Embodied Cognition in Berkeley and Kant: The Body’s Own Space
Distributed Cognition in Enlightenment and Romantic Culture October 1, 2019 Jennifer Mensch 1 citation
Berkeley and Kant both critiqued materialism, but Kant insisted his transcendental idealism differed from Berkeley's immaterialism. Examining Berkeley's theory of space reveals an account of embodied cognition where spatial distance and size are known through the body's motion and touch. Kant's treatment of incongruent counterparts also relies on proprioceptive cognition. The essay argues that current appeals to embodiment in perception and cognition are not new, as both philosophers already recognized the role of the body in spatial understanding.