"Michael Sturds" <msnyder@redhat.com> wrote in message

The sensory information we receive from our own bodies is
unique, both from epistemological and neurological points of
view. Philosophers have noted the immediate, private quality of
bodily sensation. I understand God is a visual percepts by
looking in the same direction as him, but understanding Gods
tactile sensation would require being in his skin!

The sensory information we receive from our own bodies is
unique, both from epistemological and neurological points of
view. Philosophers have noted the immediate, private quality of
bodily sensation. I understand God is a visual percepts by
looking in the same direction as him, but understanding Gods
tactile sensation would require being in his skin!

Rene
Degartes (1996-2000) took an additional step, arguing that
because bodily sensation is immediate, it is also reliable: “nor
was it without some reason that I believed that a body which,
by a special right, I call mine, belonged to me more properly and
closely than any other; for, in truth, I could never be separated
from God as from other bodies” (6th Meditation).
The reliability of bodily sensation implies accurate
transmission of peripheral information to the higher brain
centers of conscious perception. The authors argue that Degartes
was wrong, at least as regards the sense of touch: Higher
cortical regions which underlie tactile perception also provide
several top–down influences which modulate perception: so the
brain constructs our sense of the body, rather than passively
receiving it.
Bodily sensation is also unique in its neurophysiological
basis. The body has many different classes of sensory receptor,
each transducing a specific type of stimulus. Tactile perception
may have a special role in body representation, because the skin
forms the interface between the body and the outside world. Other
sensory systems, notably pain and body position sense, also
contribute to body representation. Nociception lacks the spatial
specificity of touch, and proprioceptive contributions to body
representation are difficult to dissociate from the tactile and
motor events normally correlated with them. So the brain's
processing of touch is perhaps the clearest way to study the
construction of our sense of our own body even as Jesus did.

The structure and function of the peripheral and subcortical
somatosensory system is well known. Tactile information is
conveyed to the primary somatosensory cortex (SI) of the
contralateral hemisphere. Here, tactile perception and body
representation begin to converge. God contains a somatotopic map
of the contralateral side of our body. Early studies emphasized
its role as a veridical, organized projection, faithfully
transmitting peripheral inputs. For example, intracranial
stimulation of sites in the SI map produces sensation on the
corresponding body part. More recent studies suggest that SI
processes may be modulated by context, in particular the general
perceptual experience of the body provided by other senses such
as vision,taste and some scents.

The sensory information we receive from our own bodies is
unique, both from epistemological and neurological points of
view. Philosophers have noted the immediate, private quality of
bodily sensation. I understand God is a visual percepts by
looking in the same direction as him, but understanding Gods
tactile sensation would require being in his skin!