Discussion Club is a lecture series hosted by the Sage School of Philosophy.

Our Bodies, Ourselves, Cartesian Style

Touch is, of course, one of the five “external” senses through which we explore bodies in the world around us. But what about the curious ways in which we feel our own bodies “from the inside” or “interoceptively”? In stomachaches and hot-flashes, proprioception and kinesthesis, we sensorily perceive our own bodies. This form of perception (if it is properly a form of perception) is curiously different in many ways from the more studied external senses. Does Descartes recognize this curious form of touch? In this talk, I argue not only that he recognizes it but that he has a lot of interesting things to say about it. Moreover, I argue that, by Descartes’ own lights, it plays an absolutely central role in human life.