Bodily Awareness, Imagination and the Self

Common wisdom tells us that we have five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. These senses provide us with a means of gaining information concerning objects in the world around us, including our own bodies. But in addition to these five senses, each of us is aware of our own body in ways in which we are aware of no other thing. These ways include our awareness of the position, orientation, movement, and size of our limbs (proprioception and kinaesthesia), our sense of balance, and our awareness of bodily sensations such as pains, tickles, and sensations of pressure or temperature. We can group these together under the title ‘bodily awareness’. The legitimacy of grouping together these ways of gaining information is shown by the fact that they are unified phenomenologically; they provide the subject with an awareness of his or her body ‘from the inside’. Bodily awareness is an awareness of our own bodies from within. This perspective on our own bodies does not, cannot, vary. As Merleau‐Ponty writes, ‘my own body…is always presented to me from the same angle’ (1962: 90). It has recently been claimed by a number of philosophers that, in bodily awareness, one is not simply aware of one's body as one's body, but one is aware of one's body as oneself. That is, when I attend to the object of bodily awareness I am presented not just with my body, but with my ‘bodily self’. The contention of the present paper is that such a view is misguided. In the first section I clarify just what is at issue here. In the remainder of the paper I present an argument, based on two claims about the nature of the imagination, against the view that the bodily self is presented in bodily awareness. Section two defends the dependency thesis; a claim about the relation between perception and sensory imagination. Section three defends a certain view about our capacity to imagine being other people. Section four presents the main argument against the bodily self awareness view and section five addresses some objections.     

Selective visual attention for ugly and beautiful body parts in eating disorders

Body image disturbance is characteristic of eating disorders, and current treatments use body exposure to reduce bad body feelings. There is however little known about the cognitive effects of body exposure. In the present study, eye movement registration (electroculography) as a direct index of selective visual attention was used while eating symptomatic and normal control participants were exposed to digitalized pictures of their own body and control bodies. The data showed a decreased focus on their own 'beautiful' body parts in the high symptomatic participants, whereas inspection of their own 'ugly' body parts was given priority. In the normal control group a self-serving cognitive bias was found: they focused more on their own 'beautiful' body parts and less on their own 'ugly' body parts. When viewing other bodies the pattern was reversed: high symptom participants allocated their attention to the beautiful parts of other bodies, whereas normal controls concentrated on the ugly parts of the other bodies. From the present findings the hypothesis follows that a change in the processing of information might be needed for body exposure to be successful.     

Dissociative Identity Disorder,Ambivalence, and Responsibility

If someone with dissociative identity disorder (DID) commits a wrongful act, is she responsible? If one adopts the Multiple Persons Thesis, it may seem that one alter cannot be responsible for the actions of another alter. Conversely, if one regards the subject as a single person, it may seem that she is responsible for any actions she performs. I will argue that this subject is a single person, but one who suffers from delusions of disownership and therefore does not fulfill ordinary requirements for responsible agency. This is because she suffers from extreme ambivalence: her deep‐seated needs and desires conflict, and she forms alter‐personalities as a way to cope with inner discord without abandoning any of these contradictory impulses. However, although the ability to exercise autonomous agency is eroded in such cases, the capacity for autonomous agency is preserved. The subject with DID is weakly responsible for her wrongful acts.     

Body satisfaction, sexual self-schemas and subjective well-being in women

The objectification of women's bodies in western culture creates special emphasis on women's representations of embodied aspects of themselves. I argue that women's satisfaction with their bodies is likely to have particularly strong implications for other embodied aspects of self: in this case, representations of their sexual selves. This paper examines the relationships between women's body satisfaction, their sexual self-schemas, and components of subjective well-being in a sample of 91 Australian women aged between 18 and 68. Body satisfaction and dimensions of women's actual sexual self-schemas predicted satisfaction with life, positive and negative affect. The relationships between body satisfaction and both positive affect and satisfaction with life were partially mediated by the positive dimensions of sexual self-schemas. This finding suggests that at least some of the negative consequences associated with body dissatisfaction are due to the negative implications of body dissatisfaction for women's beliefs about their sexual selves.     

