Excerpt: Obviously perception is embodied. After all, if creatures were entirely disembodied, how could physical processes in the environment, such as the propagation of light or sound, be transduced into a neurobiological currency capable of generating experience? Is there, however, any deeper, more subtle sense in which perception is embodied?
Alexandre F. (2017) How to Understand Brain-Body-Environment Interactions? Toward a Systemic Representationalism. Constructivist Foundations 13(1): 130–131. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/4415
Open peer commentary on the article “Missing Colors: The Enactivist Approach to Perception” by Adrián G. Palacios, María-José Escobar & Esteban Céspedes. Upshot: The target article discusses the influence of the enactivist account of perception in computer science, beyond subjectivism and objectivism. I suggest going one step further and introduce our VirtualEnaction platform, proposing a federative systemic view for brain-body-environment interaction for this analysis.
Arango A. (2018) From sensorimotor dependencies to perceptual practices: Making enactivism social. Adaptive Behavior 27(1): 31–45.
Proponents of enactivism should be interested in exploring what notion of action best captures the type of action–perception link that the view proposes, such that it covers all the aspects in which our doings constitute and are constituted by our perceiving. This article proposes and defends the thesis that the notion of sensorimotor dependencies is insufficient to account for the reality of human perception and that the central enactive notion should be that of perceptual practices. Sensorimotor enactivism is insufficient because it has no traction on socially dependent perceptions (SDPs), which are essential to the role and significance of perception in our lives. Since the social dimension is a central desideratum in a theory of human perception, enactivism needs a notion that accounts for such an aspect. This article sketches the main features of the Wittgenstein-inspired notion of perceptual practices as the central notion to understand perception. Perception, I claim, is properly understood as woven into a type of social practices that includes food, dance, dress, and music. More specifically, perceptual practices are the enactment of culturally structured, normatively rich techniques of commerce of meaningful multi- and intermodal perceptible material. I argue that perceptual practices explain three central features of SDP: attentional focus, aspects’ salience, and modal-specific harmony-like relations.
In his comment, McGann argues that in my “From Sensorimotor Dependencies to Perceptual Practices: Making Enactivism Social,” I have overlooked a group of enactivist theories that can be grouped under the participatory sense-making label. In this reply, I explain that the omission is due to the fact that such theories are not accounts of perception. It is argued that, unlike participatory sense-making, the approach of the “From Sensorimotor Dependencies to Perceptual Practices” article does not focus on the perceptual aspects of things social, but on the social aspects that are constitutive of perception in general. I conclude by underscoring the central argument of the original article: that the adequate notion to make enactivism about perception social is that of “perceptual practices,” a social practices-based notion of perception.
While structured as an autobiography, this memoir exemplifies ways in which classic contributions to cybernetics (e.g., by Wiener, McCulloch & Pitts, and von Neumann) have fed into a diversity of current research areas, including the mathematical theory of systems and computation, artificial intelligence and robotics, computational neuroscience, linguistics, and cognitive science. The challenges of brain theory receive special emphasis. Action-oriented perception and schema theory complement neural network modeling in analyzing cerebral cortex, cerebellum, hippocampus, and basal ganglia. Comparative studies of frog, rat, monkey, ape and human not only deepen insights into the human brain but also ground an EvoDevoSocio view of “how the brain got language.” The rapprochement between neuroscience and architecture provides a recent challenge. The essay also assesses some of the social and theological implications of this broad perspective.
Aru J., Rutiku R., Wibral M., Singer W. & Melloni L. (2016) Early effects of previous experience on conscious perception. Neuroscience of Consciousness 1: 1–10.
Constructive theories of brain function such as predictive coding posit that prior knowledge affects our experience of the world quickly and directly. However, it is yet unknown how swiftly prior knowledge impacts the neural processes giving rise to conscious experience. Here we used an experimental paradigm where prior knowledge augmented perception and measured the timing of this effect with magnetoencephalography (MEG). By correlating the perceptual benefits of prior knowledge with the MEG activity, we found that prior knowledge took effect in the time-window 80–95ms after stimulus onset, thus reflecting an early influence on conscious perception. The sources of this effect were localized to occipital and posterior parietal regions. These results are in line with the predictive coding framework.
