Is materialism right to claim that the world of everyday-life experience – the phenomenal world – is nothing but an illusion produced in physical reality, notably in the brain? Or is Merleau-Ponty right when he defends the fundamental character of the phenomenal world while rejecting physical realism? I address these questions by exploring the nature of the body proper in Merleau-Ponty and Plessner, arguing that physical and phenomenal realism are not mutually exclusive but complementary. The argument includes a (...) close examination of the relationships between scientific and pre-scientific perspectives, between living and non-living things, and between humans and animals. (shrink)

Embodied cognitive science has argued that cognition is embodied principally in virtue of grossmorphological and sensorimotor features. This thesis argues that cognition is also internally embodied in affective and fine-grained physiological features whose transformative roles remain mostly unnoticed in contemporary cognitive science. I call this ‘proper embodiment’. I approach this larger subject by examining various emotion theories in philosophy and psychology. These tend to emphasise one of the many gross components of emotional processes, such as ‘feeling’ or ‘judgement’ to (...) the detriment of the others, often leading to an artificial emotion-cognition distinction even within emotion science itself. Attempts to reconcile this by putting the gross components back together, such as JessePrinz’s “embodied appraisal theory”, are, I argue, destined to failure because the vernacular concept of emotion which is used as the explanandum is not a natural kind and is not amenable to scientific explication.I examine Antonio Damasio’s proposal that emotion is involved in paradigmatic ‘cognitive’ processing such as rational decision making and argue (1) that the research he discusses does not warrant the particular hypothesis he favours, and (2) that Damasio’s account, though in many ways a step in the right direction, nonetheless continues to endorse a framework which sees affect and cognition as separate (though now highly interacting) faculties. I further argue that the conflation of ‘affect’ and 'emotion' may be the source of some confusion in emotion theory and that affect needs to be properly distinguished from ‘emotion’. I examine some dissociations in the pain literature which give us further empirical evidence that, as with the emotions, affect is a distinct component along with more cognitive elements of pain. I then argue that affect is distinctive in being grounded in homeostatic regulative activity in the body proper. With the distinction between affect, emotion, and cognition in hand, and the associated grounding of affect in bodily activity, I then survey evidence that bodily affect is also involved in perception and in paradigmatic cognitive processes such as attention and executive function. I argue that this relation is not ‘merely’ casual. Instead, affect (grounded in fine-grained details of internal bodily activity) is partially constitutive of cognition, participating in cognitive processing and contributing to perceptual and cognitive phenomenology. Finally I review some work in evolutionary robotics which reaches a similar conclusion, suggesting that the particular fine details of embodiment, such as molecular signalling between both neural and somatic cells matters to cognition. I conclude that cognition is properly embodied’ in that it is partially constituted by the many fine-grained bodily processes involved in affect (as demonstrated in the thesis) and plausibly by a wide variety of other fine-grained bodily processes that likewise tend to escape the net of contemporary cognitive science. (shrink)

In the late 1940s, a microanatomist from London Ontario, Murray Barr, discovered a mark of sex chromosome status in bodily tissues, what came to be known as the ‘Barr body’. This discovery offered an important diagnostic technology to the burgeoning clinical science community engaged with the medical interpretation and management of sexual anomalies. It seemed to offer a way to identify the true, underlying sex in those whose bodies or lives were sexually anomalous . The hypothesis that allowed the (...) Barr body to stand in for ‘chromosomal’ or ‘genetic’ sex was provisional, but it supported the expectation that genetic information established one’s primary identity, and the conviction that the animal world could be neatly divided into two, and only two, sexes. Ultimately, this provisional hypothesis, and its status as an unambiguous arbiter of true sex, was overturned. But during much of the 1950s, Barr’s thesis about the identity of the Barr body was consistent with a coherent set of theories and evidence explaining sexual development and sexual pathology. Though provisional, the scientific status of the sex chromatin within this system of knowledge was good enough to support a flourishing research enterprise in the clinical sciences. (shrink)

Russellian physicalism has the promise of answering all the typical challenges that non-physicalists have issued against standard versions of physicalism, while not giving up physicalism's commitment to the non-existence of fundamental mentality. However, it has been argued that Russellian physicalism must endorse the existence of physically unacceptable protomental properties in order to address these challenges, which would mean giving up on a core physicalist tenet of keeping the fundamental realm untainted by a special relationship to mentality. Against this, I argue (...) that a plausible version of Russellian physicalism can be constructed, which does not posit fundamental properties that are at all protomental in any problematic sense, yet which can explain the existence of subjective experience. This non-protomental Russellian physicalism, which is the only properly-physical version of Russellian physicalism, offers a satisfying solution to the mind-body problem -- including an answer to the conceivability argument -- without sacrificing any of its physicalist credentials. (shrink)

While Merleau-Ponty’sPhenomenology of Perceptionrelies on the descriptive register of the body proper, his Sorbonne lectures on child psychology investigate the genesis of the experience of a body as one’s own. I demonstrate the uniqueness of Merleau-Ponty’s account of the narcissistic affect and sociality involved in this developmental process, distinguishing his account vis-à-vis Wallon’s and Lacan’s studies of the mirror stage. I conclude that in Merleau-Ponty’s account, (1) the experience of the body proper is not singular, (...) but encompasses a range of phenomenological variation; and (2) the genesis of the body proper is not confined to the mirror stage. The production of bodily boundaries is an ongoing process identified not only with its advent in childhood, but also with adult emotional life. The boundaries between inner and outer domains of perception are not merely discovered, but must be negotiated and cultivated in the intercorporeal affective dramas of adult life. (shrink)

Feminist critics have charged that Aristotle's mistaken and harmful remarks about women and slaves show inconsistency or bias-driven arbitrariness. However, this analysis shows that these remarks function within a consistent and coherent theoretical corpus. Thus, both Aristotle's hierarchical and dualistic first principles and the methodology on which his entire corpus is based must be unreliable. Moreover, consistency and coherence must be insufficient warrants of theoretical insightfulness. Aristotle's mistakes suggest caveats for feminist philosophical reconstruction.

