The Person’s Body

Abstract

Our reasoning thus far has applied the basic thesis that any interpretation of ourselves and of other beings should not neglect, distort, or render unintelligible what is undergone in conscious and self-conscious experience. As C. I. Lewis has said: “That which explains experience is always something which the experience in question gives us some reason (some partial ground) for assuming.”1 The method of beginning with the data in conscious experience does not entail the conclusion that the person is no more than his conscious experience. For example, in chapter 2 we inferred, from what is given in conscious experience, that a person’s unconscious processes are more understandable as “extensions” of the dynamics of the self-identifying person. Our task now is to see what we can reasonably say about the person in the light of his conscious experience of his body.