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GALLAGHER, Shaun. How the Body Shapes the Mind. Clarendon Press: Oxford, 2005. ix + 284 pp. - Phenomenology, the neurosciences and psychology combine to present mental activity as an "aspect of embodiment," steering a largely safe and sometimes explicitly Aristotelian course between Cartesianism and physicalism. Topics include body image and body schema, sense of agency (sense that I am responsible for an action or movement) and sense of ownership (sense that my bodily movements, sensations or thoughts are mine), body deafferentation (lack of internal sensation or "propioception" of certain body parts), phantom limbs, the neural basis of intersubjectivity, neonate imitation, linguistic gesture, the causes and philosophical implications of schizophrenia, and free will.
Interactions of the nervous system throughout the body allow the human being to distinguish himself from his environment and to recognize other selves as like himself. Dennett's "brain in a vat" could not have human consciousness for lack of body schémas. A body schema is a particular system of non-conscious interaction of perceptions and motor actions (for example, sight and nerve impulses from parts of the body while walking allow for balance and not having to wonder whether it is we ourselves or surrounding objects which are in motion), while a body image is a set...