Embodiment - The bodily aspects of human subjectivity. Embodiment is the central theme in European phenomenology, with its most extensive treatment in the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty’s account of embodiment distinguishes between the objective body,which is the body regarded as a physiological entity, and the phenomenal body, which is not just some body, some particular physiological entity, but my (or your) body as I (or you) experience it. Of course, it is possible to experience one’s own body as a physiological entity. But this is not typically the case. Typically, I experience my body (tacitly) as a unified potential or capacity for doing this and that-typing this sentence, scratching that itch, etc. Moreover, this sense that I have of my own motor capacities (expressed, say, as a kind of bodily confidence) does not depend on an understanding of the physiological processes involved in performing the action in question.
The distinction between the objective and phenomenal body is central to understanding the phenomenological treatment of embodiment. Embodiment is not a concept that pertains to the body grasped as a physiological entity. Rather it pertains to the phenomenal body and to the role it plays in our object-directed experiences.
The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Second Edition General Editor: Robert Audi. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999
Embodiment refers to the biological and physical presence of our bodies, which are a necessary precondition for subjectivity, emotion, language, thought and social intereraction. -- Musical Identities, Macdonald, Hargreaves and Miell. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2002
The expression 'the body' has become problematized and replaced with the term 'embodiment'. This change "corresponds directly to a shift from viewing the body as a nongendered, prediscusive phenomenon that plays a central role in perception, cognition, action and nature to a way of living or inhabiting the world through ones acculturated body. (Page xiv, Thomas Csordas in Perspectives on Embodiment by Weiss, G. and Haber, H., (eds.). Routledge; March, 1999)
If embodiment is an existential condition in which the body is the subjective source or intersubjective ground of experience, then studies under the rubric of embodiment are not 'about' the body per se. Instead they are about culture and experience insofar as these can be understood from the standpoint of bodily being-in-the-world. (p. 143, ibid)
Source: http://www.thegreenfuse.org/embodiment/
See also:
Wikipedia entry on embodiment
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