Realization, Micro-Realization, and Coincidence

Let thin properties be properties shared by coincident entities, e.g., a person and her body, and thick properties ones that are not shared. Thick properties entail sortal properties, e.g., being a person, and the associated persistence conditions. On the first account of realization defined here, the realized property and its realizers will belong to the same individual. This restricts the physical realizers of mental properties, which are thick, to thick physical properties. We also need a sense in which mental properties can be realized in thin physical properties shared by a person and her body. Defining this in turn requires defining a sense in which the instantiations of sortal properties and of thick properties are realized in micro-structural states of affairs. A fourth notion of realization is needed to allow for the possibility of coincident entities that share a sortal property, e.g., coincident persons.     

Assessment of Body Image in Younger and Older Women

Body image was compared in younger versus older women using questionnaires and women's responses to fatter and thinner images of their own bodies versus responses to line drawings of bodies in the Figure Ratings Scale. We found that younger and older women have similar body dissatisfaction but that younger women have a higher drive for thinness and experience more societal influence on their body image. Using images of one's own body versus line drawings did not result in different body dissatisfaction in younger versus older women. These data suggest that age affects some facets of body image but not others and that ratings of body image do not differ in normal, healthy younger and older women when personalized measures are used.     

Understanding Women's Body Satisfaction: The Role of Husbands

This study was designed to examine the role women's husbands may play in determining their body satisfaction. One hundred and seventy-two (172; mean age = 37.53 years) European American women's body satisfaction, their perceptions of their husbands' satisfaction with their bodies, and their husbands' actual satisfaction with their bodies were assessed using the Body Figure Rating Scale; women's weight status was assessed using body mass index (BMI). Results indicated that wives were much more dissatisfied with their bodies than were their husbands and that wives thought their husbands were much more dissatisfied with their bodies than the husbands actually were. Further, findings suggested that wives' BMIs were not as strongly related to husband's satisfaction with their wives' bodies as they were to wives' own satisfaction or perceptions of their husbands' satisfaction with their bodies.     

A Medieval Feminist Critique of the Chinese World Order: The Case of Wu Zhao (r. 690–705)

Medieval Chinese held that the circumscribed social space women might inhabit in life was encoded in the nature of their bodies. Gender conceptions common to China's three religions—Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism—confirmed that women were allied to the passive and inner. Accounts of the only woman in Chinese history to occupy the throne in her own name, Wu Zhao, follow Chinese historians in portraying her as contravening this cosmology. Drawing on recent studies of the religious history of the body, I argue instead that Wu Zhao constructed a legitimizing strategy that took seriously, in ways not contemplated before, these fundamental tenets of Chinese religion.     

Foundations for self and other: a study in autism

There is controversy over the basis for young children's experience of themselves and other people as separate yet related individuals, each with a mental perspective on the world - and over the nature of corresponding deficits in autism. Here we tested a form of self-other connectedness (identification) in children with and without autism, who were group-matched according to CA (approximately 6 to 16 years) and verbal MA (approximately 2 1/2 to 14 years), and therefore IQ. We gave two forms of a novel 'sticker test' in which children needed to communicate to another person where on her body she should place her sticker-badge. Across the trials of Study 1, all of the non-autistic children pointed to their own bodies at least once, but over half the children with autism failed to point to themselves at all, even though they communicated successfully in other ways. In Study 2, where a screen was introduced to hide the tester's body, group differences in the children's communicative self-orientated gestures were most marked after the tester had 'modelled' a point-to-herself gesture in communicating to the child. Our interpretation is that autism involves a relative failure to adopt the bodily-anchored psychological and communicative stance of another person. We suggest that this process of identification is essential to self-other relations and grounds young children's developing understanding of minds.     

