Chapter Three

What Robotic Re-embodiment Reveals

about Virtual Re-embodiment
A Note on the Extension Thesis

Kirk M. Besmer

A central tenet of phenomenology is that one’s sense of presence is intimate-

ly tied up with one’s material body. That is, the sense one has of being “here”
or being “there” involves being physically embodied here or there. Recent
technologies of telepresence, such as sophisticated video games, immersive
virtual environments, and tele-operated robotic systems, complicate this bed-
rock belief. Robust real-time communicative action in and feedback from a
remote environment provide users of these technologies with a sense of
presence in the remote environment. Users often feel as if they are there, at
the remote site, whether it be a virtual or a real location. This altered sense of
presence—the sense that one is both “here” and “there”—has been called,
“re-embodiment” by philosophers pursuing (broadly conceived) phenomeno-
logical analyses of human engagement with technologies. The questions at
issue involve the nature of such re-embodiment and its limits. 1
In this chapter, I will pursue a postphenomenological analysis of two
varieties of technological re-embodiment: virtual re-embodiment, which oc-
curs to some degree in video games and more so in immersive virtual envi-
ronments; and robotic re-embodiment, which occurs, again to varying de-
grees, with tele-robotic systems, such as tele-surgery and remotely-operated
vehicles. I hope to advance towards a postphenomenological account of tech-
nological re-embodiment by arguing against a tempting but faulty way of
understanding such experiences, namely that technologies of telepresence
extend human embodiment much like ordinary bodily co-located tools, such
as the carpenter’s hammer or the blind man’s cane. My argument will depend
55
56 Kirk M. Besmer

on drawing a distinction between technologies that can be assimilated into

the body schema and those that must be integrated at the higher level of body
image. As a result of my argument, I hope to offer a refinement of what I
shall call the “extension thesis,” which is current in philosophical studies of
technology, as well as cognitive science accounts of “mind.” It also appears
in popular media analyses of technology. In brief, the extension thesis is the
general claim that technologies serve as extensions of embodied human per-
ception, agency, and cognition, or alternatively put, that technologies extend
human capacities as embodied beings that perceive, act, and think. While it is
clear that bodily co-located tools can become technological extensions of
carnal embodiment, it is less clear how this applies to technologies of
telepresence, such as we find in virtual and robotic re-embodiment. A dis-
tinction between two varieties of technological extensions of embodiment is
needed.

VIRTUAL AND ROBOTIC RE-EMBODIMENT

Playing video games is a fascinating experience because one almost instantly

and invariably identifies with one’s avatar. This makes sense since the avatar
functions as the locus of perception and agency in the virtual environment.
Like owners taking up residence in a newly-purchased house, game players
rapidly adapt to the virtual environment; in doing so, they transpose many of
the elements of real-world embodiment and spatiality into the virtual envi-
ronment. For example, watch players of video games in which the avatar is a
third-person representation of a human or human-like figure, and you will
see that they often move their real bodies synchronically with their avatar,
ducking in the real world, for example, when a projectile is coming at their
avatar’s head. Moreover, when moving the avatar “body” in virtual space,
players quickly develop a sense of its spatial dimensions: they can judge
whether or not the avatar “body” will fit through a door, for example. Thus,
not only do they identify with the avatar; they also seem to inhabit it.
This anecdotal evidence is supported by empirical research done by social
psychologists Jeremy Bailenson and Jim Blascovich who have conducted
various studies of human experiences in immersive virtual environments.
Although their research is primarily oriented towards issues in social
psychology, some of their research is revealing for theories of human em-
bodiment, especially as it pertains to virtual experiences. For example, when
controlling an avatar in virtual space, people will respect the personal space
of another’s avatar; they will do so even when they believe that the avatar is a
computer-controlled agent. Likewise, when the avatars of others invade their
avatar’s personal space by coming too close, they react by moving away.
Their studies show that habits of minding socially acceptable interpersonal
 What Robotic Re-embodiment Reveals about Virtual Re-embodiment 57

space established in real, physical interactions with others seem to be carried

into the virtual environment. 2 More profoundly, their studies indicate that
bodily-based behaviors occurring in virtual exchanges with avatars of other
people are occasionally carried back into subsequent real-world behaviors.
For example, in online dating games, making an avatar more attractive than
the user actually is not only boosted the user’s self-confidence in social
exchanges in the virtual world, but the improved self-perception also per-
sisted outside of the virtual dating game in subsequent real-world social
exchanges. Such participants, they conclude, “actually thought they had a
shot with better-looking people” (Blascovich et al., 2011, 107) outside the
virtual environment. 3 In sum, their research shows that people do not regard
their avatars—nor do they regard the avatars of others—as mere representa-
tions or empty animations. Rather people inhabit their avatars much like they
inhabit their own body, and this occurs not after prolonged use but within
minutes of controlling an avatar.
Thus, anecdotally and experimentally, there appears to be a strong iden-
tification with one’s avatar “body” as well as the transposition of constraints
and possibilities of real-world embodiment and sociality into the virtual envi-
ronment. I shall call this cluster of phenomena, “virtual re-embodiment.”
How are we to understand such experiences from a post-phenomenological
perspective? In order to begin answering this question, I shall examine analo-
gous experiences that occur to operators of tele-robotic systems, for there are
crucial similarities between the two.
In an article several years ago, Jonathan Cole, Oliver Sacks, and Ian
Waterman describe their experiences using a tele-robotic system at Johnson
Space Center in Houston, Texas. Here is what they report:

