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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 10, No. 11
Publication Date: November 25, 2023
DOI:10.14738/assrj.1011.15886
Godwins, J. (2023). Philosophy of Body: Embodiment, Perception, and Understanding Other Minds. Advances in Social Sciences
Research Journal, 10(11). 364-381.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
Philosophy of Body: Embodiment, Perception, and Understanding
Other Minds
Jude Godwins
Department of Philosophy,
Seat of Wisdom Seminary, Owerri,
Imo State University Owerri, Nigeria
ABSTRACT
The lived body, as an embodied self, lives, breathes, perceives, acts and reasons
(Drew Leder, 1990, 1-8). The imaginative, with its schematic structures, has a role
in thought (Lakoff, 1987, 275; Johnson 1987, 76,) even as we show preference for
the biological and psychological turn. The problem of other minds is about how we
come by the power to understand other people, comprehend their behaviours,
know their intentions, and discern their mental processes. In the Husserlian
phenomenology, we come to know and recognize the other through bodily
movement. The kinaesthetic experience of having a grip on its surrounding world
leads the ego into the knowledge and recognition of the other (Husserl, 1937, 16, §
62). We can take this kinaesthetic experience of knowing the other through motor
behaviour farther. Following an empathic understanding that comes from our
shared motor resonance system, we understand others when their motor
behaviour is put in a narrative framework (Gallagher, 2006). We admit, as
Gallagher does, that neither a “cold theoretical logic” (of folk psychology) nor a
“self-controlled simulation” (of simulation theory) replaces the powers associated
with the primary- and secondary inter-subjectivity that attend the way we interact
with others, first as babies and later as children (Gallagher, 2006, 12).
Keywords: Inter-subjectivity, embodied self, mental states, mental processes,
other minds, kinaesthetic experience, perception, gestalt configurations,
metaphorical mappings.
EMBODIMENT AND PERCEPTION
Zaner
Reflecting on the views of Gabriel Marcel, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, Zaner notes four moments
in the phenomenology of the animate organism:
a) One’s body bears that point of orientation, null (Träger der Orientierungspunktes),
around which other things in this world of space and time are organized;
b) It is one’s organ of perception (Wahrnehmungsorgan);
c) It is that which carries one’s field of sensation (Sinnesorgan);
d) It is the organ of one’s spontaneous actualization of the reflex-yearnings (reflexes) of
consciousness and that which realizes one’s willings (Willensorgan).
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Godwins, J. (2023). Philosophy of Body: Embodiment, Perception, and Understanding Other Minds. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal,
10(11). 364-381.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.1011.15886
One’s body-proper, Zaner argues, fetches these meanings for consciousness, following from a
recurrent and spontaneous complex process in the life of the conscious subject (Zaner, 1964,
250-251).
Drew Leder
Leder observes that in Cartesianism the body is a negative and counteracting moment within
the bipolar-self: a view reinforced by the fact that it is mostly experienced as (when) it features
prominently in moments of breakdown and malfunction. The body seems to disappear when
functioning unproblematically; it attracts attention only in times of malfunction. Following
Descartes, the body since the 17th century has been seen as part of res extensa and treated as
an object of scientific description which is subject to general scientific laws. Leder argues, on
the contrary, that the embodied self in its outgoing nature is, indeed, involved in a multiple form
of moral, aesthetic and spiritual communion. Besides, it is through one’s sensory motor skills
that one encounters a world replete with meaning and formed into gestalts. Within this
universe of perception, the body as presented by the science of experiment and observation
becomes inexhaustive of the body’s multiple senses (meaning). Instead, the body is the
condition of the very possibility of objects, the world and science. This calls attention then to
this other dimension of the body as an experiencer, a living body, a Leib. The body as Leib
reveals our corporeality as a principle of generation. The lived body, as an embodied self, lives,
breathes, perceives, acts and reasons. It is intrinsically at once a subject and an object (Leder,
1990, 1-8).
