A person can control movement entirely through vision after losing proprioception
Evidence
Schneider: PP, 105/132–3. His experience was studied by the gestalt psychologists Adhémar Gelb and Kurt Goldstein. An extraordinary recent case of lost proprioception overcome by sheer force of will is that of Ian Waterman. He has no proprioception below the neck, yet controls his movements using vision and delibeate muscle control alone. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1677
Categorization
- QUESTION: Waterman’s case as a real-world analogue to Merleau-Ponty’s embodied phenomenology — worth chasing the original Cole book.
- XREF: Lines up with Merleau-Ponty’s account of the body as intentional subject — a live example that bodily intentionality can be rebuilt through vision. — connects to: Stroke patients can route movement through spared neural pathways by learning — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 105; Intensive learning physically rewires brain structure and perceptual habits.; Even near-total paralysis leaves a person intensely embodied through phantom sensations. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 1679
- SHARE: Ian Waterman’s story would animate V.S. Ramachandran or Oliver Sacks–type readers.
- SEED: An essay on how a case of total lost proprioception reveals the phenomenology of bodily intentionality through its absence.
- FICTION: A character whose entire sense of self must be recompiled through deliberate visual control — a genuinely novel narrative premise.
Broader Connections
- Stroke patients can route movement through spared neural pathways by learning
#corroborates(0.82) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 105 - Intensive learning physically rewires brain structure and perceptual habits.
#expands(0.80)