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I heard phrases like

My brain is telling me ..., but i know ...

For example:

My brain is telling me to stay with him/her, but I know that it's not the right thing to do.

It sounds like people have a separation between their brain and something else that they think is them / something that defines as them (maybe their consciousness or soul).

I want to know if there is a name for that. I think it is similar to the "Who am I?" question.

  • This is called Cartesian mind-body dualism, and, in a more primitive form, the homunculus fallacy. People imagine a "little man in the head" which is "them", as opposed to the big physical man with the head attached. – Conifold Oct 27 '19 at 00:05
  • Plessner called it ex-centric positionality, the human subject being non-spatially positioned within its physical body and at the same time outside of its living/experiencing body, thus having distance to its own self, allowing for conscious experience of the empirical self. There is nothing paradoxical about the human being a physical body, a body that feels and lives, and a self which at the same time is both and not identical with them. That's the human condition. People saying they are their brain simply talk nonsense. Yet, this does and should not fall apart into dualities. – Philip Klöcking Oct 27 '19 at 12:03
  • Thank you for the answers! That's what I was looking for –  Oct 30 '19 at 10:57

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