the tapping to be arising from
the visible rubber hand. In an uncanny way, he assigns his own feeling to the
rubber hand and assimilates the artificial hand as part of his own body.
Even more remarkably, one can replace the rubber hand by the tabletop. If
the subject’s concealed hand and the tabletop are tapped in perfect synchrony,
then the subject soon starts to personally feel the taps at the table’s surface, as if