Excerpt: ‘Sensorimotor Theory’ offers a new enactive approach to perception that emphasises the role of motor actions and their effect on sensory stimuli. The seminal publication that launched the field is the target paper co-authored by J. Kevin O’Regan and Alva Noë and published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) for open peer commentary in 2001. In the central argument of their paper, O’Regan and Noë suggest radically shifting the nexus of research in visual perception away from analysis of the raw visual patterns of stimulation, to refocus on the law-like changes in visual stimulation brought about as a result of an agent’s actions in the [light-filled] world. A key consequence of this change is a new way of characterising objects by the unique set of ‘sensorimotor correspondences’ that define the characteristic changes in objective appearance brought about by the agent-object interactions [in the world]. These characteristic correspondences relating the movement of any object relative to the agent define its sensorimotor dependencies [qua world]; an agents practical knowledge of these sensorimotor dependencies constitutes its visual experience. Thus in O’Regan and Noë’s sensorimotor theory, perhaps for the first time, we have a rich, testable, psychological (and philosophically grounded) theory that accounts for why our conscious experience of the world appears as it does. This is a significant achievement and one that, in our opinion, goes a long way to answering at least some of the hard problems of consciousness.

Radical embodied cognitive science (REC) tries to understand as much cognition as it can without positing contentful mental entities. Thus, in one prominent formulation, REC claims that content is involved neither in visual perception nor in any more elementary form of cognition. Arguments for REC tend to rely heavily on considerations of ontological parsimony, with authors frequently pointing to the difficulty of explaining content in naturalistically acceptable terms. However, many classic concerns about the difficulty of naturalizing content likewise threaten the credentials of intentionality, which even advocates of REC take to be a fundamental feature of cognition. In particular, concerns about the explanatory role of content and about indeterminacy can be run on accounts of intentionality as well. Issues about explanation can be avoided, intriguingly if uncomfortably, by dramatically reconceptualizing or even renouncing the idea that intentionality can explain. As for indeterminacy, Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin point the way toward a response, appropriating an idea from Ruth Millikan. I take it a step further, arguing that attention to the ways that beliefs’ effects on behavior are modulated by background beliefs can help illuminate the facts that underlie their intentionality and content.

This paper contrasts two enactive theories of visual experience: the sensorimotor theory (O’Regan and Noë, Behav Brain Sci 24(5):939–1031, 2001; Noë and O’Regan, Vision and mind, 2002; Noë, Action in perception, 2004) and Susan Hurley’s (Consciousness in action, 1998, Synthese 129:3–40, 2001) theory of active perception. We criticise the sensorimotor theory for its commitment to a distinction between mere sensorimotor behaviour and cognition. This is a distinction that is firmly rejected by Hurley. Hurley argues that personal level cognitive abilities emerge out of a complex dynamic feedback system at the subpersonal level. Moreover reflection on the role of eye movements in visual perception establishes a further sense in which a distinction between sensorimotor behaviour and cognition cannot be sustained. The sensorimotor theory has recently come under critical fire (see e.g. Block, J Philos CII(5):259–272, 2005; Prinz, Psyche, 12(1):1–19, 2006; Aizawa, J Philos CIV(1), 2007) for mistaking a merely causal contribution of action to perception for a constitutive contribution. We further argue that the sensorimotor theory is particularly vulnerable to this objection in a way that Hurley’s active perception theory is not. This presents an additional reason for preferring Hurley’s theory as providing a conceptual framework for the enactive programme.

In the visual arts, “representation” usually means a copy or reproduction of some original. In that context it is clear that the original is always something the representer has seen, something that is the product of ordinary visual perception. With the introduction of the term in philosophical writings, the spurious question has arisen whether or not representations could reproduce, replicate, or correspond to things-in-themselves. The question was long ago given a negative answer on logical grounds by neurophysiology. Most arguments on the topic could have been avoided if one had followed Mark Baldwin, the pioneer of cognitive psychology, and had used the term “presentation” which has the added advantage of being a viable translation of the German “Vorstellung.”

