The space of the body schema: putting the schema in movement

Abstract

This chapter contributes to conceptual debates about the body schema and body image by studying the body schema’s role in shaping our sense of lived space. Contra ‘body-in-brain’ or representational views of the body schema as a centralized controller, the chapter supports ‘body-in-world’ views by showing how the body schema is itself of space, founded and actualized in schematizing movements of a body in the world. This suggests that capacities for, and divergences between, a body schema versus a body image emerge when body-schematizing activity runs into resistances or demands from environmental supports, including other perceiving bodies and the social sphere, over various timescales, e.g., of evolution, development, skill, and habit acquisition, as well as cultural formations. The chapter draws on phenomenological and psychological results concerning our sense of space in cases of directly touching and moving with things, but also in cases where movements coupled with surroundings through light (via our eyes or technological devices) yield a sense of distal things. These are complemented by conceptual insights from recent evolutionary-comparative approaches to the philosophy of mind and body, which give a new perspective on just where movement control arises in bodies.