Body Image And Body Schema: A Study Of Embodied Cognition

In the 60s of last century, the study of Cognitive Science was mostly based on Computer Since, and in 80s, the study turned to be on the basis of Psychology and Biology. However, when time comes to 21th century, the importance of Neuroscience becomes more and more obvious. One of the results is, the broad argument about the role of embodiment for understanding cognition has been made in numerous ways, and also there is a growing consensus across a variety of disciplines within which this basic fact is inescapable. But if we let neuroscience go to the other end, the importance of our body in human experience and cognition will be only reduced into the processes of neurobiology. This is the approach that I try my best to avoid."Embodiment" becomes one of the hottest topics in the study of cognition, but the research of embodied cognition in China is mostly based on the analysis of Phenomenology and discusses the usefulness of embodiment as a theoretical concept. In some sense, this poses that Philosophy and Phenomenology run into their natural limitations when it comes up against non-philosophical and non-phenomenology processes. They cannot tell us exactly how embodiment works in human cognition and to what extent and in what way awareness of body enters into the content of conscious experience. In my view, in order to explore how body plays the important role in our cognition and action, we should not work exclusively from either the bottom-up or the up-bottom approach, because the approach of bottom-up which tries to discuss everything from the neural mechanisms is too simple and the approach of up-bottom which tries to explain everything from the state of cognition is too complicated for our study of embodied cognition.In my view, there is no one approach could provide a full picture of the setting that we intend to explore. We should resort to the philosophical ways that are informed by empirical studies. As a result, in this thesis, I try to borrow from already established insights and results provided by different empirical studies, such as Neuroscience, Physiology, Behavioral Science, Psychology, to explore the different functions of body image and body schema system and further our understanding of how embodiment play an prenoetic role in our action and cognition through them. This is a new as well as strategic danger to combine Philosophy and empirical studies together.On this aspect, I work my way through specific issues by exploring into some specific problems and examples—case studies, experiments or some pathological symptoms. Some people who suffer from Unilateral Neglect fail to perceive or attend to one side of their body in their body images, but their body schemas may remain intact or operational. Thus, they are still able to use the neglected or forgotten side of their body to do intentional bodily activities. The patient who suffers from Deafferentation misses body schema, however, with the help of intact body schema he is still able to make the balance of his body by vision and cognition. These two cases strongly prove that body image and body schema which are regarded as one thing in psychological and philosophical traditions are different concepts. Body image and body schema refer to two different but closely related systems. In embodied behavioral level the two systems interact and are highly coordinated. It is nonetheless useful and precisely distinct them in conceptual level, since they have different functions in our embodied consciousness and actions. Body image cannot be relegated to the mentalistic side. It is, as we first defined it, a system of spiritual construction, representation or beliefs pertaining to one's own body. It at least contains contents in three aspects: (1) our perceptual experience of our own bodies; (2) our emotional attitude toward our own bodies; and (3) our conceptual understanding of our bodies in general. But body schema is a sensory-motor system. By the adjustment of our bodily gestures and bodily activities, it integrates the meaningful part of the world into our experiences. However, we cannot simplify the functions of body schema into neurobiological processes, because the ways of our bodily activities not only cater for our intentions, but also support and constrain the need of our actions in the environment.A central tenet of empiricist philosophy is that experience, in the sense of relatively prolonged practice of the sense organs, educates perception. On this view, throughout most of the past century, the received doctrine had been that the body image and body schema were acquired phenomenon; built up in our perceptual experience of our own bodies. But this established scientific doctrine was directly challenged by the results of empirical studies. The facts that phantoms existing in the case of congenital absence of limb and invisible imitation do occur in newborns prove that body schema is innate, and it works non-consciously to allow the infant to control and coordinate his/her imitative movements. Body image may in fact develop its content over the course of childhood and be influenced a lot by the factors of social, education, custom, but its framework and basic elements has an innate status; and the intermodal translation is operative from the very beginning of human beings. From the experiments of neonate, we found that the new born baby has a proprioceptive awareness of his/her own body; and knows the differentiation between self and other and also has recognition that the other is the same sort as him/herself. It sounds incredible, but does become possible because of the existence of innate body schema, proprioception, intermodal system and mirror neuron.In order to give a whole and better picture of the importance of embodiment in human experience and cognition, my approach herein involves the interpretation of a large amount empirical data and studies. It is the work of body schema and body image that make the importance of embodiment possible. Thus, to some extent, the Aristotelian insight that the human soul is an expression of the human body has found significant verification in contemporary studies of cognition. Before we know it, the prenoetic function of our body is setting us on a course in which our human nature is expressed in intentional action and in interaction with others.