Bodily Ethics Series
Written by Johanes Narasetu
Cover Image Menunggu Hujan Reda (Waiting for The Rain to Pass) by Bung Carol
Following bodily possession and bodily choice is the third fundamental corporeal fact which is often equally taken for granted by us, human subjects, namely, inhabitation. Merleau-Ponty in his Phénoménologie is making an acute observation by pointing out that we have always been in a body to the extent that we do not think of it at all (Merleau-Ponty 1945).
However, being conscious about our corporeality, i.e. that we are in a body, does not seem to solve any existential or even ontological problem either. What is the importance of pointing out the explicit fact of bodily inhabitation? I will argue that by laying out corporeal inhabitation, philosophy or, more precisely, phenomenology, intends to criticise two-layered notions of bodily inhabitations, physically and virtually. Even though each layers bring about different practical case, both of them shared a similar attitude which potentially simplify the fact of corporeal inhabitation by treating our physical bodies as mere sockets. This intuition is wrong.
Critiques towards The Reduction of Corporeal Inhabitation in Physical Level
To state that corporeal inhabitation is a mere matter of physicality means a clear separation between my selfhood and the body in which I happen to be in. It is another way to say that the self – or true self for that matter – exists separately from the physical body inasmuch as it works as a socket for my selfhood.
The philosophical notion underlying this premise can actually be traced back to Cartesian view which treats the body as res extensa. Descartes’ position is important to mention here since while his notion can be interpreted not as mere duality between mind and body, his thought still emphasises on the primacy of the cogito.
Merleau-Ponty’s reading on Descartes’ res extensa will shift in the latter period of his works by incorporating the idea of the body as the extension of my selfhood into the totality of the self (Merleau-Ponty 1996). To put it briefly, it is possible to schematise the extensional trait of the body independently from the rest of exterior objects. Such approach is possible when physical body is not regarded as the extension of exterior objects which reach the self, but the other way around. The body is the extension of my selfhood which tries to reach out to the exterior world.
Notwithstanding this shift in his lecture on Descartes, Merleau-Ponty’s moderate attitude during his latter works stands as strongly as his opposition against Descartes in Phénoménologie. Cartesian emphasis on the separation between mind and body, referred as res cogitans for the mind and res extensa for the body, is seen as insinuating entirely separate entities with the sole adherence of the self to only the res cogitans. The problem with this complete separation is it cannot explain perception as human phenomenon in the world. Perception, Merleau-Ponty argues, is a form of quasi mental reach towards the world not as mere heaps of physical objects, but as a set of reality where each objects is always grasped in an articulation from a certain background (Merleau-Ponty 1945). In contrast, the clear mind-body separation with the self anchored mainly to the mind does not give room to conceptualise the quasi abstract phenomenon such as perception. How legit is this criticism then?
We need to see what Descartes states in his Meditation that there is a strict difference, and hence separation, between the mind and the body according to each one’s mode of being. This commonly known Cartesian dualism is founded on a notion that while we can never be sure that we have a body – or whether or not our body is effectively real – the only thing that we can be sure of is the fact that we are doubting (Descartes 2008; 2006). This method of thinking was originally intended to give firm foundation for scientific thinking in approaching the world. However, it later became well-known in philosophy as a dualistic notion. Mind and body are two separate entities, and the most certain domain of selfhood between the two is the mind, thus cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am).
The classic reading for Cartesian cogito tends to separate the mind from the body and split human action into the action purely performed by the mind – i.e. thinking – and the one purely done by the body – i.e. physical activities. However, in 1945, Phénoménologie discovered that there are actions by the combination of both without belonging completely to either of them; in Waelhens’ words, an ambiguous mode of being (De Waelhens 1951). The so-called action is perception. Prior to reflection or thinking, we need to be in contact with the specific object which will later be examined by cogito. However, this perception also necessitates me to be physically in the world, i.e. to be in a body.
Critiques towards The Reduction of Corporeal Inhabitation in Virtual Level
The ambiguous mode of being which happens in the boundaries of our corporeality and our consciousness in the world equally needs to be contested in virtual level. Today’s virtual technology can be said to present a proper challenge to the idea of bodily inhabitation since it seems to show how detachable I am – or more precisely, my mind – from my physical body. From the detachability of the mind, the intuition that physical body is a mere socket in which selfhood may come and go appears to be pretty tenable. In order to see the limit of this notion, virtual technology needs to be addressed before looking into its underlying philosophical premise.
Unlike the Renaissance, our 21st century era managed not only to lift our mind in the form of thinking, but our technology also manages to literally shift the ‘here’ from our body to somewhere else. Virtual technology is an ideal example here. Nowadays, virtual environment is not only limited to laboratories and research centres, but expanding to our daily lives from tracking devices, medicine technology, communication devices, and to video games.