Embodiment and our Experiential and Metaphorically Framed Structures of
Understanding: Lakoff and Johnson
Lakoff and Johnson approach the question of our embodiment from the perspective of our
experiential and metaphorically framed structures of understanding. They have four major
propositions. First, there is preconceptual structuring of our experiences by our image
schemata. Second, we have concepts that correspond to our image schemas. Third, we have
metaphors that map our image schemas unto abstract spheres, while retaining their core logic.
Four, rather than being arbitrary, these metaphors derive from the structures that inhere in our
day-to-day corporeal experience (Lakoff, 1987, 275).
Image Schemata Structure Our Experience Pre-Conceptually:
Lakoff and Johnson see image schemata as continuous, active, dynamic, recurring structures
that organize our experience and comprehension. Perhaps a better example of the image- schematic structure is the recurring pattern we find in the experience of balance. Johnson cites
the example of a toddler trying to walk for the first time. One observes her initial unsteady
efforts at distributing mass and forces proportionately around an imaginary vertical axis. She
stretches out her arms to set up a steadying and stabilizing horizontal axis proportional to the
vertical axis. This imaginary central axis around which the forces get distributed is neither a
physical, perceptible object, nor a propositional structure conceptualized by the baby, nor an
image which she has. It is rather a recurrent pattern in the experience of balancing (Johnson
1987, 76). These schemata constitute for us a pattern, a structure according to which we
organize our experience and understanding, as we move and perceive with our bodies. They
structure our experience of space in various forms. The link schema, the container schema, the
part-whole schema, the center-periphery schema, the front-back schema, the up-down schema
all go into our organization and conceptualization of space.
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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 10, Issue 11, November-2023
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
Such is the case that the image schemata which structure space are eventually framed onto
corresponding abstract configurations which structure concepts. Our entire category structure,
for instance, is conceived in terms of the container schema. The physical space is extended to
the conceptual space. Consequently, our conceptual system is characterized by metaphorical
framing from physical space onto metaphorical space.
Corresponding Image-Schematic Concepts Exist:
Image schemata, which grow out of our bodily nature and our spatial boundedness as bodies,
give rise to body-related concepts such as our motor movement concepts, spatial relations
concepts etc. Spatial relations concepts, for instance, make sense of space to us. The from-to
schema generates our concepts of nearness and farness, according to which something is either
near to or far away from us. It is common knowledge that nearness and farness as such do not
exist. They are merely imposed on space, following from the from-to schema, which in turn
grows out of our bodily spatially orientated structure. The same is true of the concepts of back
and front, which come from the back-front schema. Nothing has a back or front in itself. Being
body-based concepts, fronts and backs make meaning only to beings, such as us, with fronts
and backs.
Our concepts are not only structured after the manner of the image-schematic structures, but
the very concept of structure itself is also structured by these schemata. The concept of
categories (the category-structure) makes sense to us within the context of the container
schema. The front-back schema opens up to us the background-foreground structure and
concepts. The part-whole schema as well as the up-down schematic structures give us an
understanding of the concept of hierarchy (hierarchical structure). The link schema reveals to
us the concept of relationship (relational structure).
Conceptual Metaphors Map Image Schemata into Abstract Domains:
Conceptual metaphors map our image schemata into abstract realms, keeping intact their
underlying internal structure and gestalt understanding. For instance, from the up-down
schema we construct the metaphorical mapping, more is up; less is down.
Orientational Metaphors orient and structure concepts in terms of non-metaphorical spatial
orientations, e.g., we suppose that more is up: ‘My salary rose by 50 %.’ Ontological Metaphors
frame the status of substance or entity onto things that are inherently bereft of such status. For
example, we assume the mind to be a machine: ‘Our minds refused to operate.’ Structural
Metaphors, emerging from our structural concepts, structure a kind of activity or experience
with respect to another kind. For example, we give the impression that understanding is seeing:
I see what you mean.
