Weird question

[CoachPedro]

My step son asked me quite an unusual question last night.

While showering...he asked me why he has a body. Upon further investigation I found out he meant things like skin, bones, blood & hair.

The unspoken rule is as a step dad im not really responsible for his spiritual development. That's the job of bob natural parents...who he sees a lot of.

I told him he has a body because that's how he was made. How would you respond ?

[Slothhead]

Well firstly it isnt really a weird question.

Children, well generally all of us, are innate dualists. Its not until we get older that we can grapple with this concept, even many adults dont seem able (or willing) to do it.

I dont think i would say you have a body because that is how you are made. I guess i would try and come at it at an angle of you are your body. They are not separate things. How this would pan out i have no idea. It would depend on the age of the child and so on.

[Slothhead]

Just thinking about it a little futher. You would have to quickly get to defining you as the brain. You are your brain. They are not different things.

Then you basically are off and talking about the evolution of limbs, tertapods, evolution of senses and so on.

There are a great many little experiments that you could do as well to help define the difference between "limbs" and "organs", and then how one specific organ is the things you are calling you.

It is a deep topic though, so it will come down to the capacity of the child and yourself to break down the topic into digestible bits.

Why do "I" have a body?
Why does this body have.... legs, arms, heart, lungs, on and on.
You are your brain, the thing we call I is an emergent property of the brain (our ability to imagine), thus without that brain there is no I.
So what is the brain for, it has evolved to make us more effective gene transfer machines.

Hope that helps, if it makes any sense (busy here at work so typing on the fly).

[Perspective]

Could you ask him to consider "What are you without a body?"

[Logic]

What about - 'well, what would carry your brain around if you didn't have a body!?'

[wolty]

CP, it really depends his age and what stage of development he is at. A younger child at six would be answered completely different to a child of twelve or thirteen.

It also depends on the intent of the question, a worried question of who am I due to outside input, to an inquisitory question of where I fit into the world.

[Goldenmane]

"Why do you have a body? Probably because you're an evolved bipedal ape, and if you didn't have a body you'd be something completely different. I don't know what that might be, but I can suggest to you why it might feel like "you" are something that has a body. Are you ready for this?

The thing you think of as "you" is a model created by your brain to explain itself to itself, and that model feels like something somewhat independent from the physical structure it arises from because there are no sensory nerves in the brain - the brain can't feel itself, so it has no choice but to model itself as something independent from that physical structure.

To put it another way: did you ever sleep wrong on your arm, and wake up with no feeling in it? For a few moments, it doesn't fit with your understanding of that being your arm - it doesn't fit with your internal model of your body. You know, through vast experience, that this is your arm and it feels and moves in certain ways... and yet for a short time it doesn't do that. If you're old enough, you will have heard the old line about lying on your arm before you masturbate because then it feels like someone else is doing it.

That's the exact opposite of what you live with every day. Your brain has never felt itself, therefore never had the opportunity to develop a deep sensory element to its own understanding of itself. As far as it is concerned, your brain doesn't exist in a physical, perceivable way at all, and is just a magical self-awareness.

But without a body, your brain wouldn't exist to make such dumb ideas seem so powerful. Brains that can fundamentally fool themselves into thinking they're magical entities somehow tethered to physical bodies evolved way after physical bodies did, and only came into existence as an outgrowth of the existence of the bodies.

It's more complicated than that, but you'd probably be better off (though only marginally) asking "why do I think I exist"?

Prepare for that to not be a short answer."

How old's the kid? If he's asking those sorts of questions, expect him to get fucked up for some period of his life, one way or the other. Poor bugger's in danger of becoming a philosopher, an almost sure path to a wasted life. Better off being a drunk. At least we shut the fuck up on occasion.

[Centauri]

Saying "that's how you were made" sends the wrong message. It sounds like part of a creationist myth.

[CoachPedro]

Thanks y'all for your comments. I don't have time to make a worthwhile response. I'm just about to cruise into work.

The young fella is turning 4 in a few months. The question perhaps came due to him learning about he physical body at school (skin, bones, muscles, organs...).

[Sir Patrick Crocodile]

Centauri makes a very good point. By answering "that is how you are made" you are effectively reinforcing the creationist myth/dogma about God and all - assuming he was told about that by some religious relative or friends or whatever.

Really though it would be evolution that explains this. Originally animals did not have a "body" (ie. single-cellular) but as they evolved they ended up with one which evolved and you got even more organs such as legs and all.