On Having A Particular Physical Body? The Implications for Our Philosophical Understanding.
I am aware that this question could be seen as wide, but I am thinking of how we embodied as human beings. We are living beings, and beyond the experience of sensory experiences and the way this has possibilities and limitations for our knowledge, we are also individuals with bodies. The whole experience of having a body affects us on a personal and social level. I am referring to the subjective experience of how we see ourselves and how others see us on a social level. I am asking to what extent the whole experience of having a unique, individual body is of significance as a social and personal factor in affecting our experiences and understanding, as a basis for understanding everything.
Comments (48)
For example, check this dialogue:
[b]who are you? Javier
Yes but which Javier?
Excuse me?
Yes, which Javier in the other's people minds.
Which one is the real?
To whom are you exposing your real self?[/b]
The word "person" meant is Ancient Greek mask so this says all.
How we are perceived by others is really important. Yes we have only one unique body and it's characteristics but the reflection is not as basic as just physical.
Quoting Jack Cummins
You have completely nailed it. Affects a lot in many ways. But also depends in the open mind of the other person.
Will you hire a new employee who is tattooed all the head? I will not mind but probably other will do...
I guess I will sound negative but I think we live an era which we evaluate a lot the way of how other are exposing theirselves
Megan Fox: Known for her beauty. Her identity is physical and even if she doesn't identify herself with her body, other people do and I'm sure the constant focus on her exceptional physical attributes rubs off on her and, I'm only guessing here, sooner or later she might begin to think of herself as her body.
David Chalmers: Recognized for the formulation of the hard problem of consciousness, Chalmer's is an intellectual figure and again people identify him for his mental prowess and not his physical attributes which are quite average by my standards.
To cut to the chase, people seem to excel, either through effort or by the vagaries of fortune, either physically or mentally - think chess and athletics - and their identities are fixed according to what they excel at.
Too, it's worth mentioning that men, some men at least, seem to be on some kind of knightly quest for beauty with brains and women, some of them, have been documented to be in search of brawn with brains. :joke:
"Who we are" is largely socially formed, and growing up as a disabled person may warp one's self image, and this warping ramifies in various ways for the individual: a sense of inferiority undermining social confidence; decreasing one's sense of personal efficacy (ability to accomplish goals); loss of at least some self-worth; and so on.
None of this is news; but insufficient attention has been paid to how we are embodied. In 1978 theologian James Nelson published Embodiment: An Approach to Sexuality and Christian Theology. I found it very useful in addressing my own issues.
The thing is, our bodies are the lens through which we experience the world, including the social world of other bodies. We can successfully counter distortions in this lens, but not without help--help which is not always available.
Your discussion of two people is interesting, but it does raise the question of how much beauty is equated with the female and male with intellect. I think that this is changing with so many women being seen as of intellectual ability and so the whole area of glamour of popstars is collapsing the balance of the gender divide.
However, we are still stuck in bodies, for better or worse. I do think that self esteem is important and this relates to how we see ourselves fitting in with the whole spectrum of ugliness and beauty. Stereotypes can be limiting, and I do think that the whole construction of self worth is related to this, in ideals of self. Perhaps Narcissus is exploding and imploding in our own personal mirrors of identity construction.
I believe that this is part body and part mind. We may be struggling with our appearances, but also, in our ethical ideals. However, I do think that our sense of low worth can impinge on our perceptions of life and everything. On the other hand, this can give rise to creative possibilities.
The body is our experience and understanding. It is our mind, our consciousness, our soul. It is the self, the identity, the free will. Much of what philosophers speak about is the body, whether they acknowledge it or not.
The whole way in which you say about what philosophers speaking about, including self and consciousness, as arising from the the body is why I am raising the whole topic of having a physical body, and what this means in terms of experience.
I don't regret being gay; I do regret having poor vision. Perhaps in a cosmopolitan urban setting, these would have been less significant; maybe even insignificant. As it was, these were problematic until I finished college and set myself up in an large-urban setting.