A Medieval Feminist Critique of the Chinese World Order: The Case of Wu Zhao (r. 690–705)

Medieval Chinese held that the circumscribed social space women might inhabit in life was encoded in the nature of their bodies. Gender conceptions common to China’s three religions—Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism—confirmed that women were allied to the passive and inner. Accounts of the only woman in Chinese history to occupy the throne in her own name, Wu Zhao, follow Chinese historians in portraying her as contravening this cosmology. Drawing on recent studies of the religious history of the body, I argue instead that Wu Zhao constructed a legitimizing strategy that took seriously, in ways not contemplated before, these fundamental tenets of Chinese religion.     

Thomson and the current state of the abortion controversy

ABSTRACT Many philosophers who wish to defend abortion, but who have become frustrated by the resistance of the personhood question to yield to any nonarbitrary solution welcomed Judith Thomson's 'A defense of abortion.'Thomson argues that abortion is sometimes justifiable even if the foetus is a person. In this paper I argue that Thomson's argument is a defense of abortion, rather than merely extraction without death, only because of the current state of medical technology. Once the technology is in place to extract foetuses while preserving their lives and to allow them to develop to full term outside the uterus, Thomson cannot defend the killing of the foetus. If she is right, however, a woman will still have the right to have a foetus extracted from her body. Finally, it is pointed out that the source of the problem with Thomson's argument is the major premise in most arguments for the permissibility of abortion: a woman's right to control her own body. If the defence of abortion is to entail a defence of the termination of the foetus, then this premise, understood as the right to remove an unwanted entity from one's body or the right to alter one's body as one wishes, simply will not do the trick.     

A Positively Embodied Approach to Psychotherapy

Abstract

This article introduces a practical model for therapists to promote recovery from eating and body image problems in their clients. The history of The Body Positive, a nonprofit eating disorders prevention organization that addresses the impact of gender and other intersecting identities on body image, is shared. Five competencies are offered that were developed through The Body Positive’s feminist-informed process of dialog with students engaged in activism against sizeism in their communities. The competencies (Reclaim Health, Practice Intuitive Self Care, Cultivate Self Love, Declare Your Own Authentic Beauty, and Build Community) offer resources to support therapists to model an alive, attuned relationship to their own bodies as well as skills to guide their clients to a kinder and more passionate embodiment.     

Children's ascriptions of property rights with changes of ownership

Ownership is not a “natural” property of objects, but is determined by human intentions. Facts about who owns what may be altered by appropriate decisions. However, young children often deny the efficacy of transfer decisions, asserting that original owners retain rights to their property. In Experiment 1, 4–5-year-old and 7–8-year-old children and adults were asked to resolve disputes between initial owners and various types of receivers (finders, borrowers, buyers). Experiment 2 involved disputes both before and after transfers of ownership. At all ages participants privileged owners over non-owners and accepted the effectiveness of property transfers. Overall, children's intuitions about property rights were similar to those of adults. Observed differences may reflect older participants’ willingness to segregate property rights from other considerations in assessing the acceptability of actions.     

Luck,propositional perception,and the Entailment Thesis

Looking out the window, I see that it’s raining outside. Do I know that it’s raining outside? According to proponents of the Entailment Thesis, I do. If I see that p, I know that p. In general, the Entailment Thesis is the thesis that if S perceives that p, S knows that p. But recently, some philosophers (McDowell, in Smith (ed.) Reading McDowell on mind and world, 2002; Turri, Theoria 76(3):197–206, 2010; Pritchard, Philos Issues (Supplement to Nous) 21:434–455, 2011; Pritchard, Epistemological disjunctivism, 2012) have argued that the Entailment Thesis is false. On their view, we can see p and not know that p. In this paper, I argue that their arguments are unsuccessful.     

