Embodiment, spatial categorisation and action

Despite the subjective experience of a continuous and coherent external world, we will argue that the perception and categorisation of visual space is constrained by the spatial resolution of the sensory systems but also and above all, by the pre-reflective representations of the body in action. Recent empirical data in cognitive neurosciences will be presented that suggest that multidimensional categorisation of perceptual space depends on body representations at both an experiential and a functional level. Results will also be resumed that show that representations of the body in action are pre-reflective in nature as only some aspects of the pre-reflective states can be consciously experienced. Finally, a neuro-cognitive model based on the integration of afferent and efferent information will be described, which suggests that action simulation and associated predicted sensory consequences may represent the underlying principle that enables pre-reflective representations of the body for space categorisation and selection for action.     

Problems of Embodiment and Problematic Embodiment

Using Judith Butler's notion that bodies are materialized via performances, “resig‐nifying” disability involves a “democratizing contestation” of staircases because they exclude those in wheelchairs. Paleoanthropologist Maxine Sheets‐Johnstone shows how consistent bipedal locomotion, together with the knowledge that we will die (upon which mutuality is based), are ingredients of our pan‐hominid speciation, not contingent constructions. As axiologically important as contestation is, it forecloses the possibility of achieving a mutuality with others that is wonderfully possible.     

A political action role for APGA

APGA needs to consider what its appropriate political role will be. In this article the author suggests that APGA adopt the role of declaring its professional position when professional concerns will be influenced by political decisions. The mechanism he describes for implementing such a role allows each member of APGA to participate in the political actions of the organization.     

Embodiment

Groddeck, most interestingly, proposed that the body manifested the mind, and the mind the body. I consider his interactional viewpoint from several perspectives. First, I discuss how the entire body not only is minded by and minding of all that occurs within and without, but as well how the developable capacity for mindfulness affects the perception of reality, within and without. Secondly, I consider the body as delusion, a seemingly necessary anchor into the reality of the physical world, whereas Groddeck's and Ferenczi's openness to ideas of telepathy and communication beyond death flirts with a disembodied transcendence of physicality. And third, I propose that Groddeck's psychoanalytic approach, like Buddhist meditational techniques, reveals an experiential flux of embodiment and disembodiment in each re-embodied moment of being alive.     

Embodiment and Animality

The aim of this article is to examine the problematic frontier that separates the phenomenology of the body and the phenomenology of animality. The main difficulty is to differentiate phenomenologically not only between embodiment and animality, but also between specifically human embodied experience and what is accessible to us through empathy in relation to the corporeality of the animal. I will tackle these questions by considering relevant textual material from the writings of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. On the one hand, I will show that although embodiment and animality are convergent on the level of the naturalistic attitude in Husserl’s Ideas II, they are divergent as soon as we place ourselves in the personalistic attitude, where the body enters into a different conjunction—namely, with the idea of person and of the spiritual world. On the other hand, Heidegger claims that, in spite of the abysmal bodily kinship with the animal, there is an essential difference between the human body and the animal organism, thus opposing the tendencies to humanize the animal and to animalize the human.     

Anger and guilt about ingroup advantage explain the willingness for political action

Three studies examined non-Aboriginal Australians' guilt and anger about their ingroup's advantage over structurally disadvantaged Aborigines. Study 1 showed that participants who perceived their ingroup as relatively advantaged perceived this inequality as unfair and felt guilt and anger about it. Anger, and to a lesser degree guilt, predicted the willingness to engage in political action regarding ingroup advantage. Study 2 showed both guilt and anger to be relatively self-focused because both were associated with appraising the ingroup's (rather than the government's) discrimination as responsible for ingroup advantage. Study 3 examined on participants especially willing to engage in political action to bring about systemic compensation to Aborigines. Anger about ingroup advantage was a potent predictor. Although guilt was associated with the abstract goal of systemic compensation, guilt did not explain willingness for political action. Results underline the importance of examining specific group-based emotions in intergroup relations.     

Historical and political interpretations of jurisprudence and the social action perspective in sociology

It is argued that a full comprehension of classical and contemporary manifestations of the “social action perspective” in sociology will be significantly facilitated by placing it within the context of jurisprudential theory, especially the theory of legal actors. The Weberian and Parsonian views of social action theory are outlined in some detail, and these positions are related as a whole to the concept of legal action in late-nineteenth-century German jurisprudence. Having established structural similarities between the two perspectives, an historical argument is developed within which it is asserted that: (a) Among the academic disciplines of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Germany, jurisprudence held a relative autonomy derived from ideological circumstances which may ultimately be traced to the political economy of the nascent German state. (b) Given such an autonomy, jurisprudence provided a paradigm for the sociocultural sciences. Each of these contentions is phrased within the intellectual milieu of the day which included both Kantian and Hegelian currents. (c) Finally, certain implications are drawn from the foregoing analysis concerning ideology and contemporary social action theory, the sociology of law, and the need for future research on the relationships between jurisprudential and other forms of social theory.     