Here's a specific example: Difficulty in reading texts which are too small to see easily interferes with learning. Too much attention is required to acquire the shapes of the text, not enough to absorb content. I have always been an enthusiastic reader, but would have read more and better if tablets with a few million downloadable books had been available in the 1950's and 60s. Technology really has made a difference to visually impaired people. (Yes, there were clunky work arounds back then, but this was the rural midwest, remember.)
Not seeing, not being able to drive, not being able to participate in sports (what ball? I don't see any ball), mediocre school performance, social exclusion, and so forth had a decidedly negative affect on my sense of personal efficacy--my sense of capacity to accomplish goals, and my self-esteem.
I think the sorts of experiences I had contributed to a more pessimistic philosophical approach to life, and a lower estimate of what is possible for me. Sure, over time I compensated, but successful compensation took a long time.
I think that you make some very important points in considering the whole way in which the body can be seen as problematic. This involves the perspective of the disabled, intersex and gender dysphoric people, but also, many others who feel limited by their bodies, including those who simply feel ugly. Even those who feel beautiful may see this as a limitation on the way they perceive reality.
Yes, but I was trying to go further than that and say experience, self and consciousness are the body. I wouldn’t say they arise from it, like a plant would from soil. I don’t think emergentism is accurate on the simple basis that absolutely nothing of the sort emerges from the body. That’s why I think we need a philosophy of the body.
I have just seen your second post, which I think that you may have written as I was writing this one. I do agree with your perspective of disadvantage. I have a number of areas, including some eyesight problems, which do even have some effect on my reading on this site.
While I do believe that it can be that the limitations of our bodies, and our perceptions of these, can be limiting, I do believe that they can be a starting point for a far deeper quest for further critical evaluation.
I definitely agree that the body comes with a whole load of limitations and I do wish for a whole philosophy of the body to be created. Perhaps this is the most essential area for philosophical exploration as it is the one we face daily and individually.
I think that you are correct to identify the idea of masks, as most of us function on the level of personas. Socially, we may put ourselves in grave danger if we did otherwise. However, on a personal level, we know ourselves so much more intimately. I think that this level of knowing is important, and perhaps, in our most intimate relationships this can be explored further.
I have looked at your link on DH Lawrence , and thank you for providing this. I do think that novelists and other creative writers can provide us with insights. These may become lost in philosophy, in the attempt to credit reason above all other ways of understanding human experiences.
Agree. This point is very important. How we are ourselves is very unknown to others. I guess it’s even a private right keep our personality secret to others. This means that only people who you really trust you will open your “heart” or “persona”. I think it is beautiful. But it also depends in the person. I guess there are people who wants to be more conservative/introvert.
You might also look into "embodied cognition", or if you want to give yourself a proper headache, try Julia Kristeva.
And/or https://www.artandeducation.net/classroom/video/66044/trinh-t-minh-ha-reassemblage
I think that the idea of intimacy and disclosure is becoming an increasingly unusual idea, as we move into the information age. We are becoming used to being able to access personal details as aspects of statistics. I do believe that something is being lost, and this is connected to the way we exist as persons. All the data collected does not add up to the meaning of personal identity. We can look at the facts, but that tells us nothing about what it means to be that person. Doctors may measure, weigh, check the body mass and do other physical tests, but none of this tells us anything about the human being, which reaches out to experience and explore meaning and ask philosophical questions.
Thanks for the link. I will explore further tomorrow, to postpone any real headaches, before bedtime. The philosophical headache could even become a topic.
Completely! But this is why we are so unique as humans. There are some subjects or criteria that the doctors can’t describe at all. I guess it is better this situation. Sometimes we need to go further in physics or body. It is important trying to understand how our soul or mind work. It is one of the most dilemmas in society. What do we want? How we can pursue happiness?
As you perfectly has said, something is lost. I guess it is the lost of finding happiness. Look how human can go to Mars (true! It is a good goal) but we do not know how to be happy because it is so complex.
