Tools and peripersonal space: an enactive account of bodily space
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences March 18, 2023 DOI: 10.1007/s11097-023-09903-4 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Qualitative Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Citations | 11 |
| Key points | Argues that peripersonal space is an embodied, enactive phenomenon that is qualitative and situational rather than quantitative and positional, and that pre-reflective cognition is difficult to map onto discrete neural correlates. Proposes that tool use remaps bodily space by withdrawing tools from intentional objects into co-constituting motor-intentionality, and that a neurophenomenological approach can unify phenomenological accounts of lived space with neurophysiological data. |
Abstract
Abstract Peripersonal space (PPS) is frequently defined as a plastic, pragmatic and goal-directed multisensory buffer that connects the brain-body with its immediate environment. While such characterisations indicate that peripersonal spatiality is profoundly embodied and enactive, comparatively few attempts have aimed to systematically synthesise PPS literature with compatible phenomenological accounts of lived space provided by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Moreover, in traditional cognitive neuroscience, neurophysiological activity is thought to map onto discrete ‘cognitive correlates’. In contemporary 4E approaches to cognition, however, phenomenology-derived notions such as ‘pre-reflective cognition’ and ‘motor-intentionality’ frequently appear, yet their neural correlates may be comparatively difficult to pin down. Pre-reflectively, agents seemingly do not thematise spatial properties as operationalised in key experimental paradigms (e.g., spatial rotation tasks) but are instead inherently spatially embedded within the world. To refine this distinction, I survey how tools co-determine this distinctly spatial ‘world-embeddedness’ using a neurophenomenological methodology (Varela, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 3 (4), 330–349, 1996). Specifically, I conduct two neurophenomenological analyses of tool-perception and tool-use, examining both how distance modulates affordance-perception and how tool-use remaps bodily space via the withdrawal of tools from intentional-objects into co-constituting motor-intentionality itself. I conclude by briefly distinguishing this interpretation of spatial cognition from cognitivist frameworks. Thereafter, I briefly highlight the temporal scaffolding underlying PPS while conceptually grounding my account within Embodied Simulation Theory (Gallese, Reti, Saperi, Linguaggi , (1), 31–46, 2018). What is at stake is thus both an explicitly embodied-enactive account of bodily space that is qualitative and situational instead of quantitative and positional, as well as a viable, interdisciplinary strategy for unifying pre-reflective cognition with neurophysiological data.