This paper is prompted by the charge that the prevailing Western paradigm of medical knowledge is essentially Cartesian. Hence, illness, disease, disability, etc. are said to be conceived of in Cartesian terms. The paper attempts to make use of the critique of Cartesianism in medicine developed by certain commentators, notably Leder (1992), in order to expose Cartesian commitments in conceptions of disability. The paper also attempts to sketch an alternative conception of disability — one partly inspired by the work of (...) Merleau-Ponty. In particular, three key Cartesian claims are identified and subjected to criticism. These are as follows: (a) The claim that the body is an object, (b) what is termed here ‘the modularity thesis’, and (c) the claim that the body cannot be constitutive of the self (i.e. since the soul/mind/brain is). In opposition to these claims, it is argued that the body is properly viewed as a subject; that there are neither purely mental, nor purely physical disabilities; and that selves are constituted, at least in part, by their bodies. (shrink)

“Body positivity” refers to the movement to accept our bodies, regardless of size, shape, skin tone, gender, and physical abilities. The movement is often implicitly understood as the effort to celebrate diversity in bodily aesthetics and to expand our narrow beauty standards beyond their present-day confines. Like other feminists, I question whether the push to broaden beauty norms should occupy as central a role as it does now in the movement’s mainstream incarnations, and I believe that, beyond challenging confining (...) beauty standards, body positivity should teach us that all bodies are worthy—for example, of care and respect. My aim in this paper is to offer a general account of body positivity. I argue that body positivity should be understood as the transition from limiting body shame to proper body pride. I adopt a pluralistic approach to body positivity, incorporating the idea that we should not only expand aesthetic standards, but also celebrate such aspects of embodiment as our capacity for bodily pleasure or our bodily abilities. What is common to these different ways of developing empowering relations to our bodies is the move to resist all forms of body shame that limit our flourishing and to cultivate proper pride in one’s body. I conclude by considering several avenues toward embodying such pride and, thus, embracing body positivity: expanding beauty ideals; promoting equal access to physical activities and celebrating the accomplishments of all athletes, regardless of body size or level of ability; and consciousness-raising. (shrink)

Fictional names present unique challenges for semantic theories of proper names, challenges strong enough to warrant an account of names different from the standard treatment. The theory developed in this paper is motivated by a puzzle that depends on four assumptions: our intuitive assessment of the truth values of certain sentences, the most straightforward treatment of their syntactic structure, semantic compositionality, and metaphysical scruples strong enough to rule out fictional entities, at least. It is shown that these four assumptions, (...) taken together, are inconsistent with referentialism, the common view that names are uniformly associated with ordinary individuals as their semantic value. Instead, the view presented here interprets names as context-sensitive expressions, associated in a context of utterance with a particular act of introduction, or dubbing, which is then used to determine their semantic value. Some dubbings are referential, which associate names with ordinary individuals as their semantic values; others are fictional, which associate names, instead, with sets of properties. Since the semantic values of names can be of different sorts, the semantic rule interpreting predication must be complex as well. In the body of the paper, I show how this new treatment of names allows us to solve our original puzzle. I defend the complexity of the semantic predication rule, and address additional worries about ontological commitment. (shrink)

While body modification might generally seem to take the form of denaturalizing a biological given, this article looks at the same practice as normalizing the always already unstable corpus. The dominant discourse of the post-Enlightenment relies on the notion of the centrality of the individual subject within the singular and separate body, where distinctions between self and other are secure. Against this the incidence of monstrosity in general, with its disordered crossing of the boundaries of the proper, (...) offers a gross insult. I look in particular at instances of conjoined twinning to demonstrate that the body can only be regarded as one by a process of material and discursive modification, which nonetheless finally fails to efface the trace of the monstrous other that frustrates the closure of the self-same. (shrink)

People diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) may engage in what are called self-injurious acts. This paper situates self-injury within a larger cultural context in which body modifications are differently evaluated according to inscribed meanings. To provide a framework for ethical interactions with people diagnosed as BPD who self-injure, I draw on two concepts from theories of meaning: signification and uptake. I suggest possible significations of self-injury, but argue that clinicians have a duty to give uptake to the patient's (...) own interpretations of her behavior. Proper giving of uptake, which involves responding to others' communications such that the communicator's integrity is preserved, is crucial to ethical practices for clinicians, and uptake is never simply neutral or objective. This analysis suggests that sense-making about a client's self-injurious acts involves an understanding not only of the client's own interpretation of her behavior and its meaning, but also of the discursive production and function of such signs in our culture. I offer five maxims to guide the therapeutic process for clinicians working with self-injurious behavior in BPD patients. (shrink)

The desire to feel clean and pure might not merely be the absence of contamination and resulting feelings of disgust. Instead, it might have a social function because early in evolution social grooming not only involved improved personal hygiene and cleanliness, but also increased group cohesion. Thus, knowing that one’s body is clean, proper and tidy might have social implications that go beyond morality.

Numerous scholars have signalled that neo-pagan practitioners use their body and their senses to interact with the divine and elaborate a spiritual experience. However, the learning process followed to achieve and produce a sensing body capable of communicating with summoned entities has not been properly assessed, until very recently. For over a decade, I have conducted ethnographic research on neo-pagan ritual practices held at European megalithic sites to understand how practitioners learn to co-construct their somatic experiences culturally. Collected (...) data allowed me to develop a model I called somatic pedagogy, which is a progressive sensory learning process applied by ritual specialists organizing practices. In this review article, I present a synthesis of published material where I have developed this model extensively. Specifically, I will go through the elements that permit this kind of somatic education to be implemented within analysed practices: the specificities of neo-pagan ontologies about the human body and world, the potential of neo-pagan rituals to function as learning sites, and the main stages of this progressive bodily education. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche, focusing centrally on his understanding of the Nietzschean “body.” Nietzsche’s status as the culminating figure of Western metaphysics depends on the notion that the body, in Nietzsche’s thought, is the last Western subject. I confirm Heidegger’s sense of the importance of the Nietzschean body, and, in particular, the centrality of the word “incorporation”, to a proper understanding of Nietzsche. I argue, however, through a critique of Heidegger’s own (...) understanding of “incorporation” in Nietzsche’s work, that an investigation of the body in Nietzsche does not reveal him to be an unwilling participant in the metaphysical tradition beyond which Heidegger seeks to move; rather, we should see in the Nietzschean body a human finitude that has more resonances in Heidegger’s own thought than Heidegger would care to admit. Ultimately, I show, an investigation of the actual dynamics of the Nietzschean body, as read through the careful tracing of the word “incorporation” to which Heidegger invites us, yields a fundamentally delimited body that operates according to what we might call a kind of physiological asceticism. (shrink)