Asaro P. M. (2009) Information and regulation in robots, perception and consciousness: Ashby’s embodied minds. International Journal of General Systems 38(2): 111–128. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/348
This article considers W. Ross Ashby’s ideas on the nature of embodied minds, as articulated in the last five years of his career. In particular, it attempts to connect his ideas to later work by others in robotics, perception and consciousness. While it is difficult to measure his direct influence on this work, the conceptual links are deep. Moreover, Ashby provides a comprehensive view of the embodied mind, which connects these areas. It concludes that the contemporary fields of situated robotics, ecological perception, and the neural mechanisms of consciousness might all benefit from a reconsideration of Ashby’s later writings.
At present, due in part to our insufficient understanding of the traumatic experience, we are unable to account for the fact that while some people develop post-traumatic symptoms following a traumatic event, others do not. This article suggests that by adopting the enactive approach to perception – according to which perceiving is a way of acting – we may be able to improve our understanding of the traumatic experience and the factors which result in the development of post-traumatic symptoms. The central argument presented in this paper is that when the options of flight or fight are unavailable as a coping/defense mechanism, one freezes (freeze response). In this situation, the ability to master one’s movements is damaged and, in radical cases, the ability to move is lost altogether; as a result the sensorimotor loop may collapse. This, in turn, leads to distorted perception and, in consequence, memory disorders may develop.
Aufenvenne P., Egner H. & Elverfeldt K. (2014) On Climate Change Research, the Crisis of Science and Second-order Science. Constructivist Foundations 10(1): 120–129. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/1179
Context: This conceptual paper tries to tackle the advantages and the limitations that might arise from including second-order science into global climate change sciences, a research area that traditionally focuses on first-order approaches and that is currently attracting a lot of media and public attention. Problem: The high profile of climate change research seems to provoke a certain dilemma for scientists: despite the slowly increasing realization within the sciences that our knowledge is temporary, tentative, uncertain, and far from stable, the public expectations towards science and scientific knowledge are still the opposite: that scientific results should prove to be objective, reliable, and authoritative. As a way to handle the uncertainty, scientists tend to produce “varieties of scenarios” instead of clear statements, as well as reports that articulate different scientific opinions about the causes and dynamics of change (e.g., the IPCC. This might leave the impression of vague and indecisive results. As a result, esteem for the sciences seems to be decreasing within public perception. Method: This paper applies second-order observation to climate change research in particular and the sciences in general. Results: Within most sciences, it is still quite unusual to disclose and discuss the epistemological foundations of the respective research questions, methods and ways to interpret data, as research proceeds mainly from some version of realistic epistemological positions. A shift towards self-reflexive second-order science might offer possibilities for a return to a “less polarized” scientific and public debate on climate change because it points to knowledge that is in principle tentative, uncertain and fragmented as well as to the theory- and observation-dependence of scientific work. Implications: The paper addresses the differences between first-order and second-order science as well as some challenges of science in general, which second-order science might address and disclose. Constructivist content: Second-order science used as observation praxis (second-order observation) for this specific field of research.
Auvray M., Hanneton S., Lenay C. & O’Regan K. (2005) There is something out there: Distal attribution in sensory substitution, twenty years later. Journal of Integrative Neuroscience 4(4): 505–521.
Sensory substitution constitutes an interesting domain of study to consider the philosopher’s classical question of distal attribution: how we can distinguish between a sensation and the perception of an object that causes this sensation. We tested the hypothesis that distal attribution consists of three distinct components: an object, a perceptual space, and a coupling between subjects’ movements and stimulation. We equipped sixty participants with a visual-to-auditory substitution device, without any information about it. The device converts the video stream produced by a head-mounted camera into a sound stream. We investigated several experimental conditions: the existence or not of a correlation between movements and resulting stimulation, the direct or indirect manipulation of an object, and the presence of a background environment. Participants were asked to describe their impressions by rating their experiences in terms of seven possible “scenarios”. These scenarios were carefully chosen to distinguish the degree to which the participants attributed their sensations to a distal cause. Participants rated the scenarios both before and after they were given the possibility to interrupt the stimulation with an obstacle. We were interested in several questions. Did participants extract laws of co-variation between their movements and resulting stimulation? Did they deduce the existence of a perceptual space originating from this coupling? Did they individuate objects that caused the sensations? Whatever the experimental conditions, participants were able to establish that there was a link between their movements and the resulting auditory stimulation. Detection of the existence of a coupling was more frequent than the inferences of distal space and object.