Schemata that structure our commonplace experience pre-conceptually have an internal
ecological structure. Pre-conceptual structural correlations in experience precipitate
conceptual metaphors that map this gestalt understanding onto abstract spheres. The result,
argue Lakoff and Johnson, is that what has been called abstract reason is but a certain
dimension of our temporal and physical functioning. Structured after an outside, a boundary,
and an inside, the basic logic (internal structure) of the in-out schema is that everything is either
inside a container or outside of it. It is either A or not A; and this is the ground upon which our
class logic is predicated (Lakoff, 1987, 272). Sample metaphors, Lakoff says, could be seen in
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Godwins, J. (2023). Philosophy of Body: Embodiment, Perception, and Understanding Other Minds. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal,
10(11). 364-381.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.1011.15886
the visual field, which is conceived in terms of the container schema, with things coming into
and going out of sight. Personal relationships belong here too. We go in and out of relationships.
We enter into marriages wherein we may be trapped. This indicates that image schemata have
their internal meaning structures and gestalt configurations. They reveal cognitive, ecological,
inherent and sensible organizations, which are preserved in metaphorical mappings.
Our conceptual metaphorical and conceptual metonymic functions enable us to comprehend
realms of experience bereft of pre-conceptual structures of their own. Much of these operations
are woven into thought. In Conceptual metaphoric models we have framings from an image- schematic or propositional model in one sphere (the source-sphere) to a corresponding
construct in another realm (the target-realm). Lakoff explains that the Conduit metaphor for
communication frames what we know about transporting objects in containers onto our
conception of communication. Hence communication becomes a transporting of ideas in words
(Lakoff, 1987, 114).
These Metaphors Are Experientially Motivated:
The conceptual metaphors, rather than being arbitrary, are themselves motivated by constructs
ingrained in our mundane experiences. An instance of this is the fact that our up-down schema
organizes virtually all our activities in terms of gravity. Daily we observe liquid levels in our
cups rise as we pour in water. We see them drop as we take away some quantity. The import is
a natural environment where quantity becomes accessible and easily understandable in terms
of our commonplace experience of verticality: a verticality-quantity correlation. This daily
experience motivates the structural correlation where more correlates with up, and less
correlates with down. This in turn informs the metaphorical mapping: more is up; less is down.
Thus, conceptual metaphors such as more is up, purposes are destinations (e.g., we are heading
toward becoming a humane world, we are not yet there but we shall definitely get there) are
prompted by pre-conceptual structural correlations in our mundane experience. The
correlational experience of the in-out schema is basically the embodied experience of the
human body as both a container and as an object in an enclosure. Our inquiry into image- schematic structures and their various metaphorical extensions and elaboration, our
consideration of the various dimensions of imaginative cognitive connections and processes,
and the existence of the many forms of metonymic thinking, all seem to lead to the hypothesis
that we use our imaginative faculties and processes to contemplate and talk about what we
experience. We use them in reasoning; they form part of our rational architecture.
Appraising Lakoff and Johnson
It is important to our discussion that some of the greatest philosophers concede that our
imaginative process has cognitive functions and connect our thoughts with our experiences.
Aristotle, Kant, Ricoeur, to mention but a few, belong here. In "der Kritik der reinen Vernunft,”
Kant recognizes this connecting activity of the imaginative process. Admittedly in Kant’s
account, at times, the functions of understanding (Verstehen) and those of imagination
(Vorstellung) overlap. However, in some passages one finds that the work of imagination is to
connect, while that of understanding is to streamline the conditions and principles according
to which this linking-up activity is to be carried out (Kant, 1787, B103). He also recognizes the
“procedure” of understanding with the image “schemata” and gives some examples of schemata
(Kant, 1787, B183-184). Lakoff and Johnson, for their part, with a rather elaborated sense of
the imaginative process take this theme some steps further.