In this essay, I use the theological anthropology of the apostle Paul as a diagnostic lens in order to bring into focus some implicit assumptions about human personhood in the goals and methods of treatment with psychotropic medications. I argue that Paul views the body as a mode of participation in larger relational matrices in both vulnerable and vital ways. He thus sees the self as constituted relationally rather than as fundamentally isolated and self-determining. Such an understanding of personhood (...) yields an account of human agency as co-constituted and freedom as interpersonally mediated and sustained. From this perspective, the proper goal for psychiatric medication is the removal of barriers to life-giving human connections; methods of care for persons in psychological distress may include medication, but they also require embodied personal encounter. (shrink)

Aristotle differentiates not just soul from body, but proximate from remote matter. Yet Aristotle can be easily misunderstood as holding that the body of the human being is essentially biological in nature, and that the human differs from the beast only in having an immaterial intellect. On the contrary, I show that for Aristotle even the form of embodiment in humans is different from the form of bestial embodiment, and that human embodiment cannot be adequately understood in the (...) biological way appropriate for understanding bestial bodies. Rather, the form of embodiment proper to humans is habit. (shrink)

In this article a neo-Jamesian approach to the self is developed within a naturalistic, bottom-up, and systemic-relational framework. In this approach, consciousness of the body as one’s own body is a necessary precondition of self-consciousness as psychological self-awareness, and hence of a socially and historically situated narrative self. Thus we take on board the criticism of those accounts of the narrative self that pay little attention to embodiment, or go to the extreme of stating that the narrative self (...) is abstract and hence not embodied. But at the same time, we reject the idea that the embodiment of the narrative self is provided by a pre-reflective self-consciousness. By contrast, we view self-consciousness as a construction all the way down, which develops from automatic and pre-reflective processing of representations of objects (object-consciousness), through awareness and then self-awareness of the body, up to introspective self-awareness and then narrative identity. This form of constructivism is a naturalistic reinterpretation of the Hegelian idea that selfhood is socially constructed and self-experience intersubjectively mediated. However, it enables to move away from that blend of narrativism and epiphenomenism that characterizes some strands of the socio-constructivist approach to the narrative self. The storied Me that the selfing process makes is not “empty chatter”, but rather a causally efficacious layer of personality viewed as a self-unifying system. (shrink)

According to the bodily awareness thesis (BAT), awareness of one’s own body is a necessary condition for the acquisition and possession of concepts of primary qualities such as force and shape. I discuss two arguments for this thesis. The acquisition argument for BAT focuses on the role of bodily sensation and action in the acquisition of the concept of force. I suggest that this argument requires us to conceive of the content of sensation as both representational and non–conceptual. The (...) objective reality argument for BAT claims that awareness of one’s own body is an essential component of those experiences which are required for a proper grasp of concepts of primary qualities. I conclude by arguing, in opposition to Sartre and Merleau–Ponty, that there is no incoherence in the idea that one’s body is a thing among other things. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A patient whose case notes had been used, without her permission, during a disciplinary inquiry on the conduct of Wendy Savage (her obstetrician) complained that this was a breach of confidentiality. Her complaint cannot be understood as based on a concern about the possible adverse consequences of this use of the notes: rather, her concern was just with the fact that medical information about her had been made known to others. My concern is with the meaning and status of (...) the right to privacy, to which the Savage patient appealed. Such a right cannot be reduced to a property right, since this cannot capture what concerned the Savage patient. A proper understanding of what lies behind her complaint requires us to recognise the way in which facts about oneself—in this case facts about one's body—are intimately bound up with one's self, with one's identity, and thus with one's autonomy. What kinds of fact, and thus what conception of the self, are involved in such a conception of privacy need not everywhere be the same; the crucial point is that privacy and the self are concepts which, whatever their particular content, are internally related [1]. (shrink)

In a paper titled "Dewey between Hegel and Darwin," Richard Rorty argued that while it is appropriate to describe John Dewey as a radical empiricist and panpsychist, it would be better if we allowed those aspects of his thought to atrophy and eventually disappear. This paper challenges that claim, arguing that properly understood, radical empiricism and panpsychism continue to have a role in a world newly fascinated by the way bodies, minds, experience and nature are all interwoven into a complex (...) organic network. (shrink)

Martin Buber has always made it clear that his dialogic principle is not to be treated as an abstract conception but an ontological reality. But admittedly, in I And Thou he could only point to such reality and could not properly present it in discursive prose. However there are instances in the text where he strives to do the latter. One particular instance is where he elaborates the emergence of consciousness of “I”. Through this elaboration, what Buber has tried to (...) point at is the bringing forth of the primary word ‘I-It’ forming part of his dialogic principle, as it ‘emerges round about’ the perceptual consciousness realised in body as some sort of a ‘primitive function of knowledge’. However, this still amounts only to an abstract conception, and not to a description of ontological reality as Buber would have aspired for. Hence the thought: what if there exists an endeavour carried out independently of Buber’s work, nevertheless in the same spirit as Buber but without his notorious mixing up of philosophy and religion? There indeed has been such an Existential-phenomenological take on embodiment and perception by the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as is laid out in his magnum opus Phenomenology of Perception. In the present paper we will explicate this interesting coincidence, thereby honouring Buber’s aspiration for ontological status to his dialogic principle, at the same time demonstrating how existentially resonating and ontologically converging the thought of these two great thinkers’ have been, though they had totally different intellectual pursuits and concerns. (shrink)

