Do I Get to Choose My Body?

Written by Johanes Narasetu

Cover image Study by Bung Carol

Justifying the notion that we are somewhat “owned” by our physical body and not vice versa can lead us to the fundamental question with regard to our relation with our physical body. If my body precedes my consciousness about it, that me being inside it is some sort of ‘given state’ since I cannot remember my pre-body state by any stretch of imagination, another fundamental aspect related to my body as existential fact/facticity is related to fundamental choice. The question is simple: do I get to choose my body?

I would tackle this question by pointing out that the matter of ‘choosing my body’ can be seen as possible to do to some extent and impossible past a certain context. As Merleau-Ponty points out, the fundamental difference between ‘my body’ and ‘a body’ lies in the fact that I inhabit my body so that it is tied to my facticity (Merleau-Ponty 1945). On the contrary, ‘a body’, with regard to me as a subject, is by no means a part of, or even attached to my very existence.

In this regard, other people’s bodies bear objective values to the extent that their existence is not tied to mine. Apart from my body, the rest of corporeal entities surrounds me without being a part of my facticity. Their relation to me is dependent on a situation or context which will eventually bear certain values or meanings to me. Simply put, we can easily neglect other corporeal form except mine since it is to my body that my worldly existence (including presence and everything whereof entails) is undisputedly tied to.

Two inferential questions are worth mentioning from the matter of choosing my body: 1) what makes me think that I can choose my body? 2) How far can my choice over my own body go?

1. What makes me think that I can choose my body?

If we intend to get to the fundamental problem of personal choice over one’s own body, I suggest that we step further into the assumption behind the question. This is why thinking about the possibility of choosing my body implies thinking of the reason why choosing a body is possible in the first place.

So what makes me think that I can choose my body? The answer for that is the assumption that choosing my body is possible. Whether this assumption is justified or not will be discussed in the sub-section right after this one. For now, let us focus on the significance of assuming the possibility of choosing my own body, namely, that physical bodies are malleable.

This ground notion is not unthinkable by any means, fictionally or factually. In contemporary literatures, corporeal malleability is not a novel product of human imagination, moreover if we turn our heads to science-fiction genre. Cyberpunk, a sub-genre of science-fiction which talks about dystopian future where advanced technologies – corporeal and neural modifications included – are commonly used and utilised down to marginal class of the society is a perfect example of imagining the malleability of human bodies (Cave, Dihal, et Dillon 2020). For those who are more to-date with video games, a new title called Cyberpunk 2077 has just been released in 2020 by CD Project Red which builds a narrative inside the same dystopian future. It can be said at least that it is not unimaginable to think of human bodies as malleable objects, i.e. as objects of personal choice.

Looking at sci-fi literature, games, and movies is useful to point out that at least corporeal malleability is possible in our imagination. This is by no means a satirical position. In fact, some scientific breakthrough throughout the history of mankind started from mere imaginations. This is why in the context of imagining the malleability of human bodies, it is important to put some recent updates of scientific endeavour.

While medicinal science nowadays has greatly advanced to cellular level, my favourite example is the application of AI-driven neuroprostheses. Looking back at the simplicity of prosthetic limbs centuries ago, it is truly admirable seeing what medicinal science has achieved nowadays by combining robotics and artificial intelligence. From Michigan University, Cindy Chestek and Paul Cederna are leading a research to develop prosthetic limbs that connect directly to human nervous system to enable amputees a certain degree of intuitive control of their robotic hand. This myoelectric prostheses rely on electromyographic signals from the amputee’s remaining muscles recorded by electrodes placed on the skin of their arm (Vu et al. 2020). To date, this innovation is the most advanced application of the idea about neuroprostheses hypothesised by doctors and neuroscientists (Lebedev et Nicolelis 2011).

In the subject of choosing a body, I will argue that the application of myoelectric prostheses is much stronger and more appealing than the more “organic” ones such as hormonal therapy and even sex-reassignment surgery. The reason for this argument is simple: neuroprostheses requires multiple scientific disciplines working together including, but not primarily, robotics and engineering. In this regard, not only the engaged scientists approach human bodies as a set of technical operations, but they literally synchronise actual machines with human body. I believe that at this point, we are not so far off to describe human beings as living machines (apparatus viventem) in exchange of rational animals (animal rationale).

