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A second argument of the imperative of the body rests on the principle of decentralization and biofeedback. To grasp what this means: how would the old and new bodies, respectively, contribute to biking? Let us assume that the old body had hours and hours of training, year after year, while the new body, though slim and fit, had never experienced life from a bicycle saddle. How does the number of bike experiences affect the old body as compared to the new? Doubtless, the configuration of leg muscles, muscle tone and litheness would be completely different, and the new body would simply have to catch up through heavy training. But would the history of the old body play any other role than that of physical constitution in the differences?

Almost certainly the body played an active part in taking up biking to begin with. Some bodies are just born to bike and, in that sense, natural abilities are indispensable. But the question of history addresses the question of the body being integral to and then part of former experiences. For instance, does increased use of whatever sensors are used in biking (for instance, the organ of equilibrium) feed back on them and improve their performance (making bikers’ organs of equilibrium dynamic participators in the activity)?

Is the employment of senses stimulated by use? The idea is not farfetched, as the mechanism is improved by muscular activity, which simultaneously prepares the muscle for dealing with an augmented load in the future.

However, other examples of processes that are delegated to the body can also be found. By surgically disconnecting the spinal cord from the brain in rats, it has been shown that alleged cognitive abilities remain intact (Grau 2002).

Here we touch upon the real issue: if the body accommodates processes of causal relevance to cognition, amputation with non-negligible effects is very unlikely.