My analysis of the mind-body problem suggests that the mind-body problem is a "problem" because: There are discrepancies in use between scientific notions like "physical" and philosophical notions like "phenomenal character". Phenomenological conceptions of the mind are primarily used as contrast-terms in arguments against metaphysical physicalism. "Qualia" and similar terms - properly analysed - reveal that they do not, as often claimed, have a "folk-psychological" origin. Rather these terms should be described as highly sophisticated technical terms and should (...) not be confused with non-philosophical notions expressing experiential content. Dualists are obliged to offer us a positive, thus substantive, account of what they mean by "subjective experience" and similar idioms. This is, as I shall point out, a very hard task, mainly due to the strong contrast-mode in which these terms are used. When disconnected from the paradigmatic contrast-context these terms appear more or less out of place. But when faced with a hard-core reductionism the appeal to "phenomenal qualities" seems very appropriate. In my analysis, terms like "what it is like" and "experiential character" are concept that, as such, make perfect sense, but only in a limited context. The strong contrast mode in which these terms are used, I think, also explains why it is so hard to give a satisfactory semantic account for these terms. (shrink)

This piece brings into critical conversation Christian resurrection hope, virtual versions of transhumanism, and intellectual disability and demonstrates that Christian resurrection provides a more cogent hope for people with severe intellectual disabilities than transhumanism. I argue that transhumanist virtual futures are theologically problematic, as bodily resurrection is neither required nor desirable. It is particularly problematic for people with severe intellectual disabilities given the way they would be excluded from these futures. Disability theology also raises issues with the traditional notions of (...) “healing” in the resurrection and the implications for the value and identity of persons with intellectual disabilities. Starting with these problems, I explore the nature of Christian hope, noting the inadequacies of a virtual transhumanist future with respect to both resurrection faith and intellectual disability, and address how resurrection hope can account for issues raised in disability theology, and so properly include people with intellectual disabilities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics by Alexander R. PrussBenedict M. Guevin O.S.B.One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics. By Alexander R. Pruss. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 465. $45.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-268-03897-7.As a professor of moral theology in general and of sexual ethics in particular, I found Alexander Pruss’s largely philosophical account of sexual ethics (...) to be refreshing. As much as I try to dissuade my students from using religious legalism to justify the rightness or wrongness of certain sexual practices, I find it almost impossible to break them of the bad habit of using such phrases as “Because the Church teaches...” or “Because the Bible says...”. Even when I counter by saying, “The Church teaches that something is good because it is good and not because the Church says it is good, and such goodness is grounded in the natural law and a sound anthropology,” such legalism still persists. And so, to read Pruss’s extensive analysis of sexual ethics using both personalist and Thomistic principles as well as what we have received from divine revelation is a much-needed tonic not only for students of theology and philosophy but for all those interested in discovering the role of human reason and biology in crafting a sexual ethic.After an introduction, the proper beginning of Pruss’s analysis is found in chapter 2. Here, the author discusses love and its forms with a particular focus on the meaning of agapē in the New Testament. Pruss argues that, philosophically speaking, we should love everyone. But love should not be understood as monolithic. There are various kinds of love: agapē, philia, and erōs. The New Testament understanding of agapē contains the other two, for it is love itself. This kind of love is a love that loves the other as the other is, for the other’s sake, and in a way that is appropriate to that person in the light of objective facts. Moreover, this kind of love is not simply a feeling or an emotion but is concentrated in an action that is an expression of one’s will.In chapter 3, Pruss takes up the issue of desire. He evaluates desire in two ways: (1) desire and libido, and (2) sexual desire, need, and pleasure. He [End Page 485] concludes that sexual desire is not a need in the same way that we desire food, drink, communication, love, and to be loved. Without these latter, human life would be seriously lacking or, in the case of food and drink, quickly cut short. Second, he observes that circumstances may not be appropriate for fulfilling one’s sexual desire. Finally, while human life would be seriously compromised by the lack of food, drink, communication, love, and the need to be loved, abstaining from the fulfillment of sexual desire even over a long period of time would not be detrimental to human well-being in the same way.Pruss does not imply by the preceding that sexuality does not matter. Chapter 4, in fact, deals with the meaningfulness of sexuality. There are two sets of rules regarding sexuality and its expression. Some rules are moral in nature, like the prohibition against rape. Other rules are customs, for example, the exchanging of rings after the exchange of marital vows. With respect to the moral rules regarding sexuality, Pruss highlights casual sex, sexual assault, gay rights, and romantic love. Apart from sexual assault and rape—both of which lack consent—casual sex, homosexual sex, and romantic love have the following in common, namely, that sex is indeed innately important to human beings and that sex aspires to be romantic in nature. While, as in the case of casual sex, romantic love does not necessarily give rise to true love, romantic love is often the prelude to a deep and unique form of love. Why this is so has to do with the meaning of sexual union.Sexual union is the topic of chapter 5, presented under the title “One Flesh, One Body.” Scripture, Pruss affirms, describes the person as... (shrink)

A better appreciation of the material, distributed quality of human agency can illuminate subtle dynamics of domination and oppression and reveal resources for potentially liberatory political action. Materialist accounts of agency nevertheless pose challenges to the notion of personal responsibility that is so crucial to political obligation and democratic citizenship. To guard against this danger, we need to sustain the close connection between agency and a sense of selfhood that is individuated, reflexive, and responsive to norms. Yet we should acknowledge (...) that reflexive selfhood is not the whole of individual agency for the sources of agency extend beyond the individual herself. We also need to recognize the ways that both reflexivity and norm-responsiveness are themselves embodied capacities. When properly conceived, a materialist view of agency can increase awareness of our oftenunwitting contributions to systematic inequalities of power and extend our political responsibilities in emancipatory directions, thus holding great promise for democratic life. (shrink)

This book uses Western philosophical tradition to make a case for a form of thinking properly associated with ancient China.

