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The Feeling of Embodiment: Our Target of Explanation

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Abstract

Carruthers offers a description of the feeling of embodiment, or the experience of oneself as one’s body, as me. This discussion is driven by experimental and pathological alterations to the feeling of embodiment as seen in the rubber hand illusion (RHI), the delusion of somatoparaphrenia and body integrity identity disorder. From this the feeling of embodiment is distinguished from the sense of ownership of the body. The Real Problem of Consciousness introduced in Chapter 1 returns here: there are circumstances where we cannot be confident that reports are a valid and reliable measure of the feeling of embodiment. However, Carruthers argues that using well-designed questionnaires, corroborative measures and by grouping reports into types that we can make progress on the Real Problem.

This chapter makes use of substantially altered text previously published as: Carruthers, G. (2008, 2009, 2013).

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  1. School of Psychology, Charles Sturt University, Port Macquarie, NSW, Australia

    Glenn Carruthers

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Correspondence to Glenn Carruthers .

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Carruthers, G. (2019). The Feeling of Embodiment: Our Target of Explanation. In: The Feeling of Embodiment. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14167-7_2

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