Assuming that "I" is the current intrastructure of sensory organs and all other functioning or non-functioning organs, all working and converting information to stimulus into feeling, then feeling into emotions, but not exclusively in this order, who then, is the "I" if the current intrastructure of functional or non-functional organs is re-arranged or absent?
It is correct in this sense, to view the human body and its parts as prosthetics; this concept objectifies the "identity" of the parts of the human body and this leniency makes re-arrangement possible. The conceptualizing of body parts does not end. In the text, "On the Subject of Neural and Sensory Protheses", Lisa Cartwright and Brian Goldfarb write, "We propose, however, that prosthetics exist in a continuum with orthotic and surgical hardware and software that are designed to facilitate nerve function, sensory function, and motor ability" (126). In deconstructing the aware sense of the body and focusing on the variability of nerve function and developement, the materiality of the physical body is invariable. Does that reconstruction make a new consciousness?
The cultural variability of body awareness confirms that sensory and feeling are conceived differently among different cultures. In asian cultures, for example, chi is the flow of life energy, comparably, electricity. Inflammation is a disturbance in the balance of the energy flow. Accupuncture, aims to reconstruct the inflamed region of the body, and the distantly effected areas. In this sense, the goal of the chi kung, is to use the body's current intrastructure to consciously manipulate the chi flow to better oneself, ideally, another type of recruiting of body parts.
The question still remains. Who is "I" in the midst of the body? Where is identity found within the body's extent? And excitingly, how is identity found in "machine" prostheses; where is the threshold between human and cyborg? [I think this was Norbert Wiener's interest]
I would like to bring forward a threshold that is difficult to collapse, but one in which I find to often presuppose the feelings of the body in a reality, and that is language.
Cartwright and Goldfarb examine the discernment of sensory stimuli into meaning, frequenting its subjectivity with the term "intrasubjectivity". When does the consciousness confirm what its body senses, as a determined feeling? When is red, red? When is red, love, anger, stop? When does "I" look great in red? When the network of language develops to categorize perception, the variability of perception is reduced, in theory, the congruent variability of nerves is reduced psychologically. Say, a humble individual cannot determine that he sees red, he responds grey to a sample of grey and a sample of red. Logically, the individual would be determined as colorblind. Fibromyalgia Syndrome is the name of the malady, which is found to be rooted in brain damage or nerve damage of the eye; some are born with it, some develope it. In the realm of science, diagnosis seems simple. However, what is one reality over another?
Great books, relative ideas: The Order of Things, Michel Foucault; Remarks on Color, Ludwig Wittgenstein.
VISUAL POST: youtube live puffer fish sushi. while it is quite a psychologically nauseating tradition to me, it is a great an example of consciousness being parsed into some state, approximate to death, as the sushi chef cuts down the body of the fish (unfortunately, one of my preferred animals) organ by organ, its living function is reduced, and while still "alive" they are all separated from each other. what does it feel like?
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