I've learned from Schopenhauer that each body consists in immediate subjective apprehesion of the "thing-in-itself", or the real, which he conceives of as "the will" – that is, embodiment experiences, is affected by, the world from the inside-out immersively prior to "grasping it" from the outside-in partially, approximately. Nietzsche later conceives of "bodies as perspectives" from and by which experiences are interpreted (or aesthetically stylized). Almost a century later Maurice Merleau-Ponty phenomenologizes the body as "flesh of the world" (rather than merely "in-the-world" (pace Heidegger)). And during my student days, George Lakoff et al conceived of bodies as template-generators (my term, not his) of the metaphors used to structure everyday and theoretical discourses: embodied cognition.
Other 'philosophical conceptions of the body' which intrigue me I've gleaned from the works of
Simone de Beauvoir (gendered body-as-object for male subjects)
Emmanuel Levinas (face-to-face with the other)
Franz Fanon (masking (the face of) others)
Pierre Bourdieu (socially inscribed habitus (à la Witty's forms-of-life))
Michel Foucault (strategic disciplining of docile bodies)
Nel Noddings (caring bodies rather than just agents)
Philippa Foot (functional defects of a species disclose what's good for bodies belonging to that species)
Bell Hooks (racializing bodies via aesthetics, media & fashion)
and others I can't recall at the moment – all of which seem anticipated to varying degrees, mostly implicitly, by Schopenhauer's 'metaphysics of body-subjects'. (Could be my Spinozist-bias showing re: conatus of mindbody modes (EII & III)).
180 Proof is a hard act to follow and he provides a good roadmap of approaches. I would add media driven images of beauty and attractiveness as a continual influence, a kind of acid rain of images that fall into all our lives. I am interested in how people's self image often translate into whether they consider themselves to be good or not, or worthy or not. It's almost as if perceptions of attractiveness serves to build a narrative about what is or is not possible.
It appears that you have done a lot in this area, so thank you for pointing me in the direction of important writers on this topic. I am aware, to some extent, of Shopenhauer and Nietzsche's perspective but I will try to read these in a bit more detail. I have a copy of Simone de Beauvoir's 'The Second Sex', so I can read some of it.
It seems to me that part of the question is connected with bodies in relation to others. You mentioned about face to face communication and this involves a direct impact of awareness of the body in communication. The sense of sameness or otherness arises in connection with awareness of gender, race, age and other aspects of the body which are apparent through appearances.
Definitely, the whole area of phenomenology comes into play because one's physiology affects perception and consciousness. @Bitter Crank referred to the whole way in which eyesight difficulties play. Personally, I am a bit of an insomniac and this affects me in the day, because it often means that I my brain feels tired to cloudy which has an impact on my thinking. Also, when I am lying in bed unable to sleep, I am aware of how I go into overdrive of thinking, and sometimes in a negative way. Here, there is probably some kind of feedback loop between physiology and thought processes. Also, mindfulness comes into the whole picture because we are able to observe our own physical sensations, emotions and thoughts.
Levinas' "face-to-face" is more about ethical encounters (i.e. responding – subjecting oneself – to the vulnerability or suffering of "the other") and how another's agony-anguish becomes mine via attention to another's face ... or something like that. Definitely not mere "communication". A mode of contact, or sympathy, that can be embodied. A phenomenological ethics of bodily vulnerability-availability to the demands of the other (stranger, foreigner, enemy (alien)) body. Levinas is quite deep and insightful.
The body was of central concern to me in the 1980s for mostly reasons of "race" (being a large, athletic, black male moving warily through a number of exclusive, non-black spaces) as well as an instinctive rejection of platonism's/idealism's (& christianity's) 'disembodied gaze'. By the '90s I'd broadened my concern to include (human/social) ecology, that is, focusing on bodies entangled ecologically, which had the impact of grounding ethics for me in a vibrant, pluralistic, naturalism. For decades since, Spinoza's 'philosophy of immanence' (Deleuze) still makes reflectively-being-a-body-with-other-bodies indispensable for my agency (i.e. well-being).
