心理的身体と身体知 : 身体図式を再考する

抄録

Certain kinds of neurological disorder which affect corporeal awareness and proprioception seem to indicate that one's body has a psychological dimension besides the material dimension. In this paper, examining cases of phantom limb and asomatognosia, we confirm that the body consists of two dimensions, the material and the psychological. From this viewpoint it is possible to say that the ordinary state of the body is an overlap of these two dimensions. Secondly, we seek to clarify the contents of embodied knowledge by re-examining the notion of body schema. Body schema is a term that appeared in neurology, which has been used to explain the subconscious schematic process underlying proprioception and corporeal awareness. The philosophy of Merleau-Ponty developed and extended the notion of body schema and successfully described the mechanism of one's habitual actions. Here we see the budding discussion on embodied knowledge. The contents of embodied knowledge are (1) subconsciously recognizing the spatial relation between one's body and surroundings, (2) expanding corporeal awareness to the end of instruments through repeated practice.