Sublime

First and foremost, a healthy mind is an editing mind, an organ that manages to sieve, from thousands of stray, dramatic, disconcerting, or horrifying thoughts, those particular ideas and sensations that actively need to be entertained in order for us to direct our lives effectively.

The phenomena that interested Romantic philosophers might appear somewhat arbitrary. Mental illness, ghosts, animal behaviour? But anomalous and exceptional phenomena can be thought of as a point of weakness between the perceived material world and something greater beyond.

Philosophie antique, psychologie moderne

Neurosurgery attracted me as much for its intertwining of brain and consciousness as for its intertwining of life and death.

In subsequent work he was able to locate neurological damage to the part of their brains that create and control our sense of body image. This damage had occurred at birth, or very early on. This meant that the brain could create a body image in a perfectly healthy person that was highly irrational. It seemed as well that our sense of self is far m