Wednesday, March 7, 2018

The Value of Embodiment

Having laid the groundwork for values, we can progress to some particulars. In this post, I want to argue that our embodiment is something we ought to value. From there, we can examine how to regard particular modes of embodiment, and what our relationship to them should be.

Our bodies are our means of interacting with the world. We perceive through our bodies and alter our surroundings via our bodies. To live is to have a body. The world we find ourselves in correlates with the body we find ourselves to be. Thus, in presuming the goodness of our lives and of the world, we are forced to value our embodiment as a means to having lives and a world.

Because our bodies are how we have and alter a world, we can say that the purpose of a body is to provide us with perceptual and active access to the world. Thus, one way a body can be good is by enabling us to perceive the world well and enabling us to affect the world well. The next question, then, must be: what counts as perceiving or affecting the world well?

To perceive the world well is to perceive the world in such a way that we can act in a way that fits how the world is. This does not require complete accuracy and specificity of perception, but the degree of accuracy and specificity required for our projects. Thus, perceiving well is relative to our other projects. Augmenting human vision, then, is not a good in and of itself, but only insofar as it enables us to achieve other goods.

To affect the world well is to alter the world in a sustainable manner. To affect the world sustainably is to affect the world in such a way that the effect preserves and enhances the way in which the world hangs together. It thus includes economic sustainability as preserving and enhancing how the physical environment hangs together, but also includes social sustainability as preserving and enhancing how society hangs together, bodily sustainability as preserving and enhancing how our own bodies hang together, and rational sustainability as preserving and enhancing how our thoughts hang together.

Because our bodies are how we live, the goodness of a body serves the goodness of a life. Thus, part of the purpose of a body is to enable us to live well. What we are as bodies is part of what determines what counts as living well, but it is not all. There are two other fundamental values that we will argue for--rational agency and sociality--which also impact what a good life for beings like us is. The goodness of a life is thus served, at least generally, by affecting the world well. In each case of sustainably affecting the world, the aim is the same: to preserve and enhance the way the parts come together to form a unified, synergistic whole.

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