One sees and controls the robot’s moving arms without receiving any periph-
eral feedback from them (but having one’s own peripheral proprioceptive
feedback from one’s unseen arms). In this situation, we transferred tools from
one hand to another, picked up an egg, and tied knots. After a few minutes we
all became at ease with the feeling of being “in” the robot. Making a move-
ment and seeing it effected successfully led to a strong sense of embodiment
within the robot arms and body. This was manifest in one particular example
when one of us thought that he had better be careful for if he dropped the
wrench it would land on his leg! Only the robot arms had been seen and
moved, but the perception was that one’s body was in the robot. (Cole et al.,
2000, 167; italics added)

I will call this sense of being “in” or “inhabiting” the remote body of the
robot, “robotic re-embodiment.” It occurs to varying degrees in tele-robotic
systems, such as remotely operated vehicles and tele-surgery, for example. It
seems that the effect is achieved as soon as the operator has real-time visual
access to and feedback from the remote site and is able to affect change there,
58 Kirk M. Besmer

usually using some kind of robotic “arm” and/or grasping device. Approach-
ing robotic re-embodiment from a post-phenomenological framework, it is
tempting to see the remote robotic arms as technological extensions of the
user’s carnal embodiment, much in the same way that ordinary co-located
tools extend our sense of embodiment as well as our bodily capacities for
perception and action. While there are important differences, three similar-
ities between virtual and robotic re-embodiment are critical. Both involve
some kind of interface equipment (joystick, head-mounted display, key-
board, etc.), visual access to and feedback from the remote environment, and
the ability to be active and effective there. Since both virtual and robotic re-
embodiment involve expanded perceptual access and greater agency in the
world, there appear to be good reasons for seeing virtual and robotic re-
embodiment as technological extensions of carnal embodiment, much like
the blind man’s cane in Merleau-Ponty’s famous description.

TECHNOLOGICAL EXTENSIONS
AND INCORPORATIONS

The locus classicus for beginning a post-phenomenological analysis of tech-

nologies as extensions of carnal embodiment is Merleau-Ponty’s famous
example of the blind man’s cane in the Phenomenology of Perception. For
the blind man, the cane is initially experienced as a perceived object, but
after some practice, it withdraws from focal awareness, becoming a perceiv-
ing object—an almost transparent means through which the blind man senses
the environment around him. Once mastered, the stick becomes an element
in the blind man’s motor-perceptual repertoire. In his description, Merleau-
Ponty modulates between language implying that the cane becomes a bodily
“extension” and language suggesting that the cane should be seen as a bodily
“incorporation.” 4 This ambiguity can lead to some confusion.
In order to avoid misunderstanding Merleau-Ponty’s intention here, it is
important to clarify the target of his descriptions. Taken most literally, the
terms, “incorporation” and “extension,” imply bringing something into the
body or extending the body outside its physical boundary. This way of under-
standing Merleau-Ponty’s language in these passages refers to the “objective
body,” that is, the body as a material object persisting in objective space and
having an “inner” and an “outer” that is separated by a boundary. This
boundary is sometimes provocatively referred to as the “skin-bag.” 5 The
examples Merleau-Ponty deploys in these passages and the language he uses
to describe them support, to some degree, this reading. 6 But this cannot be a
complete account of Merleau-Ponty’s intention, for at issue here is not sim-
ply the objective body, but the “phenomenal body,” that is, the lived body—
the body as the locus of intentional activity in the world. More precisely,
 What Robotic Re-embodiment Reveals about Virtual Re-embodiment 59

