Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Philosophy - Philosophy of the present, grade: 1,0, , language: English, abstract: I investigate whether anorexia nervosa involves a kind of cognitive penetration by analyzing the results of Smeets' and Keizer's studies regarding body image distortion in patients suffering from anorexia nervosa. Because Smeets' study does not provide sufficient evidence for non-trivial cognitive penetration, namely that the results of her study do not show cognitive penetration to be anything more than a matter of focusing attention, I turn to the results of Keizer's 2013 study, which provides evidence for body image distortion occurring at an unconscious level. Interpreting Keizer's findings reveals a surprising result that, due to the plausible idea that the body schema and not the body image is the cause of body image distortion in anorexia nervosa, cognitive penetration is rejected in favor of what might be called cross-modal,somatic penetration in order to explain body image distortion in cases of anorexia nervosa.