These two accounts on the malleability of human bodies from both science-fictions and science make up a strong argument that human bodies bear some object-like characteristics which are malleable to quite an advanced level. However, there is still no immediate rational consequence from modifying or manipulating human body to choosing to modify or manipulate my body. While the first one is unmistakeably related to imagined reality or actual facts, or even scientific truth, the later is related to either personal choice or ontological fact. For this reason, we need to measure the scope of ‘choosing my body’.

2. Rational limits of the notion ‘choosing my body’

The fact that physical bodies, particularly human bodies, are malleable down to the neural level does not confirm that I can choose my body for it is a completely separate matter. This simply means testing the limit of the notion ‘choosing my body’, or in other words, examining the act of choosing with my body as the object. My premise here is that when it comes to my body, my personal choice is limited by my facticity because my body is not just a body.

I will start with the later part of the premise. As mentioned in the beginning of this section, the distinction between a body and my body is often neglected or taken for granted. This is understandable given the empirical aspect shared by my body and every corporeal entity in the world so that its object status easily blurs its ontology. It is just after Phenomenologie de la perception that its existential significance is accentuated, notably when it was proven that I perceive the world via my body (Merleau-Ponty 1945; 1971).

If ‘my body’ is indeed different from ‘a body’ or any ‘physical forms’ at all, this notion is tenable insofar as we refer to all of them as objects. Consequently, there is no need to even put any relative position to it as indicated by the possessive pronouns ‘my’. I do not intend to step into language games here since the problem at hand is by no means the accuracy of linguistic use, but facts.[1]

How can relative positions towards a body be facts? To test this, I will pose another question to counter it: can I physically move away from my body as from other bodies? It is evident that we just cannot do that. Unlike other people’s bodies, mine is attached to me as I exist in the world. Not only ‘my body’ is a fact in the sense of worldly events, but also it is an ontological fact, i.e. a fact related to my being-in-the-world.

With that part of sentence explained, measuring the rational limit of my choice towards it can be more easily approached since we do not choose between a number of bodies for me to wear just like shopping for clothes. Instead, it is a choice after we are attached to the body, and even a choice in the framework named my body. Having my body as a framework of my choice also means that it is practically impossible to make a retroactive action, that is, to go back in time prior to the formation of my body and to consciously opt for the type of physical body I would like to have. Practically speaking, it is possible to choose what to do with my body since it is a technical matter. However, it is highly unlikely to call in the prior-to-the-body condition and choose to be in this or that body, and even more, to be in the world without a corporeal existence due to the depth of this matter which is ontological in nature. Even should it be made possible, like attempting to upload our consciousness to a virtual world, for example, we would still face a number of technical and philosophical questions (Cave, Dihal, et Dillon 2020) which is not the scope of this topic.

Therefore, it is rational – i.e. technically doable – to choose within the framework of my bodily existence, i.e. what to do with it, but it is irrational – i.e. technically undoable and fundamentally absurd – to choose which body can be my own.

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Next: Inhabiting My Body as Fundamental Fact

References

Cave, Stephen, Kanta Sarasvati Monique Dihal, et Sarah Dillon, éd. 2020. AI narratives: a history of imaginative thinking about intelligent machines. First edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lebedev, Mikhail A., et Miguel A. L. Nicolelis. 2011. « Toward a Whole-Body Neuroprosthetic ». Progress in Brain Research 194: 47‑60. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-53815-4.00018-2.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1945. Phénoménologie de la perception. Tel 4. Paris: Gallimard.

———. 1971. The Primacy of Perception: And Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics. Traduit par James M. Edie. 2. paperback print. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Univ. Press.

Popper, Karl R. 2008. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Repr. 2008 (twice). Routledge Classics. London: Routledge.

Vu, Philip P., Alex K. Vaskov, Zachary T. Irwin, Phillip T. Henning, Daniel R. Lueders, Ann T. Laidlaw, Alicia J. Davis, et al. 2020. « A Regenerative Peripheral Nerve Interface Allows Real-Time Control of an Artificial Hand in Upper Limb Amputees ». Science Translational Medicine 12 (533): eaay2857. https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.aay2857.

 

[1] More on this account see (Popper 2008).