# Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense ![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/media/uploaded_book_covers/profile_1188016/FvYr8gKHivekXw_9mBItwg_Br9xrqgdqHrrvB5xKzKI-cove_WHweLye.png) ## Metadata - Author: [[Barbara Montero]] - Full Title: Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: The text explores the idea that proprioception, the sense of body position and movement, can be considered an aesthetic sense, particularly in the context of dance. Dancers use proprioception to evaluate and refine the aesthetic qualities of their movements, sometimes prioritizing it over vision. The interplay between proprioception and vision in making aesthetic judgments, as well as the potential impact of degraded proprioception on the appreciation of dance, are also discussed. - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/166523140 - Source File: Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense by BARBARA MONTERO.pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > Proprioception is the sense by which we acquire information about the positions and movements of our own bod- ies, via receptors in the joints, tendons, liga- ments, muscles, and skin. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j32asgc4kh3xeaa417qwwssk)) > The light waves that bounce off a painting must come in contact with one’s eyes no less than the molecules wafting away from the perfume bottle must come in contact with one’s nose. Moreover, while one must eat to survive, once the edge of appetite is taken off, one can distance oneself from one’s needs and dine without the practical purpose of fend- ing off hunger. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwa8e3kg65gb0t0mwk26k37x)) > it is natural, at least for dancers, to talk of experiencing beauty proprioceptively. A dancer, during a rehearsal onstage—a situation in which there are no mirrors—may claim that a certain movement or position is beautiful or, since dancers tend to be a self-critical lot, com- plain that the beauty, or whatever other aes- thetic quality he or she is aiming at producing, is lacking: “The movement is too abrupt”; “The line is ugly”; “I’m not feeling the connections” are all phrases that roll naturally off a dancer’s tongue ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwa8erzsk38hj8jc66re1w9z)) > Furthermore, it is sometimes thought that the aesthetic senses do not admit satiety—in Bernard Bosanquet’s words, “the aesthetic want is not a perishable want, which ceases in proportion as it is gratified”—and that this pre- cludes some of the exteroceptive senses (senses that typically inform us about the external world) from being aesthetic senses.10 For example, it might be thought that at a certain point the pleasures of eating chocolate and other delicacies turns to disgust. Of course, while one becomes sated by food, it may be that the pleas- ure of eating, if it could be prolonged without actually ingesting anything, is insatiable. In any event, whatever we think of this as a criticism of gustatory taste, it seems even less applicable to proprioception. Although one gets physically exhausted in moving, as one might get physi- cally exhausted in looking at paintings in a museum, one seems to never tire of the experi- ence of moving in aesthetically valuable ways. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwa8fpvfht1f06fx7hrya4qk)) > proprioception, it might be claimed, cannot focus our attention beyond ourselves, for it is by definition a type of self-perception; it is, as Oliver Sacks puts it, “the inner sense by which the body is aware of itself.”11 Thus, it might be claimed, the distinc- tion between the object one senses and the bod- ily sensation dissolves. I will address this claim as well as the correlative claim that the object of proprioceptive experience seems to be necessar- ily private, making it difficult to see how a pro- prioceptive experience could, as Immanuel Kant claimed aesthetic judgments must, command universal assent, and making it difficult to see how a proprioceptive experience could ground true disagreement and not just differing opinions ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwa8hrk4ce5repa062r9e18x)) > When I look at a field and see it as covered with snow when it is actually covered with clover in bloom, my visual experi- ence is misrepresenting the field. Proprio- ception can similarly misrepresent the world. Choreographers often see dancers make mis- takes based on such misrepresentations: a dancer might proprioceptively experience his or her knee as perfectly straight, when it is in fact bent, or a hand as directly above his or her head, when it is behind. More dramatic proprioceptive mistakes occur with amputees who have phan- tom limbs; in this case they represent *p* as *q*, where *p* does not even exist. Even pain judg- ments can be mistaken in this more dramatic sense: with phantom limb pain, one can feel foot pain without having a foot. Yet, arguably, judgments of pain are not mistaken in the former sense: if a pain appears sharp, then it is sharp. However, one’s limb may propriocep- tively appear straight when it is bent. