ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to provoke critical reflection, and historical enquiry, on the longstanding role of experimental investigation into "resting states" in shaping conceptualisations of the self. It begins with an investigation of Cartesian mind-body dualism, a well-worn subject in studies of the human. The chapter describes the role of the wandering mind in destabilising Descartes' classical philosophy of the self. To experience elements of both waking and dreaming simultaneously was for Descartes considered as "anomalous," even pathological, threatening to disrupt the unity of the conscious self. It is within the liminal space carved by Descartes, between sleep and waking, that the wandering mind is conceptualised as having space to roam. The confidence in clear seeing, as outlined by Descartes through relations of consciousness, memory and the certainty of cogito, is undermined, as Taine argues all perception, even that during most consciously experienced states of wakefulness, a form of hallucination.
