{"id":15695,"date":"2015-12-22T18:20:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T18:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/embryo.nl\/432-the-embryo-in-us-2012-en\/"},"modified":"2023-09-16T13:58:54","modified_gmt":"2023-09-16T13:58:54","slug":"the-embryo-in-us-article-2012-en","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.embryo.nl\/en\/the-embryo-in-us-article-2012-en\/","title":{"rendered":"AA ARTICLE The embryo in us – 2012 EN"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Embryo in us \u2013 A phenomenological Search for Soul and Consciousness in the prenatal Body. Published\u00a0in:<\/u>\u00a0Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health, Volume 27, Issue 3, April 2013.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

Introduction<\/em><\/p>\r\n

Lost Body <\/strong>In the last two decades we have seen a new onslaught of materialistic thinking in biology, psychology and philosophy. Truly, it could be described as a tsunami. Based upon concepts about the function of our brain according to modern neurophysiology, a new perspective about the human soul and consciousness is introduced and apparently accepted by the general public. To summarize the gospel of modern brain philosophers: the brain rules the mind. All that we feel, think, do \u2013 well, it\u2019s just the \u201cbrain.\u201d Everything that we are able to experience is attributed to the brain and reduced to \u2018nothing but\u2019 the activity of hippocampi, cerebral cortical areas and so on. The post-Cartesian soul which still was more or less defensible as the imponderable res cogitans dimension in our mind has been abandoned. Neurophilosophers claim that Cartesian dualism of body and mind is overruled by the evidence of the brain as the definitive physical substrate for our consciousness, our speech and our mind. Implicitly, however, and without any modesty, a false new dualism is introduced in the form of a body\u2013brain split. The brain is a \u2018special\u2019 organ in the body and there our consciousness occurs and is performed by neuromachinery. The Dutch neuroscientist Swaab proclaims that the body only serves three purposes: to feed, to move and to reproduce our brains. \u201cWe are our brains\u201d is the message. It leaves us with a very private and subjectivist view of reality, because you have to consider that everything you feel or experience as a \u2018non-body\u2019 or imponderable reality in your head or in your body (like the pain in your toe) is merely an \u201cillusion produced by the brain.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Lost soul<\/strong> What is the defense against this pure reductionistic materialism? It is: become a phenomenologist! Don\u2019t just conform to the view of the scientific onlooker (observer) but take the primary stance that life offers to all of us: be a participant. As a participator, take for true your own sense experience and what you experience in, and by means of, your body. This is the primary reality. The \u201cworld of senses\u201d is reality before the Cartesian split of mind and body. A phenomenological approach not only takes as true what your experience is telling you, it also includes the virtual and secondary reality of the \u201cbrain facts.\u201d Modern neurophilosophers make the philosophical and methodological mistake of assuming that primary reality is only the reality that we observe through our instruments. But this is not so. Reality is not just that which we can observe through physical onlooker-instruments, but it is reality as we experience it. Consciousness and soul are also experienced realities. Although imponderable and therefore, not measurable, they are yet evident for everyone. It is a strange form of modern asceticism in science to deny the real world that we all experience! In fact, the statement that \u201cI am my brain\u201d is not a fact \u2013 it is a choice. More precisely, it is a paradigm choice: that is, a choice that scientists and philosophers make about how they will see the world. Modern \u201cbrain thinkers\u201d nearly always confuse the means with the message: because we must have the means \u2013that is, the vehicle, for thinking and experience in the form of the brain \u2013 that signifies to them we are only experiencing our own brain. . !<\/p>\r\n

Read more?<\/span> On<\/span> the link below.<\/span><\/em> \u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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