The Phenomenology of Bodily Awareness
The Bodily Self March 9, 2018 DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/9780262037501.003.0006 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Key points | Argues that bodily awareness is structured by a non-Cartesian spatial frame of reference, which can be illuminated by research on proprioception and motor control. |
Abstract
There is an interesting dialectic between discussions of bodily awareness in the phenomenological tradition and in contemporary philosophy of mind and scientific psychology. It shows, with particular reference to Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, how phenomenological insights into bodily awareness and its role in agency can be developed and illuminated by research into somatic proprioception and motor control. The paper presents a taxonomy of different types and levels of bodily awareness and presents a model of the spatiality of bodily awareness that explains some of the fundamental differences that Merleau-Ponty identified between our experience of our bodies and our experience of non-bodily objects. The key to these differences is that bodily locations are given on a non-Cartesian frame of reference. The final section shows how this way of thinking about the phenomenology of bodily awareness has interesting and fruitful connections with current thinking about motor control.
Comparable studies
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| Psychosis as a state of aberrant salience: a framework linking biology, phenomenology, and pharmacology in schizophrenia. | 2003 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| From dopamine to salience to psychosis--linking biology, pharmacology and phenomenology of psychosis. | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| How do the brain's time and space mediate consciousness and its different dimensions? Temporo-spatial theory of consciousness (TTC). | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The phenomenology of deep brain stimulation-induced changes in OCD: an enactive affordance-based model. | 2013 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Looking for the Self: Phenomenology, Neurophysiology and Philosophical Significance of Drug-induced Ego Dissolution | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |