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Up until recently, the prevailing view in both philosophy and the sciences has been that consciousness is strictly correlated with the brain and central nervous system, and that neurophysiological facts alone provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for mental life. However, more and more thinkers have begun to challenge this brain-based conception of consciousness and to argue that consciousness is not just "instrumentally dependent" on human bodily form and bodily activity, but also constitutively dependent on the body. Taken together, and taken seriously, these arguments show that consciousness is not simply something that happens within our brains, but rather something that we do through our living bodies and our lived, bod&ily engagement with the world. Although we are not always, or even usually, conscious of our bodies or vital systems, nonetheless we are always and necessarily conscious with, or in and through, our living and lived bodies.

DOI: 10.1057/9780230297715_1

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