"But the view that the self and consciousness can be explained in terms of the brain, that the real us is found inside our skulls, isn't just misleading and wro

"But the view that the self and consciousness can be explained in terms of the brain, that the real us is found inside our skulls, isn't just misleading and wrong, it's ugly. <snip> I find this a very sad and ugly picture of our circumstance. Now contrast that view with a sense of ourselves as engaged in the flow, responsive to the things going on around us, part of the world. It's a very different picture." So...is he arguing that brain-as-self is wrong because it's untrue, or wrong because it's depressing? I've always understood myself as a being within a brain, using my body for I/O. I agree that on its face it's a somewhat alienating concept, and I'd love to believe otherwise, but Noë did nothing to convince me it's untrue. Another example: "The dominant view in neuroscience today represents us as if we were strangers in an alien environment. It says that we go about gathering information, building up representations, performing calculations and making choices based on that data. But in reality, when we get up in the morning we put our feet on the floor and start to walk. We take the floor for granted and the world supports us, houses us, facilitates us and enables us to carry on whatever our tasks might be. That kind of fluency, that kind of flow, is, I think, a fundamental feature of our lives. Our fitting into the world is not an illusion created by our brains, it's a fundamental truth about our nature. That's what I mean by home sweet home." I don't understand how he can assert that the process he describes has no part in the way we start our day. We may not consciously decide whether the floor is something we should walk on every day, but that doesn't mean it's not a subconscious or instinctual decision that takes place within the brain. It seems to me all he's advocating is a change in perspective, suggesting that we are comfortable beings in a familiar "home," but this does nothing to shed light on the nature of consciousness. Of course consciousness is an emergent process that rises out of mind, body, and environment, but if it doesn't take place within the brain, then where is it?