*The presence or absence of these representations is the source of the more recently described phantom limb (presence of representation but absence of limb) or body identity integrity disorder (absence of limb representation but presence of limb, which the patient views as foreign and wants amputated).
*The diencephalon contains the epithalamus, thalamus, hypothalamus, ventral thalamus, and third ventricle.
*Ernest Shackleton first described the feeling of a presence. He and his two companions were in a state of utter exhaustion and physical deprivation after successfully crossing 680 miles of the world’s roughest seas in a leaky lifeboat with scant food and water. They were on the final leg of an epic mission to obtain help for his stranded crew left on an island off the coast of Antarctica: crossing two unmapped, snow-covered mountain chains on South Georgia Island, with only an ice ax and fifteen yards of rope, as quickly as possible. While on this trek, Shackleton described the feeling that they were being accompanied by a fourth man. Later, T. S. Eliot made a reference to this phenomenon of feeling a presence in his poem “The Waste Land,” but called it “the third man,” and this is what has stuck (J. Geiger, The Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible [New York: Weinstein Books, 2009]).
*One of my friends who read this remarked, “What’s a ‘pergola’? This is not a term us Lower East Side NYC guys have ever heard.” I am going to let you look it up on Wikipedia, just like my friend ended up doing. That way you can see a picture, too.
*The American Heritage College Dictionary: Subsumption: “The act of subsuming”; “Something subsumed”; or “The minor premise of a syllogism,” where a syllogism is “A form of deductive reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion.”
*Processes necessary for consciousness begin in the evolutionarily oldest part of the brain, the brainstem. The main job description for the brainstem is homeostatic regulation of the body and brain. It keeps your heart pumping, your lungs breathing, your guts digesting. Disconnect the brainstem in any mammal, and the body dies. From the brainstem, neurons take off in many directions. Those necessary for consciousness are connected to the intralaminar nuclei (ILN) of the thalamus, which is situated between the midbrain and the cortex.
*Pascal was interested in probability theory. The gist of the wager concerns what degree of risk is acceptable if the consequence of being wrong is dire. Is it worth it to risk the substantial consequences of believing God does not exist, if indeed God does?