what is at stake in these passages from the Phenomenology of Perception is

the relationship of habit and the “body schema” (schema corporel).
While I will have more to say about this below, it is crucial to note that
while it is indeed supported by neurological and other physical structures, the
body schema cannot be reduced to such structures. 7 From a phenomenologi-
cal point of view, they are distinct; thus, descriptions of the “body schema”
refer to a different level of embodiment in which different principles apply.
Crucially, the organizational logic of the body schema differs from that of the
objective body in one important way. Understood in terms of body schema,
“incorporation” and “extension” do not imply the breaching of a boundary
that would distinguish that which is “internal” to the body from that which is
“external.” Instead, what is primary here is a relationship between part and
whole. This relationship is not one in which already existing discrete parts
are externally and contingently related to each other by being brought into a
whole through some additive principle 8—like so many apples in a basket or
so many interchangeable parts on a car—rather, the parts are related to each
other and to the whole such that the organizing “logic” of the whole is a prior
principle of organization that required just these parts in order to realize
itself. In other words, referring to the body schema, the relationship between
the whole body and its “parts” is akin to the relationship between the percep-
tual Gestalt and its various temporal “moments,” and this relationship gives
primacy to the whole. 9
Understood as an alteration that requires a re-synthesizing of the entire
body schema and its inter-related elements, once a technological artifact is
mastered enough to withdraw from focal attention, it becomes integrated into
the body schema such that a new body synthesis emerges. Incorporating a
technological artifact into the body schema implies the emergence of a re-
newed body with expanded perceptual powers and extended capacities for
agency in the world. What Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the cane shows is that
insofar as the body is the locus of intentional activity in the world, it portrays
an open structure that can be modified by integrating into itself potentialities
and possibilities afforded to it by non-bodily objects—what I shall call,
“tools”—in its environment. The incorporation of a tool in this manner im-
plies that it not only withdraws from focal awareness but that the affordances
provided by that tool become a background condition for subsequent inten-
tional activity. In other words, the language of “incorporation” implies that
the tools contribute to the structuring of the very environment in which they
will be enlisted to bring intentional activity to fulfillment. By doing so, a tool
extends one’s capacities beyond what they would be in the absence of it. 10 It
is in this manner that the language of “incorporation” and “extension” are
used somewhat interchangeably in phenomenological and postphenomeno-
logical analyses of technology and embodiment, even though the terms are
not synonymous. Thus, the ambiguity arising from Merleau-Ponty’s lan-
60 Kirk M. Besmer

guage can be alleviated somewhat with textual analysis as long as we keep in

mind that what is at stake is not tied exclusively to an inner-outer distinction
that would apply to the object body but rather what is central is a distinct
form of the part-whole relationship that applies to the phenomenological
body, specifically a pre-personal synthesis of the body schema.
This brief textual reminder, however, is not sufficient to fully eliminate
confusions that have emerged from Merleau-Ponty’s description of the blind
man’s cane. Although it was never intended to be a description of human-
technology relations more generally, it is often a starting point for philosoph-
ical analyses that seek to understand the altered sense of embodiment that
occurs in habituated human-technology engagements. In such analyses, it is
not unusual for technological “incorporation” to be used interchangeably
with technological “extension”; however, technological developments since
Merleau-Ponty’s time—such as medical implants of various sorts, advanced
prosthetics, and technologies of telepresence—call for a more refined analy-
sis in order to avoid obfuscation. In short, not all technological extensions are
incorporations. In a recent article, Helena De Preester has sought to clarify
this difference by arguing for a more rigorous distinction between the incor-
poration of non-bodily objects into the body, which she understands as “pros-
theses,” and objects that must be regarded as “mere” bodily extensions
(2011). Further dividing these two categories (prostheses and extensions)
into three subdivisions—perceptual, limb, and cognitive—she proposes con-
ditions for the possibility of each. Sensitive to both cognitive science and
phenomenological approaches to technological embodiment, her argument is
cogent and compelling, and I largely agree with her conclusions, specifically
her claim that “incorporation of non-bodily items into the body… is a diffi-
cult process and limited by a number of conditions of possibility that are
absent in the case of “mere” bodily extensions” (De Preester, 2011, 135).
Indeed, I have argued elsewhere that genuine bodily incorporations are
rare. 11 For De Preester, both prostheses and extensions result in a trans-
formed sense of embodiment, but incorporations must meet additional re-
quirements, namely they must give rise to “a feeling of body ownership.” 12
Of course, “mere” technological extensions also result in a transformed sense
of embodiment insofar as they extend one’s bodily capacities. It is the trans-
formed sense of embodiment that does not amount to an incorporation that I
want to focus on in the remainder of this chapter, for I believe more fine-
grained distinctions are warranted here as well. More precisely, I will argue
for a distinction between two different varieties of technologies as extensions
of embodiment, those that can be integrated into the body schema and those
that remain at the level of the body image. This distinction is especially
important when we consider technologies of telepresence, such as tele-robot-
ic systems.
 What Robotic Re-embodiment Reveals about Virtual Re-embodiment 61