I just read your links and found the one about Julia Kristeva"s ideas on horror very interesting because I could relate to that based on my experience of working in nursing care. I have worked in mental health but while training in nursing I did placements in a general nursing and in some settings involving physical health problems. I found these extremely difficult and I think that this was probably due to coping with the gore and horror. I can cope with these in fiction but being expected to see them in reality are two separate matters.
I did a placement in a ward of deep wound surgery and I struggled to get up and face going each day. I have seen a fair amount in psychiatric care as well, including a lot of the physical wounds of self harm. Surprisingly, I never actually saw a corpse, and I am thankful for at the present time I have not. However, a few settings I have been in there has been a whole sense that death which seemed to pervade the whole atmosphere.
The mention of the whole boundary of self and other developing in childhood is one that I find fascinating. The idea of narcissism is a whole complex one, and one which is discussed within the psychoanalytic literature on personality disorders. One idea is the whole idea 'thick and thin skin narcissism' in which the person might have little concern for others perception of him or her in some respects, but in certain respects have heightened sensitivity and capacity to become offended or wounded so easily. The whole issue of sensitivity is, of course, one that affects all of us in ways and it is this is so relevant to the topic because we can become wounded by others to the extent of it affecting self esteem and self image.
The whole way in which images in the media affect us is a fascinating one.The whole way we perceive ourselves as ugly or attractive does affect us so deeply. It is becoming an increasing area for men too, not just women. One associated aspect is the one of weight, especially in the development of eating disorders.
Now put all that in brackets or scare quotes and append " says the white intellectual. And so (the other link) a film in which you (or I, or anyone) are mentioned as the viewer who cannot look at the body without demanding to know the meaning of every movement conceived as necessarily gestural, necessarily significant of something else, and never complete in itself. It reminds me of the way one cannot look at a work of art without the aid of an adequate blurb of interpretation already provided.
Thanks for clarifying Levinas's idea of face to face. It sounds interesting, the whole relationship with vulnerability, and the enemy.
The whole experience of having a particular body in daily life is one which is interesting, especially your own reflection of the experience of being a black, large and athletic. It is so different from my own as I am rather short, white and not the slightest bit athletic. People push their way past me in queues and I often have to ask people to reach items for me on the top shelves in shops. I do think that the whole experience of our size does affect our identity.
When I was working, I was aware of the way in which race affects interaction. Most of the staff I have was working with in mental health care care were black. I am also aware of the way that you are not religious and I can imagine that must affect you because I had the experience of many black Christians preaching their Christian beliefs to me, rather forcefully sometimes. Of course, I am sure that there are many black people who are not religious at all, but I am sure that you meet a lot of extremely religious individuals from your own culture.
I like the idea of 'bodies entwined ecologically', because it does seem grounding.
I do believe that our whole experience of the body affects the whole question of whether we are happy or not. The way we are perceived, as well as our health affects our quality of life, and I think that they are probably bound up together, as evident in depression. But, of course, it is complex because in some cases it goes in the opposite direction and people can go into manic flight, including feelings of elation, when facing negative experiences. This just shows how complicated mind and body are.
So, this showed some relationship between height and 'success'. I think the popular thinking is that height and success are strongly correlated. I'm 5'10" -- 178 cm tall, close to the average American male height of 175.4 centimeters). That's about 5 feet 9 inches. Obviously there are numerous other factors contributing to "success": weight, intellect, social background, race, sex, geographical location, personality factors, and so on. One reason for the popular thinking on height may be the relative success of tall males in school athletics. Short, light-weight boys are usually not going to be stars of the team. Even if lighter weight shorter males are excellent athletes in individual sports, those usually don't get the acclaim given to team sports.
Tall athletically successful males leave school with a certain amount of social capital (personal confidence, self-esteem, status...). What gave them social capital in school may be entirely irrelevant in corporate work settings, so performance has to be exhibited for the former stars to get ahead in their jobs. Never-the-less, self-confidence and self-esteem help.