The Embodiment Thesis

In this essay I articulate and defend a thesis about the nature of morality called “the embodiment thesis”. The embodiment thesis states that moral values underdetermine the obligations and entitlements of individual persons, and that actual social institutions must embody morality by specifying these moral relations. I begin by presenting two thought experiments that elucidate and motivate the embodiment thesis. I then proceed by distinguishing the embodiment thesis from a Rawlsian doctrine about the nature of justice, from the doctrine of moral relativism, and from solutions to the coordination problem of rational choice theory.     

Embodiment, ownership and disownership

There are two main pathways to investigate the sense of body ownership, (i) through the study of the conditions of embodiment for an object to be experienced as one's own and (ii) through the analysis of the deficits in patients who experience a body part as alien. Here, I propose that E is embodied if some properties of E are processed in the same way as the properties of one's body. However, one must distinguish among different types of embodiment, and only self-specific embodiment can lead to feelings of ownership. I address issues such as the functional role and the dynamics of embodiment, degrees and measures of ownership, and shared body representations between self and others. I then analyse the interaction between ownership and disownership. On the one hand, I show that there is no evidence that in the Rubber Hand Illusion, the rubber hand replaces the biological hand. On the other hand, I argue that the sense of disownership experienced by patients towards their body part cannot be reduced to the mere lack of ownership.     

Moral Imagination, Disability and Embodiment

abstract    In this paper we question the basis on which judgements are made about the 'quality' of the lives of people whose embodied experience is anomalous, specifically in cases of impairments. In moral and political philosophy it is often assumed that, suitably informed, we can overcome epistemic gaps through the exercise of moral imagination: 'putting ourselves in the place of others', we can share their points of view. Drawing on phenomenology and theories of embodied cognition, and on empirical studies, we suggest that there are barriers to imagining oneself differently situated, or imagining being another person, arising in part from the way imagination is constrained by embodied experience. We argue that the role of imagination in moral engagement with others is to expand the scope of our sympathies rather than to enable us to put ourselves in the other's place. We argue for explicit acknowledgement that our assessments of others' QOL are likely to be shaped by the specifics of our own embodiment, and by the assumptions we make as a consequence about what is necessary for a good quality of life.     

Experience,Embodiment, and Epistemologies

Gail Mason's Spectacle of Violence undertakes an important project in confronting a number of serious questions about definitions of violence and power, and about the nature of experience, subjectivity, and mind/body dualisms. Hartsock's comments on the book focus on issues of experience, embodiment, and standpoint theories.     

Gratuity,Embodiment, and Reciprocity

Protestant Christian ethicist Timothy Jackson and secular feminist philosopher Eva Feder Kittay each explore the relationship between love or care and justice through the lens of human dependency. Jackson sharply prioritizes agape over justice, whereas Kittay articulates a more complex and integrated understanding of the relationship of care and distributive justice. An account of Christian love and its relation to justice must account for the gratuity, mutuality, and reciprocity that pervade human existence. Such an account must integrate provision for another's basic needs, a feature of agape, with a distributive justice that fairly allocates the material prerequisites of care and the burden of caring labor. Kittay's treatment of care and justice is more adequate to the realities of human embodiment and the social organization of care than Jackson's, but neither offers a fully adequate ground for the moral personhood of all human beings, including deeply dependent persons.     

Embodiment: An Introduction

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics -     

The Embodiment of Birth

This paper rejects dualism between mind and body toview the self as an embodied biological entity. Rather thanseeing the body operating by passive mechanisms as Descartesargues, it holds it actively moves in and even defines its world. Carrying this perspective to medicine presents an attempt toincorporate or work with internal processes of the body; it issensitive to how patients identify with their bodies. Thecurrent discussion over the extent to which women should try tohave natural childbirths provides a concrete example of thedifferences between mechanistic and embodied approaches tomedicine.     

从具身视角看道德判断

道德判断是个体对于某类行为的善恶好坏和是非对错所进行的评价及判断。随着具身认知理论的兴起, 道德判断的具身研究随之展开。道德判断具身性的研究主要围绕身体清洁、厌恶, 身体温度及身体动作这3个维度展开。从皮亚杰及维果茨基的心理发展观, 概念隐喻理论和进化心理学3个角度对道德判断具身效应进行了理论解释和探讨。考虑到身体变量会通过情绪、认知因素进而影响道德判断, 今后具身认知视角下的道德判断应与道德判断中已有的理论进行整合, 同时对其与道德直觉的关系需要深入探讨, 并需进一步考察具身效应发生的时效性和动态性问题, 探讨道德判断具身效应的调节变量及个体差异, 同时要对道德判断具身效应进行跨文化比较。     

技能性知识与体知合一的认识论

近年来,现象学、科学知识社会学以及关于人工智能的哲学研究对传统科学认识论提出了挑战。这些研究成果虽然主旨各不相同,但都不约而同地涉及到关于技能性知识(skillful knowledge)的讨