Article 7: Embodiment and the Limits of Perspective

Framing

You experience the world from a particular location. You are here, not there. Your body occupies a specific position in space, and from this position, you perceive. This is so obvious that it seems not worth remarking on. But the consequences are profound.

Because you are embodied, you cannot perceive the world from all angles simultaneously. You cannot see the back of your head without a mirror. You cannot see what is behind you without turning around. You cannot see what is in the distance without moving closer. You cannot see what is very far away at all, except through the mediation of instruments.

This limitation seems like a mere fact of biology. The body is located in space, and therefore perception is limited to what the body can access. But embodiment constrains thought and meaning in ways that are less obvious than spatial limitation.

Because you have a body, you understand the world in bodily terms. You understand distance as walkable or not walkable. You understand height as climbable or not climbable. You understand texture through the possibility of touch. You understand other people's minds partly through simulation of their bodily states in your own nervous system.

Embodiment shapes what is thinkable. It shapes what metaphors are available, what concepts make sense, what possibilities seem real or impossible.

The question is: how much of what we think we know about the world is a function of the particular kind of embodiment we have? How much would change if we had different bodies? How much of what we call "truth" or "reality" or "objectivity" is actually a reflection of human embodiment?

I. The Particularity of Perception

A bat perceives the world through echolocation. It emits sounds and listens to the echoes. From these echoes, it constructs a picture of its environment. The bat perceives the world as a space of echoes and voids.

A human perceives the world through vision. It receives electromagnetic radiation at certain wavelengths. This radiation is organized by the eye into an image. The world is perceived as a space of colors and shapes.

These are two different worlds. Not because the physical world is different for the bat and the human, but because the embodied perceiving systems are different.

A philosopher famously asked: what is it like to be a bat? The question points to something important. There is something it is like to have a bat's kind of perception. There is something it is like to perceive the world as a space of echoes. But this experience is, from a human perspective, not just different but inaccessible. We cannot imagine what it is like to perceive through echolocation because we do not have the embodied capacity for echolocation.

The bat's experience reveals something about perception: it is always tied to a particular embodied perspective. There is no perception in general. There is only perception from a particular body, with particular sensory capacities.

This means that what the bat perceives as real—the structure of space revealed through echoes—is not more or less real than what the human perceives. They are different actualizations of reality, revealed through different embodied perspectives.

But because humans have language and can articulate what they perceive, and because humans have constructed culture and science largely without echolocation, the human perspective has become normalized. We tend to think of vision as the primary way of perceiving the world. We tend to think of what we can see as what is real. Other modes of perception are seen as secondary or supplementary.

A blind person perceives the world through touch, through sound, through proprioception. Their world is different from the sighted person's world. They navigate by a different spatial logic. They construct meaning through different metaphors.

But is their world less real? Is their perception of reality less accurate?

The question seems misguided. Both the sighted and the blind are perceiving something real. They are perceiving the same world from different embodied perspectives. The world reveals itself differently depending on the perspective from which it is perceived.

What is true of perception is also true of thought. Different embodied perspectives lead to different thoughts. A person who has experienced chronic pain thinks about the body differently than a person who has not. A person who is pregnant thinks about agency and embodiment differently than a person who is not. A person who has limited mobility thinks about space and navigation differently.

These are not different beliefs about the same underlying reality. They are different actualizations of what is thinkable, given different embodied perspectives.

II. The Metaphors We Live By

Much of human thought is metaphorical. We understand abstract concepts through concrete bodily experience. We speak of "going up" to talk about increasing quantity or status. We speak of "moving forward" to talk about progress. We speak of "closeness" to describe emotional intimacy and "distance" to describe emotional separation.

These metaphors are not arbitrary. They are grounded in embodied experience. We stand up when we feel good. We lie down when we feel sick. We move toward things we want and away from things we want to avoid.

Because all humans share a similar embodied form, we all have access to similar basic metaphors. The metaphor of "up is good, down is bad" appears in cultures across the world. The metaphor of "approaching is approaching good, moving away is moving away from good" appears widely.

But the embodied metaphors available to us constrain the concepts we can think. If we did not have bodies that could stand and fall, the metaphor of "up" and "down" would not make sense. If we did not have the experience of approach and avoidance, we could not think of desire in these spatial terms.

Consider what it would be like to think without these embodied metaphors. How would you conceptualize status or emotion or time? What concepts would be available to you?

Moreover, different bodies experience embodiment differently. A person with a disability might have access to different metaphors and different ways of thinking. A person from a culture that places value on different kinds of embodied experience might think differently.

The point is not that one embodied perspective is better or worse. The point is that embodiment enables certain kinds of thought and constrains others. It makes certain concepts available and other concepts difficult or impossible.

