Dimensions of bodily subjectivity

Abstract

There has been a recent resurgence of interest in the body both within philosophical as well as cognitive scientific approaches to consciousness and cognition. An abundance of body-centric alliterative characterizations now abound throughout the literature. It is widely argued, for instance, that mind is only to be understood once we take seriously its fundamentally ecological, or situated, character. From this general orientation, we then encounter further claims: mind is embodied, embedded, enacted, and, most radically of all, extended. However, at the heart of these approaches lies the embodiment thesis. In its leanest formulation, this is the thesis that mental activity depends essentially not just on the brain but on the body as well. There is an emerging consensus that philosophical and empirical investigations of cognition must therefore begin with a consideration of the contribution of the body to our interactions with the world. But what sort of body are we talking about, exactly? If mind is essentially embodied, how are we to understand the nature of this “body” and its central role in driving mental activity? There are multiple ways of approaching this question. For instance, one may talk about the physiological body, while another may be interested in the experiential body; one may consider the functional body while Phenom Cogn Sci (2009) 8:279–283 DOI 10.1007/s11097-009-9142-6