A MULTISCALED APPROACH TO PRIVACY

Abstract

There are bodily processes and events to which the behaving organism is sensitive. A self-descriptive response, taken as indicating such sensitivity, is not specific to a localized source of stimulation posturing as a private stimulus, but is specific to the coordinative efforts of the body as an integrative whole. The skin does not bound private stimuli or stimulation because stimulatory processes span the organism and environment and cut across the private-public distinction. Private events are not inaccessible; they are multiply scaled. We endeavor to characterize this scaling and lay the foundation for an empirically driven account of privacy. With the multiscaled view as our theoretical guide for inquiry, we propose a characterization of the body from nanoscale to macroscale. This characterization enlightens, as we come to find that the organism is sensitive and responsive to bodily events, processes, and states that take form under certain circumstances. Research on haptic perception and its biological bases provides an example according to which the historically deemed private event can be brought under investigative control.