ABSTRACT
Note that within a dualist or reductionist world view it does not make sense to describe an experience as being ‘in the finger’. Conversely, if the pain really is in the finger, there must be something wrong with the way dualists and reductionists describe experience. There are, of course, neural fibres which convey pain signals to the brain located in the finger – so even if one accepts that the pain is in the finger, perhaps one could still regard these neural fibres as an extension of the brain. However, if the arm itself is severed from the shoulder one can still experience pain in a now non-existent ‘phantom limb’ or ‘phantom hand’, along with sweating, itching and so on.5 The brain combines information arriving from the stump with information in memory to produce a hallucinatory arm and hand extended in space - a clear case of ‘perceptual projection’.
