The Seat of the Soul

[brin_bellway]

(currently inspired by etiragram's tripblogging, but I've been thinking about this on and off for a long time)

I *feel* as if my mind is located in my head, and I *feel* as if this is the intuitive place to perceive it (in the middle of a bunch of sensory receptors, plus a speech generator) but I wonder how much of it is just power of suggestion. Did people in cultures that believed the soul was in the heart perceive their thoughts as being located in their chests? Is it even particularly common for members of brain-as-the-seat-of-the-soul cultures to perceive their thoughts as being located in their heads?

Comments

[wingedcatgirl]

>Is it even particularly common for members of brain-as-the-seat-of-the-soul cultures to perceive their thoughts as being located in their heads?

Well, we do, so there's one data point.

[sigmaleph]

Same. I could point you to a specific area inside my skull, even

[contrarianarchon]

My consciousness seems to be somewhere just behind my eyes, so that's a data point.

(Note-worthily, though, I am prone to bouts of feel like I'm too small for my body, like a mind-hermit crab which only practically inhabits about half of my head and my forearms and which is kinda remote controlling all the other stuff)

(That's ... a bit exaggeration and a bit weird subjective-mushy-stuff that may not reflect any real experience but it's still something that I *feel* strongly sometimes. Mostly when I am curled up in all my layers of shells and am feeling particularly anti-flesh)