Affective Bodily Awareness

This Element describes the principles governing bodily self-awareness that are shaped by the need to protect one's body for survival.

Frédérique de Vignemont (Author)

9781009209687, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 12 October 2023

78 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 0.5 cm, 0.13 kg

Most accounts of bodily self-awareness focus on its sensory and agentive dimensions, tracking the origins of our special relationship with our own body in the way we gain information about it and in the way we act with it. However, they often neglect a fundamental dimension of our subjective bodily life, namely, its affective dimension. This Element will discuss bodily self-awareness through the filter of its affective significance. It is organized around four core themes: (i) the relationship between bodily awareness and action in instrumental and protective contexts, (ii) the motivational role of pain and interoception, (iii) the sense of bodily ownership and its relation to the value of the body for survival, and (iv) bodily anchoring in peripersonal and egocentric awareness. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Introduction
1. The acting body
2. The affective body
3. When the body becomes mine
4. When the world is here
Outstanding questions
References.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of mind [HPM]