Human beings pose a problem for Descartes’ metaphysics. They seem to be more than a mere sum of their mental and bodily parts; human beings, Descartes insists, are unions of mind and body. But what does that union amount to? In the first, negative, part of this paper I argue that, by Descartes’ own lights, there is no way for us to answer this question if we are looking for a proper metaphysics of the union. Metaphysics is the (...) job of the intellect; it involves understanding. On Descartes’ considered view, we don’t understand the union; we feel it through the internal senses. In the second, positive, part of the paper I argue that, while Descartes does not give a properly metaphysical account of the union, he does provide a rich phenomenology of it that is of both theoretical and practical interest. Along the way, I suggest a phenomenological reading of a number of important passages that scholars have interpreted as Descartes’ attempt to provide a metaphysics of the union. (shrink)

Through a re-reading of Antigone, I offer a critique of Hegel's use of the story to illustrate the unity which emerges from the representation of sexual difference in ethical life. Using Hegel's own account of habits, as the mechanism by which the body becomes a sign of the self, I argue that the pretense of social unity assumes the proper construction and representation of one body only. This critique is brought to bear upon contemporary moves towards a (...) post-Hegelian ethics of difference. (shrink)

A company called Biojewellery has proposed to take a sample of bone tissue from a couple and to grow this sample into wedding rings. One of the ethical problems that such a proposal faces is that it implies surgery without medical need. To this end, only couples with a prior need for surgery are being considered. This paper examines the question of whether such a stipulation is necessary. It is suggested that, though medical need and the provision of health and (...) wellbeing is overwhelmingly the warrant for surgical intervention, there is no reason in principle why other, non-medical, projects such as jewellery creation might not also warrant surgical intervention. Implicitly, this line of thought forces us to consider the proper place of surgical intervention—that is, to ask what surgeons are for. (shrink)

AimTo examine the association of body mass index (BMI) [kg/m2] and its classifications (underweight [BMI < 18.5], normal [18.5 ≤ BMI < 25], overweight [25 ≤ BMI < 30], and obese [BMI ≥ 30]) with brain structure in individuals with a wide range of BMI group.Materials and methodsThe participants included 382 right-handed individuals (mean age: 46.9 ± 14.3 years, 142 men and 240 women). The intelligence quotient was assessed using the Japanese Adult Reading Test. Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and diffusion (...) tensor imaging (DTI) were performed to analyze the association of BMI and its classifications with gray and white matter structures, respectively.ResultsAccording to VBM, BMI was significantly and negatively correlated with the bilateral cerebellum exterior volumes. In group comparisons, the right cerebellum exterior volume was significantly lower in the overweight or obese group than in the underweight or normal group, while the bilateral cuneus and calcarine cortex, left cuneus, and left precuneus volume was significantly lower in the underweight group than in the non-underweight group. Sex-related stratification analyses for VBM revealed that BMI was significantly and negatively correlated with the bilateral cerebellum exterior volumes only in women. In group comparisons, the left cerebellum exterior volume was significantly lower in obese women than in non-obese women. The left thalamus proper and the right cerebellum exterior volumes were significantly lower in overweight or obese group than in underweight or normal group in men and women, respectively. The bilateral cuneus and calcarine cortex, left cuneus and carcarine cortex, and bilateral cuneus volume was significantly lower in underweight men than in non-underweight men. In contrast, there were no notable findings on DTI.ConclusionOur results suggest association of continuous BMI, being overweight or obese, and being underweight with decreased gray matter volume in individuals with a wide range of BMI group. Furthermore, sex-related differences are seen in the association of BMI and its classifications with regional gray matter volume reductions. Abnormally high or low BMIs may have a negative influence on regional gray matter volumes. (shrink)

The contribution of the body to cognition and control in natural and artificial agents is increasingly described as “off-loading computation from the brain to the body”, where the body is said to perform “morphological computation”. Our investigation of four characteristic cases of morphological computation in animals and robots shows that the ‘off-loading’ perspective is misleading. Actually, the contribution of body morphology to cognition and control is rarely computational, in any useful sense of the word. We thus (...) distinguish (1) morphology that facilitates control, (2) morphology that facilitates perception and the rare cases of (3) morphological computation proper, such as ‘reservoir computing.’ where the body is actually used for computation. This result contributes to the understanding of the relation between embodiment and computation: The question for robot design and cognitive science is not whether computation is offloaded to the body, but to what extent the body facilitates cognition and control – how it contributes to the overall ‘orchestration’ of intelligent behaviour. (shrink)

In this article, the author examines the work of the Neo-Confucian thinker Zhou Dunyi , particularly his seminal essay, "Explanation of the Diagram of the Great Ultimate" , as a key articulation of the anthropocosmic vision that underlies the traditional Chinese practice of taijiquan. Although often associated with Daoism, the art of taiji actually draws on cosmological principles widely shared by followers of all Chinese schools of thought. Through a careful reading of Zhou's essay, it becomes apparent that Zhou is (...) deeply versed in this very ancient pan-Chinese cosmic vision, giving his essay a decidedly mystical air. However, Zhou also takes pains to give his essay a distinctive Confucian flavor by stressing the necessity of human moral action in establishing proper cosmic balance. This marriage of the more mystical and practical/ moral suggests that Zhou himself may have been a practitioner of some form of taijiquan, as that are functions by combining both aspects of Chinese philosophy. Whether this suggestion is true or not, however, Zhou's "Explanation" stands as perhaps the best articulation of the "essence" of taiji found in traditional sources. (shrink)

For the past two decades, the issue of the body and essentialism has dominated feminist theory. In general, it is assumed that the body has been devalued and repressed by the Western metaphysical tradition. In this article, I make two claims to the contrary. First, as poststructuralist theory has tirelessly demonstrated, Western thought has continually tried to ground thought in some foundational substance, such as the body. Second, the most provocative, fruitful and radical aspects of recent feminism (...) and poststructuralism concern the event of incorporeality. What makes incorporeality such an urgent issue is its tie with anti-foundationalism. If there is not a direct or proper passage between what is and what is thought, then thinking can be considered as a force or event in its own right. By disrupting the traditional philosophical series that ties thought to some grounding body, thinkers as diverse as Deleuze, Derrida, Irigaray and Foucault have opened the possibility of a theory of the incorporeal. (shrink)

