BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

236
THE BODY AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL
embodied mind is a basic element of his anti-skeptical strategy, even if he
does not stress that point himself. I shall say more on this in due course.
First, however, let us notice that it is far from obvious that the notion
of human embodiment can be used in a strategy to fight skepticism. On
the contrary, the notion itself seems to be vulnerable to skepticism. I have
argued that Kantian representationalism follows from a reflection
starting out from the idea that human existence is radically embodied. It
is possible to argue, however, that by following this reflection to the end,
the very notion of embodiment is undermined. If we accept that
everything that we represent as being outside us is some kind of
construction made on the basis of information present to our embodied
minds, then it seems to follow that what I call my body is such a
construction too. When I observe my arm, my legs, and other parts of my
body, then my body appears to me in space along with all the other
empirical objects of my empirical world. If these are representational
constructions, must not my body also be such a construction? If so, do I
have any privileged knowledge of it? Can I know that what I take to be
my body is really my body? Can I know that this body is where my mind
is? It may seem as if all these questions have to be answered negatively. If
so, then the very idea that the mind is embodied undermines itself, or so
it seems.
The problem is not a trivial one. When I observe my body from the
outside, for instance, if I look at one of my arms, then it has the same
epistemic status as other objects in my environment, and as such I have
no privileged epistemic access to it. However, the knowledge I have of
my body is not derived just from the knowledge I have from observing it
from the outside. I also know my body from the inside, and this
knowledge is immediate in a sense that my knowledge derived from
external observation is not. 21
Now, what kind of knowledge is this
immediate knowledge? What can it tell about myself? Does it tell me I
am embodied?
Before I answer this question let me emphasize, as I have done
before, that what I here call ‘immediate knowledge’ is not identical with
our normal state of consciousness. So the answer to the question just put
is not found by asking what we actually feel inside at some particular
moment. It is found by asking what it is possible to know, and what not,
when we start to reflect upon human embodiment. With this in mind, let
us proceed.
21
Kaulbach (1968), 285 expresses this point beautifully: ‘Der Leib ist
unmittelbare Gegenwart. Er ist mir, raumlich gesprochen, das Nächste.’