Marinella and her interlocutors: hot blood,hot words,hot deeds

In the treatise called La nobiltà et l’eccellenza delle donne co’ diffetti et mancamenti de gli uomini (The nobility and Excellence of women, and the Defects and Vices of Men) (1601) Lucrezia Marinella claims that women are superior to men. She argues that men are excessively hot, and that heat in a high degree is detrimental to the intellectual and moral capacities of a person. The aim of this paper is to set out Marinella’s views on temperature differences in the bodies of men and women and the effects of bodily constitution on the capacities necessary for political deliberation and rule. I situate Marinella’s argument in the context of an ongoing debate about physiological differences between the sexes, begun in antiquity and extending into the Renaissance. That debate is important for several reasons: (i) as part of a broader discussion of the nature and worth of women, (ii) as determining influential interpretations of ancient authorities on matters of physiology, and (iii) as anticipating later discussions of the relation between the sexed body and political roles. This paper considers Marinella in dialogue with a number of interlocutors, elements of whose work can be found in her own: Aristotle, Mario Equicola, Galeazzo Flavio Capra, Ludovico Domenichi and Torquato Tasso.     

Treatment of Body Image Dissatisfaction Among Women With Bulimia Nervosa

Body image dissatisfaction contributes to the development and maintenance of bulimia nervosa. Many women with bulimia are unhappy with their body's appearance and yearn to attain the thin shape glamorized by our culture. This obsession breeds low self-esteem, feelings of inadequacy, and resistance to recovery from bulimia. This article offers treatment suggestions for body image dissatisfaction as it relates to bulimia. Counselors must be comfortable with their own bodies and must be cognizant of sociocultural dictates demanding a thin body for women.     

How long is your arm? Using multisensory illusions to modify body image from the third person perspective

Updating body representations from the 3rd person perspectives (3PP) seems to require viewing the real body, unlike when viewing from a 1st person perspective. Here, 3PP updating was investigated through induction of a physically impossible multisensory illusion in which participants viewed real-time 3PP video of themselves having their arm pulled until it stretched to twice its normal length. The illusion elicited the subjective experience that the participant's own arm had been stretched and caused an overestimation of reaching distance, although actual reaches were unaffected. Multisensory illusions from the 3PP can alter body image when applied to real bodies.     

Focusing on the bodily self: The influence of endogenous attention on visual body processing

The present study explores whether endogenous attention can modulate body perception. A modified version of the Posner paradigm was used to direct participants' attention toward the appearance of distinct body images, which differed only in detailed idiosyncratic features: one's own and another person's hands. Hand stimuli were preceded by symbolic cues that predicted their identity with high probability, which made it possible to compare the processing of expected (valid) and unexpected (invalid) targets. Results revealed that endogenous attention influenced the processing of participants' own hands by speeding participants' responses to valid in contrast to invalid trials. Crucially, no validity effect was found for the hands of another person. These findings cannot be explained in terms of perceptual familiarity, since an optimization of the processing for both familiar and unfamiliar faces by symbolic cues was observed. In light of these results, it is suggested that participants are able to anticipate particular stimuli within the same perceptual category as long as these stimuli appear to be remarkably distinct to them, which is probably the case for particular faces and their own bodies, in contrast to other people's bodies.     

My body until proven otherwise: Exploring the time course of the full body illusion

Evidence from the Full Body Illusion (FBI) has shown that adults can embody full bodies which are not their own when they move synchronously with their own body or are viewed from a first-person perspective. However, there is currently no consensus regarding the time course of the illusion. Here, for the first time, we examined the effect of visuomotor synchrony (synchronous/asynchronous/no movement) on the FBI over time. Surprisingly, we found evidence of embodiment over a virtual body after five seconds in all conditions. Embodiment decreased with increased exposure to asynchronous movement, but remained high in synchronous and no movement conditions. We suggest that embodiment of a body seen from a first-person perspective is felt by default, and that embodiment can then be lost in the face of contradictory cues. These results have significant implications for our understanding of how multisensory cues contribute to embodiment.