Some Of Us, For Better Or Worse,

What Happens [in A Coma] Is That You Lose The Grounding Of The Self, You No Longer Have Access To Any Feeling Of Your Own Existence.

But Whether We Want To Do It Because We Want To Have People To Have A Different Idea Of Who We Are Or Not, We Do It Naturally. So The Way We Construct Our Narrative Is Different From The Way We Constructed It A Year Ago. The Difference Is Maybe Very Small Or It May Be Huge.

Consciousness, Much Like Our Feelings, Is Based On A Representation Of The Body And How It Changes When Reacting To Certain Stimuli. Self-image Would Be Unthinkable Without This Representation.

We Are Not Thinking Machines That Feel; Rather, We Are Feeling Machines That Think.

Imagine, For Example, Birds. When They Look Out At The World, They Have A Sense That They Are Alive. If They Are In Pain, They Can Do Something About It. If They Have Hunger Or Thirst, They Can Satisfy That. It's This Basic Feeling That There Is Life Ticking Away Inside Of You.