ABSTRACT
Alva Noe has amusingly observed, science-fiction accounts about brains in jars soon have to start replacing parts of the lost body, for the brain must be given eyes, ears, a voice, just in order to play its fictional role. A mind without a body, therefore, makes no sense, even if our ability to think, dream and remember makes us aware of goings on that seem independent of the physical world. The approximate symmetry of the body and apparently identical limbs and eyes allow identification of the centre-line as axis of symmetry. Among some African and East Asian peoples, the soul is even thought to leave the body during sleep, which explains for them both the experience of dreams and the absence of consciousness that is witnessed by others. The body develops in relation to an outer world, which is at first that of the womb, which it must leave, the primal experience of moving from inside to outside.
