“The body I call ‘mine’ ”: A sense of bodily ownership in Descartes

Abstract

How does Descartes characterize the peculiar way in which each of us is aware of our bodies? I argue that Descartes recognizes a sense of bodily ownership, such that the body sensorily appears to be one's own in bodily awareness. This sensory appearance of ownership is ubiquitous, for Descartes, in that bodily awareness always confers a sense of ownership. This appearance is confused, in so far as bodily awareness simultaneously represents the subject as identical to, partially composed by, and united to her body, without distinguishing these relations. Finally, the appearance of ownership is grounded in multiple other ways in which the body sensorily appears: namely, in the fact that the body appears to be inescapable, modified by bodily sensations, and an object of special concern.

What Am I? Descartes’s Various Ways of Considering the Self

“…A few pages later, the meditator introduces another way of considering herself: as a totality, i.e., as if she were a world unto herself (M4, AT VII 61/CSM II 42 and AT IX 49; cf. Letter to Elisabeth, 15 September 1645, AT IV 293/CSMK III 266).14 My discussion of the meditator's reevaluation of the senses is indebted toSimmons (2014: 263).15 For more extensive discussion of Descartes on the experience of embodiment, seeBrown (2006Brown ( , 2007Brown ( , 2014,Kolesnik-Antoine (2009),Curley and Koivuniemi (2015),Simmons (2014, 2017), and Chamberlain (2019.…”

“… See Simmons (2014: 263-65).17 Again, seeChamberlain (2019).18 See also M3, AT VII 49/CSM II 33-34 and M6, AT VII 88/CSM II 61.19 This description of bodies comes fromGarber (1992).…”

The Feeling of Bodily Ownership

“…For more recent work seeO'Shaughnessy (1980;1989),Martin (1992;,Bermúdez (1998;2018c) andde Vignemont (2018).3 SeeMartin (1995),de Vignemont (2007),Tsakiris (2011),de Vignemont and Alsmith (2017), andBermúdez (2018c). For historical context, seeSimmons (2017),Chamberlain (2018a) andChamberlain (2018b).4 See Chadha (2017) for criticism of this inference.…”