The body schema extends to include tools like cars and hats

Evidence

Proprioception can also operate through extensions of myself. If I drive a car, I develop a feel for how much space it takes up and what size gap it will fit through, without needing to get out and measure it each time. It starts to feel like part of me, rather than an external piece of machinery controlled by wheel and pedals. My clothes or the things I am carrying all become me: ‘Without any explicit calculation, a woman maintains a safe distance between the feather in her hat and objects that might damage it; she senses where the feather is, just as we sense where our hand is.’ — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 735

Categorization

• DEFINE: Merleau-Ponty’s point that the lived body incorporates extensions of itself, key for understanding his phenomenology of perception.
• XREF: connects to: The body becomes an anagram dispersed across wounds and automobile metallurgy — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 365