Perceiving the body 'from the inside'? Bodily awareness, perception, introspection

Abstract

This paper addresses the question: should one conceptualise bodily awareness in terms of perception or should one conceptualise it as an autonomous capacity? This question is answered by examining the works of two philosophers whose responses to this question differ fundamentally: Sydney Shoemaker argues that bodily awareness is not to be conceptualised as perception, whereas Michael Martin argues the opposite. To see which view is preferable, their accounts of bodily awareness are compared. In doing so, their general outlook on the nature of perception and the role of qualia and the account for qualia therein, are discussed. Based on an intentional theory of perception, Shoemaker sketches a stereotypical account of perception which he calls the ‘object-perception model’. He argues that bodily awareness does not fit into that model. Martin defends a naïve realist theory of perception. On basis of that theory, is might be possible to defend the object-perception model for bodily awareness, and thereby to defend a perceptual account of bodily awareness. This, however, depends on the hotly deåbated plausibility and adequacy of the naïve realist conception of perception.