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwa8kzrnhgd4n0g51ety28r8)) > The question, then, is whether the privacy involved in proprioception bars it from being an aesthetic sense. I think that the following thought experiment illustrates that it does not. Imagine a world that had a convention by which musicians were allowed to play music only while alone in soundproof rooms. There would be no recorded music, no chamber music, no orchestras (definitely a sad situation), but I could enjoy the Goldberg Variations by playing them on the piano in a soundproof room, and you could do the same.15 In this situation, are we barred from sensing any of the aesthetic properties of the music we play? It seems to me that we are not. An indication of this is that after our isolated sessions, you and I could discuss the aesthetic value of the piece. Of course, in order to discuss the auditory qualities of the piece *as performed*, we would need to deter- mine whether our techniques are similar enough to produce similar sounds. Without being able to hear each other this would be difficult, since the mere fact that we both followed the same score would not suffice to determine that we produced significantly similar sounds, but it would not be impossible: I could watch a (silent) film of you playing, we could discuss our interpretations, and so forth ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwa8rwyf402aw18n50yvvapk)) > This is what would occur in the odd music community as well: after exiting our soundproof rooms, if I claim that the first variation is tranquil and you deny this, we will not say, “To each his own,” but instead we will assume either that one of us was playing the piece in a different way or that one of us is mistaken ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwa8v2m1rbm5dt34cc0wvbdh)) > One might object that proprioception only gets its purchase on the aesthetic by informing us about what is beautiful visually. Although a dancer may make judgments based on proprio- ceptive information, one might argue that this does not show that proprioception is an aes- thetic sense, since proprioception in these situa- tions merely serves as a guide to the visual. In other words, the objection is that the only way proprioception is involved in aesthetic judg- ments about movement is that it can allow us to picture what the movement looks like, and we may then judge that the movement would be beautiful, if *seen*. > It is difficult to counter this objection defini- tively. However, except for the theoretical con- siderations against proprioception being an > aesthetic sense, which I have addressed, there is little reason to think that a translation of proprio- ceptive information into visual imagination *always* occurs in making such judgments. Prop- rioception can, and sometimes does, provide us with a platform upon which visual imagination can work. However, since my claim is that we can make aesthetic judgments based on proprio- ceptive input, it is consistent with propriocep- tion sometimes being merely grounds for visual imagination ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwa8wvtb7mvx5k2g135xbcfv)) > Moreover, a consideration that seems to tell in favor of proprioception being directly aes- thetic, as it were, is that some blind dancers, such as the great Cuban dancer Alicia Alonso (though not blind at birth), seem to be artisti- cally creative and, as such, seem to be aware of aesthetic properties. Though visual memory can fade with time, perhaps blind dancers’ apparent creativity is the result of remembering what certain movements look like; or perhaps it is merely the result of being well trained by sighted instructors. But this need not be so. Imagine an isolated community of the blind.17 Could some form of dance develop in such a community? One can imagine dance evolving out of the movements that two people in bodily contact might make in response to music. Since such dancers could observe each other through touch, it seems that they could intelligibly con- verse about the various experiences they have while engaged in dance. This, it seems, would indicate that for such dancers, proprioceptive experiences are not derived from visual experiences. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwa8xe56g9vq6b72bjyjgpm4)) > Moreover, subjects tend to per- ceive geometrical figures in a way that is con- sistent with how that figure is naturally drawn: if they see a circle being traced by a point of light that speeds up along the top and bottom of the circle and slows down along the sides, sub- jects tend to perceive an ellipse rather than a cir- cle, which is consistent with the fact that we slow down while drawing sharp curves.27 It seems to me that one explanation of what is going on here is that our understanding of the > circle is not entirely visual, but that we also understand its shape by feeling what it is like to draw it; when we watch a shape being drawn, the motion of drawing resonates in our own bodies.28 ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwa9qqfhwj93frgm4ghk5n5g)) > Although we lack this information, I think that the analogy between the situation with which I am con- cerned and other cases of indirect perception (perception where we perceive one thing in virtue of perceiving something else) is close enough so that it is reasonable to call the situ- ation “proprioception of another’s movement.” Arguably, you can hear grandmother’s voice when she is talking to you on the telephone, even though what you hear more directly is the vibrations of the speaker in the telephone. The situation with proprioception is relevantly ana- logous: just as one *hears* what is at the end of the telephone’s causal path, it would seem that one proprioceives what is at the end of the mirroring system’s causal path. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwa9vb9x5sn296t2s4ftccn4)) > Certainly, some aspects of how a movement actually feels are aesthetically irrelevant. Per- forming certain steps, such as *pas de couru* or a > difficult lift, can be painful, yet the experience of pain is typically not aesthetically relevant for either the dancer or the observer. Moreover, the aesthetic value of bodily movements at least sometimes depends on how they illusorily appear. Ballet, in particular, is based on the cre- ation of visual illusions: leaps that appear to defy gravity, limbs that appear elongated, and so forth. Yet if all aesthetic judgments of bodily movements depend on the illusory image pro- duced by the movement, and if proprioception only tells us how the actual movement feels, there is little, if any, room left for a propriocep- tive aesthetics. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hwaa1wbkegrxkp58crktqhaf)) > A central reason to think that proprioception is an aesthetic sense is that one way professional dancers claim to evaluate the aesthetic qualities of their movements is by *feeling* (that is, propri- oceiving) what is right. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2va2gh7m03j7hvq0zvk43nr)) > Aesthetic experience, it is thought, while sensuous (depending on sense experience), is not sensual pleasure, not pleas- ure in our own bodily sensations. Rather, as > D. W. Prall puts it, “experience is genuinely and characteristically aesthetic only as it occurs in transactions with external objects of sense.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2va6qj5qnh8yantsmn1hgtm)) > This illustrates that proprioception is not merely sensory, but represents objects in the world. The object in the case of proprioception is, to be sure, very close to the perceiver: it is one’s own body. Although there is a sense in which one’s own body is not part of the world, this is not the relevant sense here; rather, the relevant contrast here is between one’s body and one’s bodily sensations, between the posi- tions and movements of one’s limbs and the sensations one has of these positions and move- ments, a contrast that can be made with respect to proprioception.13 Proprioception may be a type of self-perception, but the self in question is not merely sensory. Thus, proprioceptive experience, it seems, need not be doomed to exist solely in the realm of the mere agreeable. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2vaj2vm76mewcyv207jcmc8)) > Barring, of course, the problem of other minds, once we have determined that our interpretations of the piece are close enough, we can assume that we are talking about different tokens of the same type of musical performance, which in the imagined situation seems sufficient to ground discussion of, and not just differing opinions about, the aesthetic qualities of the perform- ance. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2varwjrzmpndxzsprcyekg7)) > The partial dependence of the visual on the proprioceptive may not even be confined to the realm of bodily movements and positions. We speak as if we are visually aware of aesthetic properties, such as the grace of a curve in a statue or painting, but perhaps here our judg- ment of grace may be based on our sense that if we were to move our arm in such a way, the movement would feel graceful. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2vb29rn29yzt9za76f0dff1)) > Rather, the vis- ual and the proprioceptive work hand in hand: I take my own bodily movements to be proprio- ceptively graceful in part because I judge that if seen, these movements would look graceful, and I take certain bodily movements of others to be *visually* graceful in part because I judge that if I were to move in this way, these movements would feel graceful. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j2vb32a6kj61asyzcxs5cc0m))