This has consequences for what can be known. If a concept is difficult to think—because it does not fit naturally with the embodied metaphors available to you—then it may be difficult to discover or understand that concept.

Conversely, if a concept fits naturally with embodied metaphors, it may seem obvious or self-evident even if it is not. The concept may seem like a truth about the world when it is actually a consequence of your embodied perspective.

III. The Embodied Construction of Space

Different bodies construct space differently. A sighted person understands space as organized around the visual field. There is a direction of view, and the space organizes itself around this direction. Things are "in front of" or "behind" from the perspective of the sighted viewer.

A blind person understands space through movement and touch. Space is not organized around a visual perspective but around a path of movement. Things are accessible or not accessible depending on whether they can be reached through movement and touch.

These are not just different ways of describing the same space. They are different ways of actualizing space. The space is not the same for the blind and the sighted person.

This is not to say that the physical dimensions of space are different. The physical distances are the same. But the meaningful space—the space as it is experienced and inhabited—is different.

Consider a person in a wheelchair. Space is not the same for them as for a walking person. A staircase is not just an inconvenience. It is a barrier that transforms the space into something unnavigable. A ramp that is irrelevant to a walking person becomes a crucial feature of space for a wheelchair user.

Different embodiments actualize space differently. Each embodied perspective reveals true things about space. A space is genuinely navigable for a walking person and genuinely unnavigable for a wheelchair user (if there is a staircase and no ramp).

These are not alternative perceptions of the same underlying space. They are different actualizations of space. The space itself is different depending on the embodied perspective.

This is true not just of physical space but of social space. A person of a certain race experiences social space differently than a person of another race. What is accessible to them in terms of movement, safety, welcome, is different. The social space is actually different for them.

Again, this is not to say that the same physical locations have different coordinates. It is to say that the meaningful space—the space as it is experienced as a navigation problem—is different.

IV. The Perspective as a Constraint and Enablement

Embodied perspective is both a constraint and an enablement. Because you perceive from a particular location, you cannot perceive from all locations. But because you perceive from a particular location, you can perceive at all.

There is no such thing as perception from nowhere. There is no such thing as a view from a vantage point that is not a vantage point. All perception is from somewhere, from some body, with some embodied capacities and limitations.

This is sometimes presented as a problem. The problem of "perspective" or "bias." Scientists aim to overcome perspective, to see the world "as it really is," not as it appears from their embodied position.

But this aim may be misguided. The view from nowhere is not a possible view. It is a mythical view. All knowledge is situated knowledge—knowledge from a particular perspective.

This does not mean all perspectives are equally valid for answering all questions. A person closer to an event may have a better view of it than a person far away. A person with certain instruments may be able to perceive things that a person without instruments cannot. Different perspectives are better or worse for different purposes.

But it does mean that no perspective has a monopoly on truth. Each perspective reveals something true about the world. Each perspective also conceals something.

A microscope reveals the small and conceals the large. A telescope reveals the far and conceals the near. A person immersed in a situation understands it in a way that an external observer cannot. An external observer can see patterns that someone immersed in the situation cannot.

The question is not which perspective is "true" but what each perspective reveals and what each perspective conceals. What does this perspective make visible? What does it make invisible? What is gained and what is lost by adopting this perspective?

Moreover, there is the question of which perspectives are available to whom. Not all perspectives are equally accessible. A person without the resources to purchase a telescope cannot see what the telescope reveals. A person without the embodied experiences of a certain group cannot understand what that group understands.

There is a politics of perspective. Access to certain perspectives is controlled and restricted. Some people's perspectives are valued and others are dismissed. Some perspectives are cultivated and others are discouraged.

V. The Communication Problem

Because all perception is from an embodied perspective, communication between people with different embodied perspectives becomes difficult.

When you describe what you perceive to another person, you are translating from your embodied experience to language. Language is abstract. It is divorced from the particular embodied perspective that generated the perception.

So you can communicate the abstract content of your perception. You can say "there is a large tree over there." Another person can understand this statement. They can form a concept of a tree.

But they cannot, through language alone, access what it is like to see that particular tree from your embodied position. They cannot know what it looks like from your angle. They cannot feel what it is like to be near the tree if they have never been near a tree.

The embodied experience cannot be transmitted through language. The other person can only access the abstracted content.

This becomes especially difficult when the embodied experiences are very different. If you try to explain to a sighted person what it is like to perceive through echolocation, you will fail. You can describe the mechanisms. You can describe the information it provides. But you cannot convey the qualitative experience—what it is actually like.

Similarly, if you try to explain to a person without certain embodied experiences what it is like to have those experiences, you will struggle. A person who has never experienced pregnancy cannot really know what pregnancy is like, no matter how much you explain. A person who has never experienced pain cannot really know what chronic pain is like.

