Proprioception: from “proprius-ception, ‘one’s own’ ception (…) the ‘body’ itself as, by movement of its own tissues, giving the data of, depth”
(Charles Olson, “Proprioception”)
Up until now, it has not proved common in philosophy for readers to experience the breathless rush through sensory landscapes one finds in novels by William Gibson, or better, Jeff Noon (Vurt, Pollen). Philosophers of most stripes like to recapitulate; to reconstruct a context; to take you back a few steps in time and show you the emergence of an idea. Granted, there have been a few books in recent years coming out of the phenomenological tradition which emphasize the most physical…
If one places phantom limbs within the context of the self, the phenomenology of phantom limbs, confronts us with some very interesting ontological questions regarding mental causation and the function of illusion. Phantom limbs do not exist in the physical world as they are unconsciously generated constructions of the mind/brain As phantom limbs are not in the physical world, we say that they are illusory. The self is also a construction of the mind/brain : the self does not extend into the physical world, and can also be described as an illusion.