I hereby declare that the subject of this thesis is the result of research conducted by me in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India under the supervision of Dr. In accordance with the common practice of reporting observations, due acknowledgments have been given where the work described is based on the results of other studies. It is hereby certified that the work contained in the thesis entitled "THE PROBLEM OF THE EMBODIED PERSON" by Akoijam Thoibisana, a student of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, has been carried out under my supervision , and that this work has not been handed in elsewhere for an exam.
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, GUWAHATI
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Introduction
This craze for abstractness has led scientists and theorists to question the idea of the body as a given physical entity. Foucault was particularly interested in the construction of the micropolitics of body regulation and the macropolitics of population control. This chapter also reasserts the relevance of the concept of embodiment in the contemporary crisis of various ethical dimensions.
Conclusion
In the introduction to 'Phenomenologie de la perception', published in 1945, Merleau-Ponty describes the nature of phenomenology as a philosophy of essences (eidos) based on a consciousness rooted in the facts of existence, which makes it possible to see the essence of existence. as. It gives the very act of seeing our being-in-the-world, the phenomenality of the phenomenon of existence or openness to the world. At the same time, it makes it possible to see the world as the permanent horizon of our presence to things and to others; it grasps our point of view as the center around which things receive their meaning and orient themselves in relation to one another.
The embodied person as a living body (Leib) is metaphysically and conceptually basic in the sense that an individual's consciousness on the one hand and a person's physical being (Körper) on the other are nothing but dual aspects of an individual's living body.
The Body - A Brief Tour of Western Dualism
Disembodied Person
The essential component of the person is the self, which is only accidentally connected to the body. It is a thorough analysis of the 'reduplication thought experiment' that leads to the conclusion that personal identity is not relevant to survival. This denial of the existence of persons and their identity is not incoherent or absurd.
Palmer (1999) undertakes a critical examination of the seriously undermined notion of moral commitment that follows Parfit's theory of personal identity. But at bottom, both theories of personal identity are based on the inner eye of the person, which is the self behind the skin. According to the dualist, the self is the primary object of introspection because experiences are only modifications of the self.
Such a reactive attitude is primitive in the sense that it is not based on any belief about the inner constitution of the person. The importance of Strawsonian personal identity thus derives from the identity of the person as a rational and moral agent. Since he rejects a dualistic analysis of the concept of a person in terms of a body and consciousness, he is not likely to do so.
These and some similar questions are left open by Strawsons treatment of the concept of persons. However, Strawson's view of the person contributed to a wealth and abundance of ideas and images that bring to bear the question of personal identity. What is the metaphysical status of the quality of 'red', in relation to the idea of red, in the thing.
Mechanised Bodies or Embodied Persons?
What both the Vat Brain and the evil scientist versions entail is that conscious, world-oriented thinking can occur even in the null environment, even if there is no focused world at all. This disk containing all of a mind's recorded data could then be placed into a computer and 'played', in the sense that the computer's 'mind' would be identical to that of the person whose thoughts were recorded. The computer's responses would theoretically be the same as those of the person who originally possessed the mind, which has been duplicated”6.
According to the computer model of the mind, the brain is also a computer, a “physical symbol system.” With the advent of the digital computer in the 1950s, chess enthusiasts and computer engineers built, with increasing degrees of seriousness and success, chess machines8 and computer programs. 8 The Turk was a chess machine, an automaton from the end of the 18th century, which later turned out to be an illusory hoax.
From the design position, we predict behavior based on our knowledge of the intended function or purpose of the system or its physical attitudes when played against – it is much more fruitful to treat it as having beliefs and desires, that is, of the intentional attitude parts. Since then, it has been a mainstay of the debate about the possibility of what Searle called strong artificial intelligence. What if some of the contents of my thoughts are somehow transferred to the computer, that solves the problem.
This again leads to the thorny issue of 'intentionality' which will be discussed in detail in the later part of the thesis.
COMING
There is a revolution to grow and expand 'my body, my sensations, my physicality'. The human body is not a natural organism, but a prosthesis. We can also celebrate our existing bodies by modifying ourselves for a more revealing awareness of our body's inner workings and making our physical beings stronger and more beautiful. Therefore, there is no inherent rejection of the body and senses in the attempt to technologically change the body and add virtual experiences.
The emergence in 1993 of the first generation of personal digital assistants (PDAs) heralded an era of increasingly portable personal computing power and communication flexibility (more). 20 The transformation of the human body from a natural, biological organism to a superior, consciously designed carrier of personality. Analysis of the various waves and normal vectors of depolarization and repolarization provides important diagnostic information.
Despite a well-developed scientific understanding of much of the external world, we are only beginning to develop comprehensive and accurate models of our brain processes. Human history has been a history of the growth of our ability to define ourselves as individuals. As Dawkins argued in 'The Selfish Gene (1989)', as conscious beings we can understand and therefore allow the imperatives of our genes.
The cyborg body is seen as a step towards the fusion of the human body with machine.
Implications: Humanism at the Cross Road
Signs and symptoms of ill health are inserted in the disease name field. According to theorists such as Arthur and Marilouise Kroker (1997), the concept of the body is already outdated. According to this statement, there is a widespread belief that we are on the threshold of the "post-physical", "post-biological" or
As Fukuyama argues in his book Our Posthuman Future, the next iteration of the human species is a combination of man and machine. The body is the substrate for the Person, and thus innate to the subject of the law. The more difficult cases concern the disposal of parts of the body which do not threaten the continued existence of the subject.
Within this discourse, the human body and human life are presented as possessing an innate dignity that is threatened as soon as a part of the body is given an economic value. As the director of the successful protest group said, 'They came for sandalwood, now b. 'New circumscriptions' of genetic commonalities or human tissue forms threaten to extend the objectification and commodification of the body to both sexes.
In the realm of the ordinary, the body is me, the site of my experiences, the fulcrum of my movements, the source of my perspectives.
Phenomenology of the Embodied Person
A good example of this form of disembodiment is the image of the brain in the vessel (Dennett xxx; see Gallagher, 1995). Although the 20th postmodern century has succeeded in replacing the image of the brain in the vat with the image of a disembodied person, the disembodied person somehow re-emerges in a modified by a digital body in a digital space. It seems that many theories of technology will celebrate the final and total equalization of the virtual body.
In other words, it is possible to exist disembodied (the underlying assumption of many of the technology theories). Any distinction between 'I' and 'my body' would necessarily lead to the conclusion that I can also have a non-body. The omnipresence of the body, in terms of Merleau-Ponty, excludes any purely non-physical condition.
As long as one distinguishes between disembodiment and embodiment, even when the two are closely related and related, one is caught in the trap of body-mind duality. From a phenomenological perspective, cognition depends on experiences that are informed by the body through various perceptual and motor capacities that are supported (see Gallagher, 1995). It is a direct contact between the seer and the seen, both made of the same substance, that is, flesh.
Although not always conscious, my body is always present and involved in every action I undertake, even when I dream, invent or imagine things.
