The Sense of Body

The body, as the subject or the object of our experience, mediates all the interactions between our mind and the world. Sensory stimuli are perceived through sensory organs distributed on the body surface. Physical interactions with external objects occur via the different body parts. Not surprisingly, both the human experience of the body itself and the concepts used to depict it are steeped in intellectual history. However, the experience of the body is rarely invoked in a unanimous manner in life sciences, mind sciences and the humanities. Should the experience of one's body be conceptualized as a straightforward neurophysiological process, a psychological structure, or an essentially private, scientifically inaccessible, subjective event? Like other psychological phenomena, the experience of one's body calls for parallel biological, behavioural and first-person styles of exploration.