Embodied Cognition in Berkeley and Kant: The Body’s Own Space

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.

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Abstract

Berkeley and Kant are known for having developed philosophical critiques of materialism, critiques which lead them to propose instead an epistemology based on the coherence of our mental representations. For all that the two had in common, however, Kant was adamant in distinguishing his own ‘transcendental idealism’ from the immaterialist consequences entailed by Berkeley’s account. In this essay I return to their respective theories of spatial intuition, since it is by paying attention to Berkeley’s account of space that we discover a surprising account of embodied cognition, of spatial distance and size that can only be known by way of the body’s motion and touch. More striking than this, is the manner in which Kant’s approach to the problem of incongruent counterparts also relies on a proprioceptive cognition. Thus while cognition theorists today have recognized that certain challenges faced by perception and cognition can only be resolved by way of an appeal to the facts of embodiment, my aim in this essay is to show that such recourse is not new.