Anatomical Philosophy

Anatomical Philosophy

Philosophers have not shown much interest in anatomy, whether they be analytical or phenomenological, linguistic or empirical-scientific. Nor have psychologists, with the exception of Freud (oral, anal, and genital). I propose to rectify this. Of course, anatomists and physiologists have shown such an interest, but they have focused on dissection and functional studies, relevant to medicine, not psychological, phenomenological, and conceptual issues. I intend to map and describe broad features of human anatomy and articulate their human significance—this is to be an essay in lived anatomy. I am not much concerned with the physical properties of the organs of the body, or how they contribute to survival, but with how we experience our anatomy—consciously, conceptually. What does our anatomy mean to us? How does it impress us? How does it determine human psychological nature? Not how the organs of the body keep us alive, but how they figure in our lives. This is to be a study in anatomy as seen from the inside (“subjective anatomy”).

It is said that the human body contains 78 separate organs, or more depending on how an organ is defined. These organs can be listed and named. It’s quite a hodge-podge—arbitrary to the point of nausea. Can’t we divide things up more meaningfully? Some effort is made to do this by describing organ systems; I will follow this path. I therefore announce that our anatomy falls into five broad categories, corresponding to the head, the chest, the belly, the genital-excretory organs, and the limbs. I call this five-fold anatomy: five zones or regions of anatomical division. We all know what these involve (we all have bodies). In (or at) the head we have the brain and sense organs, tightly clustered: we are keenly aware of this bodily location and of the organs that dwell on the head. We might think of this area as phenomenologically central—where we are. The chest holds the lungs and heart, which function together; the lungs breathe, the heart pumps blood. We are more aware of our lungs breathing than of our heart beating, though the latter can become a central focus. The belly houses the stomach, which processes food—a vital element of life. The belly produces characteristic sensations, as in hunger and satiation. Take a step down and we reach the organs of reproduction and excretion, which are notoriously adjacent to each other; they too have their characteristic sensations. That’s the terminus of the trunk, the body proper—from crown to anus, so to speak. Attached to this thick trunk we have the four limbs: these take the form of slender protuberances. The limbs allow movement—locomotion and object manipulation.  We are well aware of their activities, being both visible and constantly active. So, my suggestion is that these are the five main sites of human anatomy, corresponding to five types of human activity: mental activity, respiratory and vascular activity, digestive activity, excretory and reproductive activity, and bodily movement activity. They are discrete (though interconnected) and each has its own psychological profile. The question then is what characterizes these five regions, philosophically.

I will consider intentionality, consciousness, action, and physicality. Intentionality is mainly focused in the head area: perceiving, thinking, willing, remembering. These are mental states with well-defined intentional objects (sometimes non-existent); this is a familiar story and has been the main focus of philosophical inquiry. In the chest area intentionality is greatly reduced: breathing and pumping have no intentional objects to speak of—the lungs and heart are not the objects of these activities. We can feel breathing in the chest, or blood being pumped, but these are not of anything: the lungs and heart are not about something outside themselves (or inside them). The stomach too is felt as in the body, but its actions are not directed towards objects, unlike the actions of the brain. The mouth presents itself as tasting food, but the stomach does not. The same is true of the organs of excretion and reproduction: they aren’t about anything. We are not aware of them as intentionally directed, because they aren’t. The limbs are different, especially the hands—they can be said to denote and express, like the face. They have intentionality. So, some of our anatomy is expressive-intentional and some is not, or only primitively so. There is no language of the lungs, heart, stomach, and genitals; but there is a language of the mouth and hands—they are perceived as communicative (the stomach keeps to itself, except for the odd involuntary rumble). Anatomically, intentionality is confined to the head and hands.

Consciousness is not so confined—consciousness is felt as widely distributed (from face to bowels). But its degree varies: we are more conscious of our eyes and mouth than of our lungs and stomach. Much of the activity of the bowels is completely unconscious; not so our hands. We leave most of the body to its own devices, only peripherally aware of what it is up to, but this is not true of the mind-brain—that is, the anatomical part involved in perception and thought. These are aspects of the brain organ, and we are well aware of those aspects. Most of our body goes about its business unconsciously, though we get glimpses of what is going on; but the business of the brain involves mental activity and we are aware of it. We are conscious of the body as a whole, but not very conscious; the brain’s mental activity is very conscious, by contrast. The question of action is more complex: what kind of action do the five bodily zones engage in? This complicates the philosophy of action considerably. Clearly, the agent acts intentionally and we can attribute this to the brain; but do the lungs act in this way, or the stomach, or the bowels? Most of this is automatic, as we say, but sometimes the will steps in—as in holding one’s breath. We can’t do this with the heart, but we can with the bowels to some degree. Thus, we are more or less in control of our anatomical regions—very in control of our hands but much less so of our bowels. We know what is voluntary and what isn’t. This affects our relation to our body. Then there is the question of physicality: do we feel some parts of the body as more physical than others (in some sense of “physical”)? Does the head area feel less physical than the belly area? We often speak of the body as something separate from the head, so the stomach is more of the body than the head is. Isn’t excretion felt as more physical than breathing? We do seem to talk this way: we recognize grades of physicality within our overall anatomy. Air is traditionally associated with the soul; not so feces. And doesn’t the disgust response apply differentially to different regions of the body? The higher up the less disgusting: the mouth is less disgusting than the anus, the heart is less disgusting than the stomach, the stomach is less disgusting than the intestines. The five zones thus vary along several dimensions; together they constitute the lived anatomical world of humans (other animals will have their own anatomical idiosyncrasies). It’s like branches of government: each has a job to do and each has its distinctive characteristics. Anatomy is not homogeneous–physically or psychologically.

Let’s get more scientific(-sounding): I wish to assert, with maximum scientific pomposity, that we have a penta-morphic anatomical phenomenology. You have heard of the pentapod—the five-limbed creature that uses its tail in locomotion (e.g., the kangaroo), and the pentaradial starfish; well, now we have to add the penta-morphic anatomical phenomenology of the typical human animal. We have five kinds of anatomical structure each with its own specific psychophysical nature. The mind has its own anatomy usually described as consisting of perception, reason, memory, emotions, etc.; the body too has some broad subdivisions, corresponding to spatial location, function, and phenomenology. An adequate anatomical taxonomy will recognize five different categories of organ, as articulated above. Every day we live with these five categories; they are part of our human nature as a psychophysical animal. We are psychologically heterogeneous andphysically heterogeneous.[1]

[1] The body is typically conceived by philosophers (and scientists) as a homogeneous machine, i.e., mechanistically. Anatomy is thus like the structure of a crystal or mountain. But this is to forget that the body exists for the conscious being whose body it is—it has a particular first-person appearance, mode of presentation. It seems a certain way to its possessor. This deserves careful description. We need to suspend the scientific standpoint (to paraphrase Husserl).