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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Book | Chapter

182632

Proprioception and self-consciousness (2)

self-conscious knowledge and the rejection of self-presentation

Andy Hamilton

pp. 136-171

Abstract

This chapter has two principal aims. The first — in Sections 1 and 2, following the non-sensory treatment of proprioception in Chapter 4 — is to develop and defend a self-conscious knowledge account of bodily identity, in opposition to the almost universal position of materialism about bodily identity, which regards the body as fundamentally a material entity. In the previous chapter, a self-conscious knowledge account was outlined in connection with the alien-hand scenario. This account says that "my body" is the body of which — when conscious — I have self-conscious (proprioceptive) knowledge, and which I can move in a basic sense, that is, not by doing something else. The account is a development of the Lockean view that to experience a limb as mine — to feel it when it is touched, to be conscious of it as hot or cold and as having other "affections", to have sympathy and concern for it — is necessary and sufficient for it to be mine.

Publication details

Published in:

Hamilton Andy (2013) The self in question: memory, the body and self-consciousness. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 136-171

DOI: 10.1057/9781137290410_6

Full citation:

Hamilton Andy (2013) Proprioception and self-consciousness (2): self-conscious knowledge and the rejection of self-presentation, In: The self in question, Dordrecht, Springer, 136–171.