ROBOTIC RE-EMBODIMENT AND

THE DEAFFERENTED SUBJECT

As noted above, robotic re-embodiment describes an experience that often

occurs to tele-robotic operators in which they have the sense that they are
“in” or that they “inhabit” the remote machinery. What is the nature of this
technological re-embodiment? Without a doubt, much like the blind man’s
cane, tele-operators must first learn to use the bodily co-located interface
equipment that controls the remote machinery so that the interface equipment
withdraws from focal awareness. It is important to notice, however, that there
is a double-technological embodiment occurring in robotic re-embodiment.
In addition to integrating the interface equipment into one’s body schema,
operators also experience the remote “arms” of the robot as functional bodily
elements. The experience of robotic re-embodiment rests on the fact that the
remote machinery must also withdraw to some degree in order to become an
almost transparent medium through which one’s perception and agency
“flows” into the remote environment.
I argue that this second withdrawal is distantly different from the way in
which bodily co-located tools and equipment—such as the blind man’s
cane—recede from focal awareness to become integrated into the body sche-
ma. There is a decisive difference here, for bodily co-located tools become
integrated into the body schema by offering robust tactile feedback and
thereby participating in somatic proprioception. This is often not the case
with remote robotic machinery. The remote “arms” of the robot do not partic-
ipate in the bodily information systems that give rise to somatic propriocep-
tive awareness. In brief, proprioception refers to the awareness one has of
one’s own body in space. While the future promises remote machinery that
will yield robust haptic feedback to the operator, currently this is not the case
for many tele-operated systems. But, as contemporary technology shows,
such feedback is not even necessary to produce a sense of remote telepres-
ence and robotic re-embodiment, and this is where things get very interest-
ing. For many tele-operated systems hitherto developed and currently in use
produce the sense of robotic re-embodiment with only visual feedback from
the remote environment and real-time command and control of the remote
machinery. In other words, they produce a sense of technological re-embodi-
ment without offering proprioceptive feedback for the operator. What does
this show us?
To answer this question, it will be useful to look at the case of IW, a
subject who has lost cutaneous touch and somatic proprioceptive awareness.
IW’s case has been well documented. 13 As a result of an illness at nineteen,
IW suffered acute neuropathy that left him without any sense of touch or
proprioceptive awareness below his neck. Sometimes referred to as an inner
sense of one’s own body, somatic proprioception describes the persistent pre-
62 Kirk M. Besmer

reflective awareness one has of one’s own body position in space. It is an

immediate, non-perspectival awareness of one’s body. For example, due to
proprioception, one can point to one’s ankle without having to look down to
find it; this is so, even in the dark. Moreover, due to somatic proprioception, I
have a continual pre-reflective awareness of my body throughout its move-
ments; such awareness is essential for motor control. While it depends to
some degree on input from vision and the vestibular system, somatic proprio-
ception relies primarily on information from “kinetic, muscular, and cutane-
ous sources” (Gallagher, 2005, 45). It was precisely these sources that were
destroyed for IW. While he still can experience hot, cold, pain, and muscle
fatigue in areas below the neck, he has lost any sense of cutaneous touch and
has “no proprioceptive sense of posture or limb location” (Gallagher, 2005,
43).
This malady affected him greatly. At the onset of his illness, he lost the
ability to stand, walk, or even achieve coordinated motor control. 14 After the
injury, it took him several months to regain the ability even to stand. Eventu-
ally, he relearned to walk, and after a few years, was able to regain enough
motor control to complete daily tasks and slowly resume living a somewhat
normal life. Doing so, however, requires an altered form of human embodi-
ment, for without proprioceptive information continuously monitoring and
updating his body’s position in space, coordinated bodily movement for IW
requires constant visual attention and mental concentration. For example,
walking across uneven ground is very challenging for IW, requiring most of
his attentive awareness. By contrast, in normal, non-pathological bodily en-
gagement with the world, the body disappears. The body effaces itself in
normal activity. While going about one’s daily tasks, the body, while always
marginally distinguishable from its environment, becomes woven into the
texture of the world. Reaching for a coffee cup, for example, does not require
a conscious command that one’s arm then carries out with continuous visual
focus remaining on the location of the arm in space throughout its movement.
Rather, most of the specific motor activity of arm movement occurs pre-
consciously due to almost automatic motor-perceptual processes that have
been habitually sedimented in the body. Focally, one is intentionally oriented
towards the coffee cup not the arm that achieves the movement. But without
proprioception, the automatic responses allowing the body to efface itself in
intentional activity have been disrupted for IW. Thus, in any movement the
he initiates, he must focus on his body in an unusually attentive manner.
Gallagher and Cole describe IW’s mode of embodiment:

Without proprioceptive and tactile information [IW] knows neither where his
limbs are nor controls his posture unless he looks and thinks about his body.
Maintaining posture, is for him, an activity rather than an automatic process.
 What Robotic Re-embodiment Reveals about Virtual Re-embodiment 63

His movement requires constant visual and mental concentration. (Gallagher

and Cole, 1998, 135)

