Lisa Heldke writes, “For theories like Descartes’ [which] conceive of my body as an external appendage to my mind, and see its role in inquiry as merely to provide a set of (fairly reliable) sensory data on which my reasoning faculty then operates to produce objects of knowledge. But growing and cooking food are important counterexamples to this view; they are activities in which bodily perceptions are more than meter reading which must be scrutinized by reason. The knowing involved in making a cake is ‘contained’ not simply ‘in my head’ but in my hands, my wrists, my eyes and nose as well. The phrase ‘bodily knowledge’ is not a metaphor. It is an acknowledgement of the fact that I know things literally with my body, that I, ‘as’ my hands, know when the bread dough is sufficiently kneaded, and I ‘as’ my nose know when the pie is done.”
Two things: Similar things might be said about sports, playing a musical instrument, woodworking, and any number of human activities. When do we get a sufficient number of counterexamples of anomalies to decide that the Cartesian model is no longer useful?
Second: What would modern philosophy had been like if Descartes had prepared his own meals?
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist
It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…
The Possibility of Possibility
"Might could” is a Southern expression meaning “maybe I could” or “I might be able to,” conveying…
The False Promise of No Contact
Around the time nineteen-year-old Alice began cutting ties with her family, she announced on social media that…
