The Primacy of Embodiment: Revisiting the Problem of Phenomenal Reality

Authors
Mohamadmehdi Moghadas
Ali Fath Taheri
Abstract
This paper examines the problem of reality from the perspective of the embodied mind. The question of reality has long been central to philosophical inquiry, with the relation between reality and human perception forming the core of this investigation—particularly the relation between phenomenal reality (the world as experienced) and physical reality (the world as it exists independently). Throughout philosophy’s history, realism and idealism have offered conflicting answers: the former asserting the objective givenness of the physical world, the latter holding reality to be a mental construct. This paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on cognitive science, phenomenology, and neuroscience, to examine the problem more comprehensively, with its ultimate focus on the embodied mind—according to which mind is not abstract and detached, but inextricably bound to the body and its enactment in the world.

From this perspective, phenomenal reality is not a merely mental representation but the outcome of dynamic, reciprocal interaction between the embodied organism and its environment. The body’s biological constitution, sensorimotor capacities, and history of practical engagement with the world constitute the ground upon which perception and meaning arise. Our embodiment thus determines the meaning of concepts and shapes a reality uniquely our own—one whose existential condition is our embodied presence in the physical world. Our particular embeddedness determines which objects become meaningful for us, and these in turn constitute our proper phenomenal reality: a reality that, despite considerable overlap with others’, remains self-constituted and singularly our own.
Keywords
Reality
Phenomenal Reality
Physical Reality
Embodied Mind
Controlled Hallucination
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