For IW, successful performance of daily activities such as walking, sitting

upright, and eating require much greater reliance on active perception of and
attentive concentration on the body. Additionally, “motor schemas”—those
habitually constituted automatic responses to a stereotypical situation, such
as buttoning a shirt—are largely absent for IW. Moreover, he even seems
incapable of generating new ones. Thus, IW’s daily getting about in the
world relies much more on active attention (primarily visual) and less on
sedimented bodily habits. So, what does IW’s case reveal about robotic re-
embodiment?
I believe IW’s case highlights four things that are relevant to understand-
ing robotic re-embodiment. First, following Gallagher’s assessment of IW’s
case, it shows us that there is a clear conceptual distinction between body
image and body schema as well as a functional difference. From a pheno-
menological point of view, the human body is located on both sides of the
intentional relationship. The difference between “body image” and “body
schema” is meant to articulate this difference. Body image consists of “a
complex set of intentional states and dispositions—perceptions, beliefs, and
attitudes—in which the intentional object is one’s own body” (Gallagher,
2005, 25). Thus, the body image refers to bodily self-awareness in a self-
reflexive form of intentionality, and it involves perceptual, conceptual, and
affective modes. For example, looking at oneself in the mirror, dispassionate-
ly thinking about one’s body in a medical context, or finding one’s body
disgusting because it does not meet social norms of beauty are all instances
of self-reflexive intentional states of the body image. In all such cases, one’s
body is taken as an object of an intentional regard. In contrast, “body sche-
ma” describes a complex system of “sensory-motor functions that operate
below the level of self-referential intentionality… preconscious, subpersonal
processes that play a dynamic role in governing posture and movement”
(Gallagher, 2005, 26). “Body schema” refers to a pre-reflexive synthesis of
inputs from multiple bodily systems—proprioceptive, visual, and vestibu-
lar—that structures, constrains, and enables intentional bodily activity (Gal-
lagher, 2005, 132–152). Thus, although conceptually distinct, body schema
and body image are often functionally interrelated. The body schema un-
doubtedly supports normal, everyday intentional activity. In fact, it is the
accomplishment of the sub-personal body processes that allows one to com-
plete habitual movements almost automatically, thereby allowing the body to
efface itself in normal intentional activity. Likewise, attentive awareness of
one’s body position (body image) can contribute to alterations in the body
schema; for example, when one is learning a new dance move, focusing on
the body’s position and movement is necessary for the move to become
64 Kirk M. Besmer

habitual and sufficiently sedimented in the habit body so that one is able to
execute the move almost automatically. Of course, this functional integration
of body image and body schema is operative in learning to use bodily co-
located tools. The notion of withdraw from focal awareness that occurs as
one becomes habituated to the motions and movements of a hammer, for
example, expresses the shift to a primarily pre-reflective (body schema)
mode of engagement.
The second important consideration that IW’s case highlights is that even
though inputs from both the vestibular system and visual sense contribute to
the synthesis of a body schema, proprioceptive information from kinesthetic,
muscular, and cutaneous sources is essential to form the body synthesis that
gives rise to a sense of bodily unity. In fact, insofar as proprioception is a
pre-personal bodily self-awareness, we can speak of “proprioceptive spatial-
ity of the body” (Gallagher, 2006, 351). Distinct from allocentric space—
sometimes referred to as “objective” space—in which spatial ordering is
keyed to an object outside the body, proprioceptive spatiality is an intra-
corporeal unity in which ordinary spatial relations (based on a notion of
extension between objects) do not apply. Merleau-Ponty puts it this way:
“bodily space can be distinguished from external space and it can envelop its
parts rather than laying them out side by side” (Merleau-Ponty, 2012, 103,
italics added).
I noted above that Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of body schema implies a
particular part-whole relationship that resists the inner/outer distinction; it
also resists notions of “near” and “far” understood as ways of describing
spatial distance in which discrete things are separated by extension. It makes
no sense to say that my nose is nearer to me than my right big toe. When it
comes to proprioceptive spatiality of the body, there is no center; there is no
origin. There is the body as a diversity-in-unity. Such a system of organiza-
tion is a differentiated unity of mutual self-envelopment and overlap by the
various elements or parts. Given this notion of spatiality, the diversity-in-
unity of the body schema abolishes distance not merely in the sense that my
body is always “here” in its entirety—even as it co-opts tools—but, more
importantly, proprioceptive spatiality abolishes distance also in the sense that
the very notion of distance cannot be applied to the body thusly regarded. So,
to speak of bodily co-located tools becoming an extension of embodiment
implies an absence of distance—not merely a factual absence but rather that
the very concept of distance does not apply to the resulting body-tool unity.
The same cannot be said, however, of tele-operated robotic systems, for not
only is there an objective distance between the operator’s physical body and
the remote elements of the system, but also the conceptual dyad, near/far
(understood in terms of extension between objects) characterizes a salient
aspect of the primary mode of engagement with these technologies.
 What Robotic Re-embodiment Reveals about Virtual Re-embodiment 65

