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Psychologists who are uneasy about the metaphysical nature of mental life often say that what we see through introspection must be the brain, but that is unlikely. We have no sensory nerves going to important parts of the brain; a surgeon can operate without anesthesia. No contingencies of selection would have promoted the evolution of such nerves before the advent of verbal behavior, and that was very late in the evolution of the species. It is more likely that what we see through introspection are the early stages of our behavior, the stages that occur before the behavior begins to act upon the environment. (p. 667)