Online research in philosophy

The article tries to show that both resolution of the mind-body problem and adequate description of the phenomenal body depend upon the ontology presupposed in offering such a resolution or description. a detailed analysis of sartre's treatment of the body demonstrates that his failures are a result of his neo-cartesian ontology. both the critique and the resolution proposed toward the end take their departure from merleau- ponty's thesis of the ontological primacy of phenomena.

The sense of embodiment is vital for self recognition. An examination of anosognosia for hemiplegia—the inability to recognise that one is paralysed down one side of one’s body—suggests the existence of ‘online’ and ‘offline’ representations of the body. Online representations of the body are representations of the body as it is currently, are newly constructed moment by moment and are directly “plugged into” current perception of the body. In contrast, offline representations of the body are representations of what the body is usually like, are relatively stable and are constructed from online representations. This distinction is supported by an analysis of phantom limb—the feeling that an amputated limb is still present—phenomena. Initially it seems that the sense of embodiment may arise from either of these types of representation; however, an integrated representation of the body seems to be required. It is suggested information from vision and emotions is involved in generating these representations. A lack of access to online representations of the body does not necessarily lead to a loss in the sense of embodiment. An integrated offline representation of the body could account for the sense of embodiment and perform the functions attributed to this sense.

What does Husserlian phenomenology have to offer feminist theory? More specifically, can we find resources within Husserl’s account of the living body ( Leib ) for the critical feminist project of rethinking embodiment beyond the dichotomies not only of mind/body but also of subject/object and activity/passivity? This essay begins by explicating the reasons for feminist hesitation with respect to Husserlian phenomenology. I then explore the resources that Husserl’s phenomenology of touch and his account of sensings hold for feminist theory. My reading of Husserl proceeds by means of a comparison between his description of touch in Ideas II and Merleau-Ponty’s early appropriation of this account in the Phenomenology of Perception, as well as through an unlikely rapprochement between Husserl and Irigaray on the question of touch. Moreover, by revisiting the limitations in Husserl’s approach to the body—limitations of which any feminist appropriation must remain cognizant—I attempt to take Husserl’s phenomenology of touch beyond its initial methodologically solipsistic frame and to ask whether and how it can contribute to thinking gendered and racialized bodies. The phenomenology of touch, I argue, can allow us to understand the interplay between subjective, felt embodiment and social-historical context. In opening up Husserl’s account of touch to other dimensions—intersubjective and affective—sociality is revealed as residing within, and structuring of, touch. Such touch can allow us to think embodiment anew.

De Vignemont argues that the sense of ownership comes from the localization of bodily sensation on a map of the body that is part of the body schema. This model should be taken as a model of the sense of embodiment. I argue that the body schema lacks the theoretical resources needed to explain this phenomenology. Furthermore, there is some reason to think that a deficient sense of embodiment is not associated with a deficient body schema. The data de Vignemont uses to argue that the body image does not underlie the sense of embodiment does not rule out the possibility that part of the body image I call 'offline representations' underlies the sense of embodiment. An alternative model of the sense of embodiment in terms of offline representations of the body is presented.

Merleau-Ponty developed a phenomenology of the body that promoted a non-dualistic account of human existence. In this paper I intend to develop Merleau-Ponty's analysis further by questioning his account of the body on the issues of body perception, and the body's relation to its environment. To clarify these issues I draw from both the phenomenological tradition and recent psychological investigations.

The structure of human embodiment is fundamentally characterized by a polarity or ambiguity between Leib and Körper, the subjective body and the objectified body, or between being-body and having-a-body. This ambiguity, emphasized, above all, by Helmuth Plessner and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, is also of crucial significance for psychopathology. Insofar as mental illnesses disturb or interrupt the unhindered conduct of one’s life, they also exacerbate the tension within embodiment that holds between being-body and having-a-body. In mental illnesses, there is a failure of tacit mediations upon which one’s bodily being-toward-the-world is based. Instead of serving as a medium of relating to the world, the body makes ..

Contemporary thought, whether it be in psychology, biology, immunology, philosophy of perception or philosophy of mind, is confronted with the breakdown of barriers between organism and environment, self and other, subject and object, perceiver and perceived. In this paper I show how Merleau-Ponty can help us think about this problem, by attending to a methodological theme in the background of his dialectical conception of embodiment. In La structure du comportement, Merleau-Ponty conceives life as extension folding back upon itself so as to reveal Hegel’s ‘hidden mind of nature.’ In the Phénoménologie de la perception, radical reflection elucidates the body schema as an essence that reveals itself within embodied existence, qua shaping the natural perceptual dialogue in which the perceiver and the perceived permeate and separate from one another. In these two conceptions of embodiment, we progressively see how the dialectical principle of embodiment must reveal and conceive itself within embodiment itself. Science, on the other hand, follows the phenomena of the body to a certain point, but refuses to allow that embodiment is self-conceptual. I illustrate this using the example of dynamic systems theory, an inheritor of the tradition of J.J. Gibson’s ecological psychology. In this way, I show how Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the dialectic of embodiment as self-conceptual is important to problems in contemporary thought.

This essay critically considers scientific and metaphorical understandings of the body and embodiment. It employs interrogates and employs the concepts of embodiment, ego, bodily intentionality, and anorexia from a phenomenological perspective. It considers the battery of concepts regarding embodiment: soma (the shape of the body), sarx (the flesh of the body) and pexis (the body and soul in unity). While Soma and sarx are the objective body, they are explained by the natural sciences. Pexis is the 'unobjective' body; it is subjective, and it is to be studied as a subjective phenomenon. To understand pexis means to understand that the body does not finish with the skin but is connected to its surroundings. There is also a consideration of the possibilities of the body under Heidegger's idea of protention, which refers to the transformation of the body into an instrument. When the body is conceived of as an instrument or object anorexia is seen as an illness only of embodiment as soma . A richer alternative is the idea that anorexia is an illness of existence that can be explained by Heidegger's discussion of embodiment via the concept of dasein.

While there have been many essays devoted to comparing the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty with that of Jacques Derrida, there has been no sustained book-length treatment of these two French philosophers. Additionally, many of the essays presuppose an oppositional relationship between them, and between phenomenology and deconstruction more generally.

Jack Reynolds systematically explores their relationship by analyzing each philosopher in terms of two important and related issues—embodiment and alterity. Focusing on areas with which they are not commonly associated (e.g., Derrida on the body and Merleau-Ponty on alterity) makes clear that their work cannot be adequately characterized in a strictly oppositional way. Merleau-Ponty and Derrida: Intertwining Embodiment and Alterity proposes the possibility of a Merleau-Ponty-inspired philosophy that does not so avowedly seek to extricate itself from phenomenology, but that also cannot easily be dismissed as simply another instantiation of the metaphysics of presence. Reynolds argues that there are salient ethico-political reasons for choosing an alternative that accords greater attention to our embodied situation.