Cognitive systems research has predominantly been guided by the historical distinction between emotion and cognition, and has focused its efforts on modelling the “cognitive” aspects of behaviour. While this initially meant modelling only the control system of cognitive creatures, with the advent of “embodied” cognitive science this expanded to also modelling the interactions between the control system and the external environment. What did not seem to change with this embodiment revolution, however, was the attitude towards affect and emotion in cognitive (...) science. This paper argues that cognitive systems research is now beginning to integrate these aspects of natural cognitive systems into cognitive science proper, not in virtue of traditional “embodied cognitive science”, which focuses predominantly on the body’s gross morphology, but rather in virtue of research into the interoceptive, organismic basis of natural cognitive systems. (shrink)

Like Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas holds that the rational soul is the substantial form of the human body. In so doing, he takes himself to be rejecting a Platonic version of substance dualism; his criticisms, however, apply equally to a traditional understanding of Cartesian dualism. Aquinas’s own peculiar brand of dualism is receiving increased attention from contemporary philosophers—especially those attracted to positions that fall between Cartesian substance dualism and reductive materialism. What Aquinas’s own view amounts to, however, is subject to (...) debate. Philosophers (such as J. P. Moreland and Scott Rae) have claimed that ‘Thomistic substance dualism’ (TSD) centers around two beliefs: (1) the rational soul is an immaterial substance, and (2) this immaterial substance is the human person. In this paper, I argue that labeling such an account ‘Thomistic’ proves dangerously misleading—not only does Aquinas himself explicitly deny both of these claims, but he denies them for philosophically significant reasons. Furthermore, I argue that Aquinas’s own position provides an account of human nature both more coherent and philosophically attractive. (shrink)

Proper attention to the theme of corporeality is crucial for understanding Derrida’s analysis of Hegel in “The Pit and the Pyramid.” This article argues that Derrida’s essay compels us to face the impossibility of giving a wholly coherent account of embodiment. The _Aufhebung_ supposedly unites the exteriority of the corporeal with interiority in a higher unity that cancels and preserves them both; Hegel’s own text reveals, however, that meaning is primordially absent from the body that was thought to (...) incarnate it. And it is this absence of ideal meaning that is originary: Differance conditions the body as it conditions speech, rendering the body other than itself such that it is not categorizable as flesh that is the self or as an object that is not the self. I am and am not my body because the dichotomy between interiority and exteriority breaks down even at the level of the body. Indeed, I am and am not my self; the embodied self is disrupted from the start, never self-contained. Thus embodiment always already testifies to the other. (shrink)

Classical liberalism stipulates that individuals may only reliably escape a state of war by joining a body politic whose unity is consolidated and preserved by the formation of a sovereign government. Frederick Douglass, through his own experience of slavery and then as a radical abolitionist critiquing the racialized laws and society of the United States, shows that there is an inherent scandal, a schism in the very idea of a body politic. This scandal cannot be overcome, but Douglass (...) enacts a treatment for it through a polemical ethic that endeavors to reconstruct political community, expansively and inclusively understood, by ever again bringing the ideal, as a regulative idea, into confrontation with the real. By putting Douglass and the historical situation of his time into dialogue with the natural law tradition of Aquinas, Locke, and the American Founding, this essay argues that Douglass’s thought and example provide a fresh way to address the crisis of liberal democracy in our time. This requires understanding the instability of the body politic as a source of strength rather than weakness, if properly confronted in a polemical ethics. (shrink)

It is hard to do justice, in a short reply, to Eyal's excellent review. Accordingly, I will focus on what I take to be its central claim – namely that I fail to give proper consideration to the extent to which the forced extraction of body parts undermines individuals' opportunities for self-respect. According to Eyal, ‘body exceptionalism’ can be defended on the following grounds: ‘People usually see trespass into a person and into objects they associate with a (...) person – especially into a person's body – as utterly disrespectful towards that person and her autonomy’ . And later: ‘Whether or not organ confiscation is truly disrespectful . . . its widespread and intractable perception as a humiliating violation counts heavily against it, because it can thwart opportunities for self-respect’. (shrink)

This article concerns the problem of assessing selected body compo- sition parameters after completion of antitumor therapy and comparing them with the same parameters of healthy children. A high percentage of overweight and obesity, as well as abnormal fat distribution in convalescents with cancer shows a significant adverse effect of therapy on body composition and suggests the need for early intervention in terms of diet and exercise, which would help patients to quickly achieve the proper parameters of (...) body composition. Two main problems will be mentioned during the presented data analysis. Firstly, in each group there was a small number of observations. Because of this, the real differences between examined subgroups may have been omitted. Secondarily, many variables are correlated and are not normally distributed. Therefore, be- side the standard statistical tests to compare two groups, principal component analysis was applied to reduce the dimensions of the attribute space and to attempt to classify two groups of patients. (shrink)

During the last two decades, many thinkers on Iranian cinema have had many things to say about censorship, especially the issue of the veil imposed on women’s gender by the authorities in Iran. In this paper, I will describe Hamid Dabashi’s narrative as related to the concept of “truth” to show further that the veil issue has reached a new phase in Iran. Although much of what Dabashi defines as the absented body of women in his article “Body (...) less faces: Mutilating modernity and abstracting women in an ‘Islamic cinema’” may still hold, I believe his over-arching narrative doesn’t contribute enough to our understanding of the new relations among the authorities and actresses’ Fashion styles on red carpets. This paper’s method is connected with cultural and visual studies through Roland Barthes’ semiotics. I first focus on Hamid Dabashi’s conception of “truth” and how he believes “truth” is related to Islamic ideology and embodied in Iranian post-revolutionary cinema to further (through analysing photos of Iranian actresses’ clothing who attend festivals) conclude that Iranian women try to adopt new resistances in choosing their costumes compared to the early two decades of post-revolutionary Iran. The presence of Iranian women in festivals especially regarding what they wear has established a new interwoven relationship with authorities which has somewhat not been surveyed properly. By surveying the photos of their fashion and style I conclude that they are in constant negotiation with authorities through what they rebelliously wear. (shrink)

