The journalist and author Michael Harris points out that it is partly because of this ability to interfere with one’s sense of self that we know it is a construction: If the distinctness of the bodily self can be tampered with via such mechanical means [i.e., psychedelic drugs, a stroke, or a neurological disorder], then we must begin to accept that the bodily self—that feeling we are whole, inviolate beings—is not due to some special soul, or “I,” resident behind our eyes.