Particularly with regards to virtual reality, this technology allows us to lively enter into an abstract world by inciting the possible sensation through algorithm and sensation devices which recreates a sort of “second world” of experience. It should be noted that ‘second’ here simply means another milieu of in-depth experience after the daily material world in which we live. The sum of VR devices allows us to “touch” and “handle” virtual objects as if they were tangible, allowing our five senses to interact with this world and its objects just as we do with our immediate tangible world (Terashima 2002). Also popularly known as augmented reality, VR technology is superimposing virtual information to the user via a head-mounted display, even though its form will be improved and compacted over time (Marsh, Gorayska, et Mey 1999). Briefly speaking, the idea is to recreate our sensory experience by elevating it into the virtual world.
With the ever-growing development of VR devices, its case use can also apply to a broader context, from medicine, architecture, to communication devices. It is true that the technology is and will always strive to improve the quality of the augmented reality through software processing and camera inputs (Mistrík 2014; Craig, Sherman, et Will 2009), but we are exponentially progressing towards a more reliable augmented reality, and therefore more alive virtual experience.
It is worth noting that this concept does not appear just recently. The basic idea of the augmented reality can actually be traced back to older inventions such as telephones, cars, ships, and planes. Communication and transportation devices are not just tools to make life easier. They are most likely rooted on human desire to conquer time and space, hence, the tangible world. The basic notion here is that reality can be manipulated to a pretty far extent and our virtual technology indicates that the manipulation of our sensory experience will most likely develop at an exponential rate towards the future. In this regard, our physical – and hence spatial-temporal – body seems to be potentially treated as equally limiting as the tangible world.
Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal inhabitation will treat this notion by going into the detail of the tangible world. If the status of our body as res extensa was parallel to the object-like status of the spatial world, the notion that drives the VR technology forward would effectively oppose the mine-ship of my body. However, the Phénoménologie’s proposal on the duality of my body, both as an object as well as mine simply counters this intuition without denying what VR technology offers. The lived reality is indeed manipulable and can certainly be augmented through devices and software which affect the orientation of our five senses. However, the augmentation of tangible reality following the technology does not erase the corporeal inhabitation prior to our being-in-the-world. Simply put, while our mind is elevated to the augmented reality, we are still “plugged in” to our physical body. We need to be first and foremost alive in our body and remain so in order to elevate our five senses towards the virtual milieu.
What Corporeal Inhabitation as Bodily Fact Suggests about Our Corporeal Existence
I will put some recaps in this part. Bodily inhabitation suggested by Merleau-Ponty is highly relevant when put vis-à-vis two tendencies which equally regard our body as a socket for our selfhood. Faced with readings on Cartesian cogito which sees the body as res extensa, corporeal inhabitation introduces an in-between status of our body as an ambiguous province which bridges my selfhood with the world and its objects. On the other hand, when the development towards more liveable virtual reality suggests that sensible world is susceptible to be altered, corporeal inhabitation persists by showing that it exists prior to the alteration of sensed reality and is factually there during the alteration. Briefly speaking, corporeal inhabitation is an ambiguous, quasi object part of my selfhood which is a prerequisite of my lived experience, either in the tangible world or in the virtual one.
References
Craig, Alan B., William R. Sherman, et Jeffrey D. Will. 2009. Developing virtual reality applications: foundations of effective design. Burlington, MA : Oxford: Morgan Kaufmann ; Elsevier Science [distributor].
De Waelhens, Alphonse. 1951. Une Philosophie de l’ambiguïté. L’existentialisme de Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Louvain, Belgique: Publications Universitaires de Louvain.
Descartes, René. 2006. A Discourse on the Method of Correctly Conducting One’s Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences. Traduit par Ian Maclean. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
———. 2008. Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies. Traduit par Michael Moriarty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marsh, Jonathon P., Barbara Gorayska, et Jacob L. Mey, éd. 1999. Humane interfaces: questions of method and practice in cognitive technology. 1st ed. Human factors in information technology 13. Amsterdam ; New York: Elsevier.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1945. Phénoménologie de la perception. Tel 4. Paris: Gallimard.
———. 1996. Notes des cours au Collège de France: 1958 – 1959 et 1960 – 1961. Bibliothèque de philosophie. Paris: Gallimard.
Mistrík, Ivan, éd. 2014. Relating system quality and software architecture. Amsterdam ; Boston: Elsevier, Morgan Kaufmann is an imprint of Elsevier.
Terashima, Nobuyoshi. 2002. Intelligent Communication Systems. San Diego: Academic Press.
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