In Sri Lanka’s armed conflict, gender, sexuality, and sex work are intermeshed with militarized nationalism. Militarization entrenches gender performances and heteronormative schemes while enabling women to transgress these—whether as combatants or as sex workers. Familiarly, in this nationalist encounter, women are expected to safeguard culture, notably through proper dress and sexual conduct. Sexualactivity that challenges containment arouses anxiety because loyalty to military groupor communal boundary can be compromised. Drawing on three examples—adress codecall by a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (...) women’s wing, consequences for a woman alleged to be a sex worker, and the public stripping of an alleged suicide bomber at a military checkpoint—this article explores how gendered behaviors and sexualities marked as culture are constructed and controlled in the interests of militarized, nationalist projects; how women can be both agents and objects of these controls; and the implications for women who refuse to comply. (shrink)

Philosophers and doctors from the period immediately after Aristotle down to the second century CE were particularly focussed on the close relationships of soul and body; such relationships are particularly intimate when the soul is understood to be a material entity, as it was by Epicureans and Stoics; but even Aristotelians and Platonists shared the conviction that body and soul interact in ways that affect the well-being of the living human being. These philosophers were interested in the nature (...) of the soul, its structure, and its powers. They were also interested in the place of the soul within a general account of the world. This leads to important questions about the proper methods by which we should investigate the nature of the soul and the appropriate relationships among natural philosophy, medicine, and psychology. This volume, part of the Symposium Hellenisticum series, features ten scholars addressing different aspects of this topic. (shrink)

In his Confessions, Augustine says that he achieved great intellectual insight from what he cryptically calls the “books of the Platonists.” Prior to reading these books, he was a corporealist and was unable to conceive of incorporeal beings. Because of the insurmountable philosophical problems corporealism caused for the Christian belief he was seeking, Augustine claims that this was the greatest intellectual barrier he faced in converting to Christianity. As such, the specific contents and effects of these Platonist books are of (...) great biographical and philosophical interest. Heretofore, the explanation of the contents and effects of these books has not been forthcoming. This essay aims to supply it. I argue that Augustine learned the mereological distinction between pertensive and entensive presence in the books of the Platonists. This distinction is required for properly conceiving of incorporeal beings. In support of this thesis, I show that Augustine himself says that he learned this very distinction, that the distinction is present in Platonist texts that scholars agree were among “the books of the Platonists,” that the distinction is present in one of Augustine’s earliest works, and that this distinction is uniquely capable of resolving the philosophical difficulties he faced as a corporealist. (shrink)

A grabs B and uses him as a body shield. That is, A hides behind B , and from that vantage point, shoots at C. According to libertarian theory, may B shoot at C, or, is it proper that C pull the trigger at B? In the view of Rothbard , the former is correct: B is entitled to gun down C. In my view, this is incorrect. Rather, it would be lawful to C to properly kill B. (...) . Jakobsson supports the Rothbardian position. The present paper is at an attempt of mine to refute Jakobsson, and, thus, also, Rothbard , once again. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.1 (2001) 73-90 [Access article in PDF] The Leader's Two BodiesSlavoj Zizek's Postmodern Political Theology Claudia Breger Over the course of the last decade, Slavoj Zizek and his "Slovenian Lacanian school" have gained renown in the Western theory market. Academics are fascinated not only by Zizek's performances as a speaker, his nondogmatic approach to issues of genre and (inter)mediality, 1 and the "literary" character of his theoretical texts (...) [Laclau, Preface xii], but also by the political turn given to psychoanalysis by the "Slovenian school." Already in his preface to Zizek's The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), Ernesto Laclau wrote that this school's work made Lacanian theory "one of the principal reference points of the so-called 'Slovenia spring'—that is to say the democratization campaigns that have taken place in recent years" [xi]. More than ten years later—after a decade of authoritarian rule, war, and genocide in former Yugoslavia—recent revolutionary events in Serbia once more allow one to hope for a thorough democratization of the region. In a newspaper article evaluating the uprising, however, Zizek warned that these hopes might be premature: while Milosevic could find his new role as "a Serbian Jesus Christ," taking upon him all the "sins" committed by his people, Kostunica and his "democratic" nationalism might represent "nothing but Milosevic in the 'normal' version, without the excess" [Zizek, "Gewalt"]. 2Zizek was not alone in warning that the new government in Yugoslavia might not bring an end to Serbian nationalist politics. The pessimistic scenario Zizek evoked on this occasion, however, was not simply the result of his evaluation of the current political constellation in Serbia. Rather, the fantasy of the necessary return of the leader is connected to his political theory—a theory that does not allow for more optimistic scenarios of democratization and the diminution of nationalism in society. My reading of Zizek's work thus argues for a reevaluation of his theory in terms of its implicit authoritarian politics. The need for such a reevaluation is also suggested by Laclau toward the end of his recent exchange with Judith Butler and Zizek when he admits that "the more our discussions progressed, the more I realized that my sympathy for Zizek's politics was largely the result of a mirage" [Laclau, "Constructing Universality" 292]. Laclau now criticizes Zizek's radical Marxist rhetoric by suggesting that he "wants to do away with liberal democratic regimes" without specifying a political alternative [289], and describes Zizek's discourse as "schizophrenically split between a highly sophisticated Lacanian analysis and an insufficiently deconstructed traditional Marxism" [205]. On [End Page 73] the other hand, he also problematizes Zizek's "psychoanalytic discourse" as "not truly political" [289]. My argument primarily starts from this latter point: the antidemocratic—and, as I will argue, both antifeminist and anti-Semitic—moment of Zizek's theory is to be located not only in the way he performs Marxism, but also in the way he performs Lacanian psychoanalysis. While, in other words, Zizek's skepticism vis-à-vis democracy is obviously informed by, and inseparable from, Marxist critiques of "liberal," "representative" democracy, his failure to elaborate alternative visions of political change towards egalitarian and/or plural scenarios of society cannot be explained solely by his Marxist perspective. Rather, it is Zizek's reading of Lacanian psychoanalysis that does not allow for revisions of the Marxist paradigm toward, for example, a "radical democracy" as suggested by Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in their Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.In a chapter entitled "Formal Democracy and Its Discontents" in Looking Awry (1992), Zizek notes that "Lacan predicted a new rise of racism for the coming decades" as early as the 1960s [162]. 3 Zizek interprets this statement in the context of a "fundamental impasse of democracy" [162] created by the fact that the abstraction proper to democracy can never dissolve the "substantial ties"—of ethnicity, nation, and so on—that it negates [164]. 4 According to Zizek, "this constitutive paradox" has to be assumed: "The democratic attitude is always based upon a certain fetishistic... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Self and Its Body in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit by John RussonRobert BermanJohn Russon. The Self and Its Body in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. Pp. xv + 199. Cloth, $60.00To intoduce his account of the human body, Russon places two epigraphs at the front of his book, one from Diogenes Laertius, the other from Artaud. The first tells (...) of Zeno, seeking the oracle’s counsel about how best to live and advised to “mix his flesh with corpses.” What sounds like a recommendation to practice necrophilia, Zeno cleverly interprets to mean that he ought to spend his life reading old books. The second likens culture to a new bodily organ, radicalizing Merleau-Ponty’s view that the blind man’s cane is an extension of his body. Diogenes’ anecdote and the surrealist’s aphorism extend the conception of the human body beyond its ordinary boundary. Literally, Artaud’s culture is no bodily organ, nor is Zeno’s hermeneutically active mind a body which, flouting the law, mixes with the corpus of ancient authors, and experiences, at one Phaedrus-like remove, forbidden pleasures of dialectics.If Russon is a Zenonic reader and Hegel an ancient, then his book enacts the oracle’s advice correctly spun. However, it is clear, despite its title, that this is not Russon’s only aim. At the outset Russon distinguishes his project from that of Hegel’s 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit (PS); whereas Hegel presents the experience of consciousness, Russon’s project is to develop a “phenomenology of the body” or “science of the embodiment of consciousness” (3), whose central concepts are the “three logical determinations of … phusis, hexis, and logos” (8). Despite this contrast, Russon claims to follow the method he takes Hegel to have adopted in PS, intending “by rigorous argument to comprehend … the human body” (3), to “display the self-development of the internal dynamism of the concept of the body” (4). Yet, while initially insisting on the difference between his and Hegel’s projects, he actually holds that PS is “implicitly” such a phenomenology of the body; hence, he wants to extract from it “the philosophy of the body that is there implied” (3) and to show how it rationally comprehends human embodiment. If making the implicit explicit describes the work of interpretation, then his book is as much an essay in Hegel interpretation as it is a self-standing phenomenology of the body. Russon mixes his interpretive with his Hegelian systematic aim, but these are distinct, and he grants the latter priority. If one rejects his interpretive claim about Hegel’s project, Russon’s systematic claims about the body should remain unaffected, and assessable in their own right, even if not implicit in PS. What are these claims?Russon’s central gambit is to understand the human body in terms of embodiment, and embodiment in turn via the activities of the self-conscious self. Since he argues that these activities essentially involve recognition, thus are inherently social, the “whole [End Page 636] functioning world of social, cultural life will have to be recognized as the body of the properly human self,” while the natural body “of mere human life” is “not yet the body of the human proper” (9). Accordingly, Russon organizes his systematic claims about the human body into three parts: A. treats propaedeutically the “Hegelian concept of self-conscious selfhood” (8), B. handles the body as social institution; and C. deals with the culminating “absolution of the body” in which the self knows itself in its embodiment as self-conscious self.Russon’s project prompts questions about his Hegel interpretation and his conception of the human body. PS is skeptical, but preparatory: its immanent critique of interrelated knowledge claims serves to expose and undermine the principle of the opposition of consciousness which they assume; acceptance of that principle, Hegel argues, is the chief obstacle blocking the way to systematic philosophical knowledge, precisely because it leaves philosophy defenseless against skeptical challenges to the very possibility of such knowledge. This construal of PS conflicts with Russon’s interpretive claim that it is implicitly a science of the... (shrink)

