Trevor responds to my response to AKMA‘s posting that was in part a response to my worrying about what the Web tells us about the importance of being embodied.

A quick recap (in order to get everything wrong or at least overstated). I said that since Web selves are so important and yet so disembodied, doesn’t this reinforce our alienated belief that bodies don’t matter? Trevor said that bodies aren’t primarily material: look at communal bodies. I replied that communal bodies, lovely though they are, lack something essential to embodiment. It’s not they’re immaterial (for Trevor and I agree that bodies aren’t just atoms…and Trevor has been helpful in clarifying my thinking on this, for which I thank him). It’s that they can’t have sex, feel pain, or die. Then I presented a four-step line of thought that allows me to hold the two beliefs I’m trying to coordinate: Our Web selves mirror (or shadow) the consequences of having a body in the real world, e.g., our perception is formed by the fact that we care about ourselves and our world, we have a point of view, etc.

In his latest entry, Trevor takes the four-part “argument” and applies it to communal bodies. It seems to me to fit well in some places and not so well in others. In particular, my way of caring about what happens to my body — the whole pleasure and pain thing — seems to me to work only in a metaphorical or extended sense for communal bodies. Sure, a communal body cares about what happens to it, but its pleasure and pain is way different from what I feel if I break a finger or come to orgasm. But, so what? Once we say that the essence of a body isn’t the atoms but what being embodied means to us, we can apply that to immaterial bodies like Web selves and communal selves. We just have to go back afterwards and remember the difference between enjoying a blog thread, finding satisfaction in improving the neighborhood, and having an orgasm. Forgetting that difference would be a real sign of alienated thinking.

Laura and Tripp, students of AKMA’s and Trevor’s, comment on my four-part argument from their faithful Christian perspectives, raising a whole bunch of deep questions that I am in no position to address but that sound spot on. For example, what’s the connection between voice and the Word? And what does incarnation mean, both for us mortals and for a particular carpenter born at the cusp of BCE and AD? Tough for a Jewish atheist-leaning guy to talk about.

Trevor has finished his first year teaching. I can tell from how he talks to students outside of the classroom, including how he blogs, that he is an inspiring teacher.

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