Sensorimotor enactivism and temporal experience

Abstract

O'Regan and Noë's sensorimotor approach rejects the old-fashioned view that perceptual experience in humans depends solely on the activation of internal representations. Reflecting a wealth of empirical work, for example active vision, the approach suggests that perceiving is, instead, a matter of bodily exploration of the outside environment. To this end, the approach says the perceiver must deploy knowledge of sensorimotor contingencies, the ways sense input changes with movement by the perceiver or object perceived. Clark has observed that the approach faces a challenge accounting for the experience of temporal duration, since event-like properties cannot be characterised by reference to the sensory consequences of possible movements. This paper argues that the account can best be shored up by emphasising, more than Noë does, the dependence of perceptual experience, in general, on temporally extended, organismic interaction with the outside environment. The paper argues, moreover, that an 'extensionalist' account of temporal experience could help make sense of object experience, which is itself, plausibly, an experience of temporal duration.

A Dynamic Interactive Approach to Music Listening: The Role of Entrainment, Attunement and Resonance

“…The mechanisms behind this coupling are complex and are not yet totally understood, with conflicting theoretical proposals that revolve around the notions of prediction and anticipation on the one hand, and reactive behavior and feedback on the other. A lot is to be expected here from current research on sensorimotor synchronization [75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82] and predictive coding [83][84][85][86], as well as from older theories of central and peripheral theories of motor control [87][88][89][90]. The latter revolves around the question of whether motor control is dependent upon the nervous system to coordinate movement through instructions from its central components-memory representations or motor programs that provide the basis for organizing, initiating, and carrying out the intended actions, as exemplified in the "schema theory" of motor control [91] (see also [88])-or by information that arises from the dynamic interactions between the mover, the task, and the environment through peripheral feedback, and which is considered as movement-related specifications that can vary from one action to another.…”

Do sensorimotor dynamics extend the conscious mind?

“…On such a view, the occluded objects are understood implicitly in experience as ‘available to perception through appropriate movement’ (Noë, 2012, p. 58, italics removed). Experience is therefore construed not as a linear succession of static representational states, but as a temporally extended process of environmental probing (Silverman, 2013). On an ECM interpretation, the exercise of such embodied capacities and the implicated sensorimotor dynamics are as constitutive of the experience as the accompanying brain processes.…”

Social intelligence: How to integrate research? A mechanistic perspective

“…Again, enactive approaches can be easily linked with some biological disciplines and fields, one of which is biosemiotics (Favareau 2010). It is also very sensitive to temporal dimensions of human interactions on multiple scales (Silverman 2013).…”