The third thing that IW’s case highlights is that even though propriocep-
tive information is an essential aspect of body schema syntheses, deficiencies
in proprioceptive receptors can be compensated for, to some minimal degree,
with attentive vision and active concentration. In other words, with great
effort, one can cope with loss of normal functioning of somatic propriocep-
tion and cutaneous sensation, but doing so alters the subject’s embodied
engagement with his or her environment in a crucial way. As Gallagher and
Cole describe it:

In place of missing body schema processes, IW has substituted cognitively

driven processes that function only within the framework of a body image that
is consciously and continually maintained. If he is denied access to a visual
awareness of his body position in the perceptual field, or denied the ability to
think about his body, then is motor control ceases to function. (Gallagher et al.,
1998, 140)

For IW, location of the limbs in space and intentional bodily activity are no
longer elements of his pre-conscious, pre-personal body schema but become
elements of his conscious, self-referential body image. Even routine move-
ments will likely never become semi-automatic process that can recede to the
margin of conscious awareness but will always require focal concentration
and active visual attention.
The fourth thing that IW’s case highlights—and crucial to my overall
argument here—is that the state of the tele-operator is an analogous state as
IW when it comes to the remote machinery. This is so because the tele-
operator only has visual sensations—and not tactile, kinesthetic, or proprio-
ceptive awareness—of the remote machinery’s location in and movement
through space. Thus, activity in the remote environment would involve a
mode of embodiment similar to IW’s experience of his own body below his
neck. This means that in any remote activity undertaken with the tele-operat-
ed system, the operator must attentively focus on the target object of the
intended action as well as the remote machinery that serves as the means
with which the intended action is brought to fulfillment. In tele-surgery, for
example, the surgeon must focus on the “tissue” of the patient as well as on
the position and movement of the robotic arms. Like IW, activity in the
remote environment requires constant visual and mental concentration.
Even with this limit, however, visual feedback can yield what has been
called “visual proprioception” (Gallagher and Cole, 1998, 143), which is the
sense that one has of the nearness and farness of objects in one’s visual field
as one moves about the environment. One must do so with one’s object body
as the constant orienting referent. The most obvious instance of visual propri-
oception involves driving a car. For an experienced driver, successfully guid-
ing a car to the desired destination can be achieved with minimal explicit
attentive awareness of the spatial boundaries of the car as well as the precise
66 Kirk M. Besmer

location of nearby objects. Indeed, it is occasionally the case that when

driving a routine route, such as going home from work, one “zones out,”
being pre-occupied with the day’s business or upcoming nighttime activities;
nonetheless, one keeps the road ahead and objects to be avoided at the mar-
gins of one’s attentive visual focus. Although vision is powerful enough to
compensate somewhat for the absence of proprioceptive feedback, we must
be careful not to understand any withdraw of the remote machinery of tele-
robotic systems to be full integration into the operator’s pre-conscious body
schema on the same order as the withdraw of the bodily co-located interface
equipment. Rather, when it comes to the remote machinery, the sense of re-
embodiment experienced by tele-operators involves the bodily self-aware-
ness indicative of the body image—as the object of an intentional regard.
Much like IW’s bodily situation post-neuropathy, we can even expect that
over time few, if any, automatic motor actions with the robotic “arms” would
emerge for the operator, while such motor schemas would likely emerge with
use of the bodily co-located interface equipment.
To summarize the point of my argument in this section: without robust
tactile feedback and the ability to participate in proprioceptive information
sources, there is a decisive dis-analogy between the experience of robotic re-
embodiment and experiences with bodily co-located tools such as the blind-
man’s cane. In short, the manner in which the tele-operator embodies bodily
co-located interface equipment is different in kind from the manner in which
she re-embodies the remote robotic “arms.” Thus, the example of the blind-
man’s cane, understood as a technological extension of carnal embodiment,
reaches its limit when making sense of robotic re-embodiment. Moreover,
since the possibilities for agency and perception offered by the remote ele-
ments of the system cannot be integrated with the pre-personal body schema
but must remain at the level of body image, they should not be regarded as
extensions of embodiment in the same manner but are technological exten-
sions of embodiment in a fundamentally different sense. This is even more
evident when we consider virtual re-embodiment.

VIRTUAL RE-EMBODIMENT

Having taken a detour through robotic re-embodiment, I am now prepared to

return to virtual re-embodiment. In robotic re-embodiment, visual access to
and feedback from the remote location along with the ability to manipulate
the remote elements of the robotic system give the operator a sense of pres-
ence in the remote environment. It shares these three aspects with virtual re-
embodiment: some kind of interface equipment (joystick, head-mounted dis-
play, keyboard, etc.), visual access to and feedback from the remote environ-
ment, and the ability to be active and effective there. I would like to suggest
 What Robotic Re-embodiment Reveals about Virtual Re-embodiment 67