A common feature of much recent work done in a variety of disciplines is the foregrounding of embodiment. Thinking in terms of a situated body however, brings up a complex problem which has often been overlooked: the re-importation of a kind of metaphysics of the body or a covert idealism, which stubbornly persists in many such discussions. This is seen in treatments ofthe body as a mediation or as a site for inscription of socio-cultural codings. We will (...) briefly show how even such an influential account ofritualization practices, that of Catherine Bell, shows traces of these problems. The corrective strategy to such conceptions is a properly situational ontology as suggested by Merleau-Ponty's later philosophy and Tim Ingolds critical work on environments. (shrink)

This essay focuses on how we embody the language we speak: how an audience "reads" the body of a speaker as it both constructs the positionality of that speaking subject and construes that subject's discursive authority. Building on the work of Linda Brodkey and Michelle Fine, I explore what is at stake when university students harass a faculty member by accusing that teacher of not embodying authority in the proper form (body).

This article further systematizes the existential body, contributing to the ethnographic model of embodied objectivity. It situates embodiment as the foundation of knowledge, demonstrating its underdevelopment in anthropological literature. The paper explores the philosophical relationship between being-in-the-world and Merleau-Ponty’s body-proper, emphasizing the central role of embodied pre-objective signification in representational ethnographic knowing. This aspect is often insufficiently addressed, particularly in light of certain ethnographic applications of the epoché. The paper concludes that, given the oscillatory apprehension of embodiment, (...) the use of terms like “systematizing” and “inter-objectivity” adequately enhances its portrayal as a pre-objective phenomenon rather than an objective one. (shrink)

The idea of a market in human organs has traditionally met with widespread and emphatic rejection from both secular and religious fronts alike. However, as numerous human beings continue to suffer an uncertain fate on transplant waiting lists, voices are beginning to emerge that are willing at least to explore the option of human organ sales. Anyone who argues for such an option must contend, however, with what seem to be largely emotional rejections of the idea. Often it seems that (...) rebuffs offered on a secular ground are rooted in nothing more than vague discomforts. We suspect that these discomforts are often based in religious sentiments that have wound their way into the fabric of secular America. Therefore, in order to contribute further to those voices heard in favor of human organ sales, it is worthwhile to show that from a religious perspective, it is just as possible to affirm the appropriateness of human organ sales as it is from a secular basis. Since Protestantism has historically had a powerful influence in American society it is a proper starting point for such an investigation. (shrink)