The Inside-Out Binding Problem

Abstract

In Gareth Evans’s terms, the fundamental ground of difference that individuates our bodies is the very same fundamental ground of difference that individuates any other concrete object: namely, its position in space and time. An intuition-friendly way of thinking of this is as a division between ways of perceiving our bodies “from the inside” and “from the outside.” Even heavily edited to deal with the glitches, a purely spatial criterion seems unpromising: given that our bodies are by and large topological donut-shaped figures, any way of drawing the boundaries between inside and outside is bound to seem a little arbitrary. Personal-level recognition of identity of body(-part) perceived both interoceptively and exteroceptively is made possible by subpersonal binding of cues from both forms of perception grounded on recognised co-location at a time of body(-part) perceived both ways at once.