that there is another, deeper similarity between the two, for in both we
witness the same double technological embodiment. The tele-operator, like
the game player (or participant in an immersive virtual environment) must
become familiar enough with the bodily co-located interface equipment so
that it withdraws from focal awareness, becoming integrated into the pre-
personal body schema. Moreover, it often occurs that the tele-operator expe-
riences the sense of inhabiting the remote machinery, despite the lack of
tactile feedback from the remote environment.
As noted above, this sense comes about due to visual feedback as well as
real-time command and control of the remote robotic “arms.” Likewise, we
can conclude that in an attenuated but analogous fashion one’s avatar, which
is seen and manipulated but never tactilely sensed, gives rise to the sensation
that one inhabits the avatar “body” in the virtual environment. Furthermore,
it seems that manipulating an avatar in a virtual environment requires the
same attentive visual focus as the tele-operation of remote machinery. This
means, however, that the manner in which one embodies the co-located
interface equipment in virtual embodiment is different in kind from the expe-
rience one has of inhabiting the avatar “body,” for the interface equipment—
joystick, VR helmet, or whatever is used—can withdraw into one’s body
schema to become an almost transparent medium of one’s intentional activ-
ity, while the same cannot be said of the digital representation that is one’s
avatar. The avatar remains at the object end of the (visual) intentional rela-
tionship, even though, much like the remote machinery of a tele-robotic
system, it functions as the locus of perception and agency in the virtual
environment.
The similarity to robotic re-embodiment elucidates a crucial aspect of
virtual re-embodiment. Moreover, it also hints at the limitations of that re-
embodiment, for if the remote elements of the robotic system should not be
seen as extension of carnal embodiment—as long as this is understood in
reference to something like the blind-man’s cane—then even less so can
one’s avatar be seen as an extension of embodiment. Rather, much like
robotic re-embodiment, it is much closer to a pathological form of embodi-
ment evinced by IW. In other words, while one might identify with one’s
avatar, one does so in a self-referential manner indicative of an intentional
body image. In no sense can it be understood that one’s avatar comes to be
integrated into one’s pre-personal body schema but, then, neither do the
remote “arms” of the tele-robotic system. The similarities between these two
varieties of technological re-embodiment are quite deep.
Of course, there is one glaring difference between virtual and robotic re-
embodiment, namely that in the latter, the remote environment is a location
in the actual, physical world, even if it happens to be on Mars. Drone pilots
drop real bombs and tele-surgeons save real lives. Contrariwise, the remote
environment in virtual embodiment is an imaginary one; perception and ac-
68 Kirk M. Besmer

tion occur in fantasy time and fantasy space. While virtual re-embodiment
entails a strong imaginary element, the reality principle remains, at least in
affective terms, for playing video games or otherwise spending one’s time in
virtual environments leads to real emotional experiences. Real people fall in
love with other real people in Second Life, for example. Making sense of
such emotional experiences, however, is a topic for another chapter.

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I pursued a postphenomenological analysis of two varieties of

technological re-embodiment, robotic and virtual. Technologies of telepres-
ence such as tele-robotic systems, advanced video games, and immersive
virtual environments offer real-time visual access to and agency in remote
environments—whether they are real or virtual—thereby providing users of
these technologies with a sense of being an active, perceiving agent both
“here” and “there.” While they may expand our perceptual access to the
world and give us greater agency, I have argued that we should avoid think-
ing of remote robotic arms and avatar “bodies” as technological extensions of
embodiment on the same order as bodily co-located tools such as the blind
man’s cane or the carpenter’s hammer. Doing so implies an abolition of
distance and integration into the body schema that does not, in fact, occur.
Given the fact that the player/operator’s mode of engagement with the “re-
mote” elements of these technologies is primarily visual, without participat-
ing in pre-personal proprioceptive bodily systems, the level of bodily integra-
tion seems limited to that of the body image. In short, the “remote” elements
remain at the noematic terminus of the intentional relationship. Therefore, a
distinction can and should be made between these two types of technological
extensions: those that are assimilated into the body schema and those that are
integrated into the body image. This distinction provides a needed refinement
of the extension thesis, which is the general claim that technologies are
extensions of embodied human perception, agency, and cognition. The abil-
ity (or inability) of a technology to contribute to proprioceptive self-aware-
ness is crucial to the distinction I am making.
Future technologies might promise the theoretical possibility of interface
equipment that can participate in proprioceptive information systems of the
body; however, it seems that multiple practical possibilities would need to be
surmounted first. Indeed, such promises seem to be more on the order of
techno-fantasies rather than plausible developments of current technological
trajectories, which seem to point in the directions of greater visual resolution,
more “natural” interface apparatuses, shorter feedback times, and greater
mobility and dexterity in remote environments. Even without radical ad-
vances, however, current technologies of telepresence offer sufficient visual
 What Robotic Re-embodiment Reveals about Virtual Re-embodiment 69

representation along with real-time command and control in and feedback

from a remote environment to induce a sense of being an active, perceiving
agent both “here” and “there.”
Perhaps this doubling of perception and agency offers us a better way to
understand the re-embodiment experienced with technologies of telepres-
ence, namely, as an asymmetrical doubling of embodiment, with one’s carnal
embodiment remaining an anchor, and, thus, any sense of agency and percep-
tion in the remote environment will be attenuated and will retain a persistent
reference back to carnal embodiment as the locus of intentional activity in
the world. Understanding such experiences as an asymmetrical doubling can
account for the continual attentive shifting between agency and perception in
the local and remote environments that occurs with the use of technologies of
telepresence. After all, one cannot “shift out” of one’s carnal body. It is a
permanent anchor of one’s embodied situation.

