Proprioception and Knowledge of the External World in the Long 18th Century
Antonia LoLordo (University of Virginia)

Dates: Monday, 03/08/2026
Start Time: 5:30pm 
Venue: Madsen Building (F09), Room 331
How to register: Free, no registration required

Abstract: Mary Shepherd says that motion (or the power of motion) is a sixth sense (or sixth sense organ).  I argue that she is talking about proprioception.  Shepherd thus holds that proprioception plays a crucial role in acquiring knowledge of the external world, as well as in acquiring the concepts involved.  I further argue that proprioception plays a role in knowledge of the external world for many of her predecessors as well—for example, the Berkeley of the New Theory, Condillac, Hume, and Reid—although unlike Shepherd, they do not distinguish proprioception from the sense of touch.

Bio: Antonia LoLordo is George C. and Clare F. Downing Memorial Professor at the University of Virginia.  Her work includes Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Philosophy (Cambridge), Locke’s Moral Man (Oxford), an edition of Mary Shepherd’s Essays on the Perception of an External Universe (Oxford), and Mary Shepherd (Cambridge), as well as articles on Cugoano, Descartes, Edwards, Gassendi, Hume, Locke, Malebranche, and Shepherd.  She is currently working on a book on proprioception and knowledge of the external world in the 18th century.