Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

of ‘embodied truth’ as a further alternative towards knowledge. The more I’ve looked into this the more I feel that this embodied truth — embodied cognition, interbeing — is a developing subject separate from previous investigations. Hence, the ideas around emergence and the connections, not just at the levels of particles and substances, but also with life, consciousness, with wider ecologies and with the bio-sphere. But the idea of an embodied truth seems, if anything, to push us away from achieving a map that corresponds with the universe. All maps are a form of transcendence, and this seems to be especially problematic for phenomenogy.

Embodiment

So we can ask — do we embody existence, do we embody truth, do we embody beauty, value, meaning, purpose, ethics?

It might seem a bit obvious to say that we embody our own existence, but as discussed in previous chapters, the traditional ideas of soul are close to suggesting that our true self is not embodied. And also, as discussed previously, as agents we have a body rather than just being a body, so the ideas of embodied existence come across quite clearly.

Embodying truth is a bit easier. Most of us embody our truth rather more than we may wish at times! The truth of who we are, what we think and what we really believe in can be apparent through our body language and manner of speaking. It’s a difficult question though to ask whether we should try to align our

214