NOTES

1. See, for example (De Preester, 2011; Dolezal, 2009; Ihde, 2011). “Re-embodiment” has
come to take on two related but distinct meanings. On the one hand, “re-embodiment” might be
applied to the altered form of embodiment emerging from the integration of bodily co-located
“tools” into the body schema, such as we witness in the example of the blind man’s cane or the
carpenter’s hammer. On the other hand, “re-embodiment” also can refer to the altered sense of
embodiment that occurs with technologies of telepresence in which technological equipment
yields a sense of perception and agency in a remote environment, whether that environment is
robotic or virtual. I will use this term in the second sense.
2. The subjects of these tests wore head-mounted displays so that they could see nothing of
the actual physical room they were in, and they were moving about a physical room that
corresponded to the virtual room in which their avatar was located. (See Bailenson et al., 2003;
Blascovich and Bailenson, 2011, 86–89.)
3. See also (Bailenson and Yee, 2009). In a series of studies, Bailenson and his colleagues
examine what they call the “Proteus Effect,” which is the thesis that an individual’s behavior in
virtual environments conforms to their digital self-representation independently of how others
see their avatar. While it seems reasonable that people will behave more aggressively in virtual
exchanges with others while controlling an aggressive-looking avatar, what is surprising is that
some of these altered behavioral traits persist, at least for a short time, into subsequent real-
world social engagements.
4. For example: “To habituate oneself to a hat, an automobile, or a cane is to take up
residence in them, or inversely, to make them participate with the volumnosity of one’s own
body. Habit expresses the power we have of dilating our being in the world, or of altering our
existence through incorporating new instruments [Fr: annexant de nouveau instruments, 168]”
(Merleau-Ponty, 2012, 145). Also, for the blind man, the cane “is an appendage of the body, or
an extension of the bodily synthesis [Fr: C’est un appendice du corps, une extension de la
synthèse corporelle, 178]” (Merleau-Ponty, 2012, 154).
5. This way of describing the physical body appears in “extended mind” approaches to
embodiment in cognitive science. See for example, Andy Clark’s 2003 book, Natural Born
Cyborgs, for examples—and it is often used in the phrase “biological skin-bag” (pp. 16, 33, and
44).
6. Other examples he uses include a ladies hat with a large external feather, a car, a
typewriter, and a musical organ.
70 Kirk M. Besmer

7. The distinction between “body schema” and “body image” and the role proprioception
plays in framing this difference are central to my argument in this paper, and I will describe this
in more detail below.
8. “The contour of my body is a border that ordinary spatial relations do not cross. This is
because the body’s parts relate to each other in a peculiar way: they are not laid out side by
side, but rather envelop each other” (Merleau-Ponty, 2012, 100).
9. For a further discussion of gestalt-like unities, see my Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology:
The Problem of Ideal Objects (Besmer, 2008, 21–27).
10. It so happens that the blind man’s cane also extends his physical body; however, it is the
enlargement or expansion of possibilities for intentional action and fulfillment that is central to
the notion of extension here.
11. I pursue this question by examining the concept of “cyborg” and “cyborg intentionality”
(Besmer, 2102).
12. The full quotation is: “Thus, my exact claim is that the distinction between bodily
extension and body incorporation is based on a feeling of body ownership” (De Preester, 2012,
396).
13. IW’s case is detailed in Jonathan Cole’s book, Pride and a Daily Marathon (1995). It is
also documented in Shaun Gallagher’s 2005 book, How the Body Shapes the Mind. IW’s case is
also described in an essay co-authored by Cole and Gallagher (Gallagher and Cole, 1995). This
article is reprinted in (Gallagher and Cole, 1998). My references will be to the reprinted edition.
For a discussion of a similar case (GL) see also (Cole and Paillard, 1998). Oliver Sacks
describes a similar instance in (1985, 42–52).
14. Hospitalized immediately after the onset of the neural damage, IW’s first sense was one
of utter disembodiment. Cole describes his condition: “[IW] seemed to be “floating” on the
mattress. Without sense of position or touch from his body and limbs, he appeared not to be
resting on the bed. But it wasn’t the relaxed floating one associates with swimming… but an
almost unimaginable total absence of feeling” (Cole, 1995, 14).

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