Piero Scaruffi

These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"

The Importance of Being Warm When speculating about consciousness, identity and free will, it is important not to forget what bodies are and how they work. Among the many features of living organisms, one is often overlooked: each living organism can live only within a very narrow range of temperature. Temperature is one of the most crucial survival factors. Temperature also happens to be an important source of "identity". For example, water and ice are made of the same atoms: it's the temperature that determines whether you are water or you are ice. It's the temperature that determines whether your body is dead or alive, and it's the temperature that determines whether you are lying and shivering in bed or are playing soccer outside. Our identity does change with the temperature of our body (from no identity to "regular" identity to delirious identity). Most of what our body does has nothing to do with writing poems or making scientific discoveries: it is about maintaining a stable temperature.   Back to the beginning of the chapter "Self" | Back to the index of all chapters