Everyone knows tall men who did not succeed. The upshot: height helps but is not deterministic.
I think that could explain why I have poor self esteem in groups. I am only about 5 ft. When I was 18 people used to often think I was about 12 or 13. I am also very poorly coordinated and atrocious at sport, although I am not interested in sports, even watching them. Perhaps that is why I became so interested in philosophy, art and literature. It is interesting to think about how the way we look affects the paths we follow in life.
Of course, we do have choices about how we present ourselves, especially clothes, and one book which I have read is Erving Goffman's, ' The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life,' and that looks at the whole social management of personal identity. I also read quite a lot on the sociology of deviance, which looks at the way the way the construction of deviant identities are created. Howard Becker's book, 'Outsiders' looks at the whole process of labelling and how people are viewed as deviant, and thereby, become deviants.
It really is a damn shame that this book wasn't taught in kindergarten. So many things would have been clear so much earlier.
I executed my stage presentation worse than many others did/do; preferred time back stage more than front stage; and sort of managed my presentation of self in everyday life. I just didn't realize that I was doing it, or that it could be done 'better', more congruously. I was, in a word, oblivious a good share of the time.
At the end of a voluntary public service stint Boston in 1970, I decided to grow a beard. When it was grown out, I realized that was the sort of anti-war demonstrator, hippyish, somewhat radical 'look' I had been looking for, and have kept it ever since, What was once curly brown is now white, but it still works. I generally have preferred working class clothes over 'professional dress' even though I was a professional (in education). Vestis virum reddit! Clothes make the man, they say,
Among the anti-war demonstrators, hippies, and several variety of radicals, there was a firm rejection of one kind of self-presentation (the corporate look) and a firm embrace of the counter-culture look. most of the counter cultural radicals eventually dumped the counter-cultural look and went back to the conventions of ordinary work life. The genuine long-term radicals I have known avoid counter-cultural appearance. It's all very confusing.
Back in the medieval period there were 'sumptuary laws' that specified what various classes of people could and could not wear--could not use in their self-presentation. For instance, fur and silk were forbidden to most people -- those being the preserve of the top class. Nicer colors were not to be found in peasants' clothing. It was a matter of considerable irritation when the shop keepers got their hands on a bit of silk or bright cotton and wore it in public. Disgusting!
At any rate, I have generally cultivated a deviant look -- just deviant enough to signal that I was busy marching to the beat of my own drummer. But in my old age, that's pretty much over. I'm not marching any more, and the world is too cluttered to know what is dominant and what is deviant (which is annoying).
To some extent we are stuck with our bodies and their changing nature. We can clothe them and modify them to some extent. They can enable us to achieve a certain amount of identity and style.Personally, I am rather attracted to punk, but in the original shabby sense of fashion rather than designer punk. But I do believe in a way, our bodies give us so much limitation in expressing who we are and how we would like to be perceived, sexually and artistically.
Our intellectual development is preceded by, and flows from our physical bodies and our interactions with the physical world. Our egotistical brains want to claim credit for everything, but nature made the first design decisions that determined much of who we are, who we became. Yes, of course we adapt, resist, strive, and so forth on our way to maturity, but it's quite possible that how much we adapt, resist, and strive is biologically determined.
I would never counsel someone to live passively, taking whatever comes as fated to happen. On the other hand, I would never counsel someone that they can be whatever they want to be. There is a critical role for acceptance balanced with striving. We should strive to achieve (provided that what we want to achieve is worth having), but we should also accept who we are.
I can look back over my life now and accept that I made some really stupid, cockeyed decisions--not just when I was younger, but more recently too. It's way too late to start over (75 is not the ideal age to start a new career). But what one can do post-retirement is pursue avenues not previously investigated.
I have had a long career where the physical and the intellectual were intertwined with each other. I realize now, despite that extensive tutorial, I believed all along that the intellectual element was free from the constraints of the other.
The desire to have some things conclusively demonstrated has a down side.
