Abstract
CONTEMPORARY WESTERN CULTURES, with a background of science and materialism, tend to think of the human person as a "mindless body" or even a "computer made of meat," to use a phrase of Marvin Minsky, a pioneering researcher in artificial intelligence. 1 On the other hand, Melanesian and African cultures with a background of tribal traditions and animism tend to think of the human person as a "bodiless mind" or a "disembodied spirit." 2 It would be oversimplifying to set these contrasts too sharply. In the West, recent studies in neuroscience are much more nuanced. Memory and emotion are described as updating and configuring the circuitry of the physical brain. 3 And in Papua New Guinea, for example, the tradition of body painting suggests a recognition that our bodies are truly part of ourselves. 4
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