A Dynamical Systems Account of Sensorimotor Contingencies

Abstract

According to the sensorimotor approach, perception is a form of embodied know-how, constituted by lawful regularities in the sensorimotor flow or in sensorimotor contingencies (SMCs) in an active and situated agent. Despite the attention that this approach has attracted, there have been few attempts to define its core concepts formally. In this paper, we examine the idea of SMCs and argue that its use involves notions that need to be distinguished. We introduce four distinct kinds of SMCs, which we define operationally. These are the notions of sensorimotor environment (open-loop motor-induced sensory variations), sensorimotor habitat (closed-loop sensorimotor trajectories), sensorimotor coordination (reliable sensorimotor patterns playing a functional role), and sensorimotor strategy (normative organization of sensorimotor coordinations). We make use of a minimal dynamical model of visually guided categorization to test the explanatory value of the different kinds of SMCs. Finally, we discuss the impact of our definitions on the conceptual development and empirical as well as model-based testing of the claims of the sensorimotor approach.

Introduction: The Varieties of Enactivism

“…While some have begun to flesh out the implementational details of sensorimotor perception by appealing to entirely non-representational dynamical systems (e.g. Buhrmann et al 2013;Flament-Fultot 2016), others have developed the approach in a more cognitivist framework, for example Seth (2014), who has combined it with a predictive processing account, or Maye and Engel (e.g. 2016) who have 1 3 used a representational implementation of sensorimotor knowledge in robot control architectures.…”

Autonomy and Enactivism: Towards a Theory of Sensorimotor Autonomous Agency

“…approaching dark corners), selecting others, actively seeking some, sequentially switching from one to another, etc. (see Buhrmann et al 2013). This bundle of habits is, partly, tied or meshed within the brain, where most of the reliable plasticity of habits and the capacity for selective enactment lies.…”

“…E ? S. It is, however, worth noting that the set of possible sensorimotor correlations that a body can enact in a particular situated condition is the environment for the agent (Buhrmann et al 2013). It is only within this environment that certain neurodynamic patterns can be enacted, only when the sensorimotor environment is actively inhabited in this sense, when sensorimotor contingencies are enacted through sensorimotor coupling, that certain functionally distinct neurodynamic patterns emerge.…”

“…There is certainly still much progress to be made to deliver a proper dynamical ontology that re-constructs cognitive categories (perception, intention, action, learning, imagining, etc.) in terms of autonomist enactivism (although some advances are already available Buhrmann et al 2013;). Meanwhile we can benefit from the theoretical progress achieved so far to discuss some of the implications that it bears within contemporary debates on sensorimotor or embodied cognitive science.…”

Evolutionary Robotics: Model or Design?

“…The study is a prototypical case in which a supposedly complex cognitive ability is demonstrated in a very simplified system, which however preserves the relevant brainbody-environment interactions that pertain to biological systems (Beer, 2003). Following this study, a number of similar minimalistic approaches have been proposed to account for the emergence of cognition in artificial systems (Barandiaran, 2006;Dale and Husbands, 2010;Buhrmann et al, 2013;Iizuka et al, 2013). In few cases, a specific parallel with the target biological system has been proposed.…”