This does not mean that understanding is impossible. People can develop empathy and understanding across different embodied perspectives. But the understanding will always be partial. It will always involve some extrapolation, some imagination, some gap between the other person's experience and your understanding of that experience.

The question is: what are the consequences of these gaps? When we talk to each other, communicate, make decisions together, how much of the meaning gets lost in translation from embodied experience to abstract language?

And more troublingly: might we be systematically missing the perspectives of people whose embodied experiences are very different from our own, simply because those experiences are difficult to translate into language?

VI. The Embodied Nature of Knowledge

Scientific knowledge is often presented as objective and disembodied. It is presented as knowledge of how things are in themselves, independent of any particular perspective.

But science is conducted by embodied scientists. The instruments they use extend their embodied capacities, but they do not transcend embodiment. A scientist looks through a microscope (using vision), listens to sounds produced by instruments (using hearing), feels vibrations (using touch).

The knowledge produced by science is conditioned by these embodied engagements with the world. The particular wavelengths that microscopes and telescopes can detect are determined by the embodied technologies available. The patterns that scientists notice are patterns that stand out from an embodied position.

Moreover, the questions that science asks are shaped by embodied concerns. Science investigates the world in ways that are relevant to human purposes. We have developed sophisticated knowledge of how to manipulate matter and energy in ways that serve human interests. We have developed less sophisticated knowledge of systems that do not immediately affect human interests.

This does not mean scientific knowledge is false or merely subjective. It means that scientific knowledge, like all knowledge, is situated. It emerges from particular embodied perspectives, shaped by particular concerns and purposes.

The consequence is that some things are easier to know scientifically and other things are harder. Some aspects of the world are easily represented in the abstract formalisms of science. Other aspects resist such representation.

This has led to systematic blind spots. Embodied knowledge—knowledge that comes from living and acting in a domain—is often dismissed as merely subjective or anecdotal, compared to scientific knowledge. But embodied knowledge is a form of knowledge. It is knowledge about what is true from an embodied perspective.

A person who has lived with a disease understands certain things about that disease that a researcher studying the disease from outside may not understand. The lived experience is a form of perception and knowledge.

Similarly, a person who has lived in a particular community understands certain things about how that community works that an outside researcher may not understand.

This does not mean that embodied knowledge is superior to scientific knowledge. It means that they are different forms of knowledge, revealing different aspects of reality. The most complete understanding requires integrating both forms.

VII. The Myth of the View from Nowhere

There is a persistent idea in Western thought that real knowledge is disembodied knowledge. That truth is something that exists independent of any perspective. That to know truly is to escape perspective, to achieve a view from nowhere.

This idea shapes how we think about knowledge, objectivity, truth. It shapes institutions like science, which pursue the ideal of objective knowledge. It shapes philosophy, which pursues the ideal of knowledge from no particular viewpoint.

But the view from nowhere is impossible. All knowledge is from somewhere. All knowledge is embodied.

Yet the myth of disembodied knowledge has consequences. It creates a hierarchy in which embodied knowledge is seen as less true, less objective, less valuable than supposedly disembodied knowledge.

The voice of the person immersed in a situation is discounted. The voice of the person living with the consequences of a decision is discounted. The voice of people whose embodied experience differs from the scientific establishment is discounted.

And the supposedly disembodied knowledge is actually embodied knowledge that has successfully hidden its embodiment. It is knowledge from a particular perspective that has become invisible as a perspective. It is knowledge that privileges certain embodied experiences and conceals others.

Recognizing this does not resolve the problem. You cannot escape embodiment. But it does open the possibility of being more honest about where knowledge comes from. It opens the possibility of recognizing what different embodied perspectives reveal and what they conceal.

Closing: The Irreducibility of Perspective

Embodiment is not a problem to be solved. It is a condition to be understood.

We are embodied beings. We perceive from particular locations. We think through embodied metaphors. We move in embodied ways. This is not a limitation that we can escape. It is the condition of our being.

The question is what we do with this condition. Do we pretend that our perspective is no perspective—that we see the world from nowhere? Do we dismiss other perspectives as merely subjective or biased? Or do we acknowledge that all knowledge is situated, that all truth is from somewhere, that all perception reveals and conceals?

If we take the second path, we must become more careful about what we claim to know. We must be more humble about the universality of our claims. But we also become more generous in recognizing other ways of knowing and other perspectives as potentially revealing truths that our perspective does not.

There is no escape from embodiment. There is only the possibility of understanding embodiment more clearly, of recognizing what our particular embodiment reveals and what it conceals, and of learning to listen to the perspectives of people with different embodiments.

Whether this kind of understanding is possible, whether people can genuinely learn from perspectives radically different from their own, whether genuine communication can occur across embodied difference—these remain open questions.