Is the Body a Sensing Organism?

In the first chapter of your book, you talk about how we see ourselves as a substance that endures through time. Could you explain that little bit on that, the importance of substance versus this kind of mechanism approach? I think it's important to see that what I am does persist through time and there's a thing there that then has various powers or potentialities which aren't always manifested. And so this idea that we are an enduring agent takes some evidence in one chapter to give some evidence for other chapters.