What you are saying is interesting. I am wondering how you see the physical and intellectual intertwined? What role does body play, and where does mind and thought come into this, especially the wish to have certain things demonstrated?
It is hard to know to what extent we are determined and how much of a role we have in determining our lives. It seems to me that some people get a better chance than others, because they experience more advantages physically and socially.
Quite true.
It is quite possible to think that we have an extremely large role in making ourselves who we are because our physical selves form "in the background", shaded by our very noisy foreground brains--chattering away as they do. Of course, the brain is body too, and even if it's content is open ended (whatever got stuffed into our heads by unauthorized and authorized agents) its shape is controlled by genes.
It's quite possible that many behavior traits are inherited (or at least expressed biologically): thrift vs. gambling; caution vs risk; big-picture vs detail orientation; gay vs. straight; good way finding skills vs. lost without a map; language acquisition vs. language difficulty, mathematical skill vs. innumeracy; good spatial relationships vs. none; and so on.
Working in reverse, I think there is a desire to have things proved through bitter experience. Thomas needs to touch the wound. Seeing that connection makes me less inclined to make a general observation about it.
It seems to me that I have had the best understanding of other people when the boundary has been established by them.
And that is a lot like our own bodies trying to interest us in something we rather would ignore.
Noli me tangere. :flower:
Or so the gospel of John says (but not the other three canonical ones). I've read in a book on christian gnostics -- could dig the source if anyone is interested -- that some of them did not believe in the resurrection of Christ in the flesh. They thought it was Jesus appearing to his disciples as a sort of supernatural deity speaking from heavens. A ghost, in other words. This gnostic interpretation of the resurrection as visions of a ghost is consistent with the 'noli me tangere'.
According to the theory, St Thomas was connected to (had evangelized) the gnostics (as evidenced by the gospel of Thomas). The authors of John's gospel would have added the story about Thomas doubting that Jesus had come back in the flesh, touching the wounds himself, and then believing, as a rhetorical weapon against them heretical gnostics.
I think that many, including Jung, have interpreted the resurrection in this way, although most people who adhere to mainstream Christianity believe firmly that the physical body of Jesus was resurrected. Related to this, is the whole idea of the eucharist as the body of Christ in communion. For some Christians, this is seen as symbolic but I know that in Catholicism it is seen as literal, as the mystery of transubstantiation. In other words, when taking the bread and wine, it is believed that one is really eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ.
You speak of behaviour traits as being inherited, and one idea which I came across in biology is that generally it has been maintained that only 2 strands of DNA are active and the rest is junk DNA, but now it is thought that this 'junk' may contain potential for understanding psychological characteristics. I do think that it is mainly speculation by some biologists, but if it shown to be true through evidence it would have profound implications for the biological basis of behavioural characteristics.
I take my guidance on DNA-influencing-behavior from other animals. Dogs, for instance, exhibit a lot of similar behaviors: gaze following (dogs are unique in this ability), retrieving, assistance seeking, playfulness, and so on. Dogs have been bred to herd. True, useful work-dogs have to be trained, but some behaviors are bred in the bone. You won't teach a retriever how to herd.
Children exhibit behavioral differences early on. Of course, parents also influence babies from the start, but still. Some babies seem to be more inquisitive, more reserved, or risk-taking than others. Then there are the differences among children in large families. There are major differences among children; the easiest explanation is the scrambling of genes. Fraternal twins are as unlike each other as children born years apart.
The Russians did an interesting experiment on the silver fox. http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160912-a-soviet-scientist-created-the-only-tame-foxes-in-the-world The selectively bred animals that showed less aggressiveness toward humans. Within a surprisingly small number of years they had produced a silver fox that a) no longer had nice fox fur, b) held its tail more erectly than ordinary silver foxes, c) had less erect ears, d) were readily friendly, and e) cortisol levels had decreased significantly.
It took quite a few generations, but it revealed that there were genes controlling silver fox behavior.
There is no reason to think that Homo sapiens operate differently, when it comes to genetics. We behave the way we are bred to behave. (And that may well be a supremely depressing fact.)