Key words: Jean Piaget, cognition, evolution

The author examines education from a constructivist perspective, assuming that its goal is independent thinking rather than the maintenance of the status quo. He distinguishes training from teaching, stressing that only the latter is concerned with understanding. Concepts and conceptual structures are seen as the material of understanding, and their dependence on language and subjective interpretations is presented. The belief that words refer to observer-independent things rather than to speakers’ and listeners’ experiences is seen as one of the age-old obstacles to conceptual education. After a brief mention of important steps in the history of epistemology, the naïve realism of popular writings on science and science textbooks is shown to be incompatible with the ideas of the great scientists of the last century, whose views were remarkably close to constructivism. The construction of concepts is illustrated by an example from visual perception, the conceptual formation of a well-known constellation, and the construction of pluralities. An examination of these constructions yields principles that may be of interest to educators. These principles are then illustrated by means of a didactic experiment in physics teaching.

Key words: education, philosophy

Context: Current theories of art, particularly those developed from a neuroscientific perspective, fail to take adequate account of the role, methods or motivations of the artist. The problem is that the lack of the artist’s voice in interdisciplinary theoretical research undermines the basis of current theoretical models. Problem: How can artists purposefully engage with contemporary consciousness studies? The aim of the research was to develop new methodologies appropriate for cross-disciplinary research and to establish what value, if any, neuroaesthetic or phenomenological theories of art could hold for contemporary arts practice. Method: My approach to the topic was to explore the application of neuroaesthetic and phenomenological theory through practice-based research in contemporary art. Results: The paper maps out a proposed avenue of research, and some initial findings, rather than the results of an inquiry. Implications: This paper will be of interest to those who work in philosophy of art and visual perception and those who are exploring empirically-based research methodologies in philosophy. Insights will be beneficial to arts practitioners, philosophers and scientists researching aesthetic experience. Constructivist content: The paper explores Noë’s sensorimotor theory of perception and the extended temporal relation between visual elements of an artwork as its forms are created in consciousness.

Key words: Visual perception, neuroaesthetics, visual arts practice, consciousness, Alva Noë

We propose that selection favors nonveridical perceptions that are tuned to fitness. Current textbooks assert, to the contrary, that perception is useful because, in the normal case, it is veridical. Intuition, both lay and expert, clearly sides with the textbooks. We thus expected that some commentators would reject our proposal and provide counterarguments that could stimulate a productive debate. We are pleased that several commentators did indeed rise to the occasion and have argued against our proposal. We are also pleased that several others found our proposal worth exploring and have offered ways to test it, develop it, and link it more deeply to the history of ideas in the science and philosophy of perception. To both groups of commentators: thank you. Point and counterpoint, backed by data and theory, is the essence of science. We hope that the exchange recorded here will advance the scientific understanding of perception and its evolution. In what follows, we respond to the commentaries in alphabetical order.

Key words: bayesian inference, categorization, parameter estimation, perceptual categorization and identification, visual perception.

With a preface by Pier Luigi Luisi, this book sketches the complexity of Humberto Maturana’s life, through his early works, his studies in England, his doctoral thesis at Harvard, and leading towards the publication of “Biology of Cognition” in 1970. The author includes anecdotes and the poetry in Maturana’s works that contribute to the development of his ideas. She presents the theoretical web he and his student and co-worker Francisco Varela were weaving. In particular, the book focusses on aspects of visual perception and the theory of knowledge designed in “dialogue,” including with classical philosophical authors such as Nietzsche. By anchoring itself in the turning points in his biography and by using the inherent redundancies in Maturana’s language, the book wraps in on itself again in a way that reveals the inescapable circularities of living.

Abstract: My intent in this essay is to reflect on the history of some biological notions such as autopoiesis, structural coupling, and cognition, that I have developed since the early 1960's as a result of my work on visual perception and the organization of the living. No doubt I shall repeat things that I have said in other publications (Maturana & Varela, 1980, 1988), and I shall present notions that once they are said appear as obvious truisms. Moreover, I shall refine or expand the meaning of such notions, or even modify them. Yet, in any case, the reader is not invited to attend to the truisms, or to what seems to be obvious, rather he or she is invited to attend to the consequences that those notions entail for the understanding of cognition as a biological process. After all, explanations or demonstrations always become self evident once they are understood and accepted, and the purpose of this essay is the expansion of understanding in all dimensions of human existence.

Key words: Autopoiesis, cognition, explanations, self-consciousness, structural coupling

Hoffman, Singh, and Prakash (2015) intend to show that perceptions are evolutionarily tuned to fitness rather than to truth. I argue, partly in accordance with their objective, that issues of ‘truth’ or ‘veridicality’ have no place in explanatory accounts of perception theory, and rather belong to either ordinary discourse or to philosophy. I regard, however, their general presumption that the evolutionary development of core achievements of the human perceptual system would be primarily determined by aspects of fitness and adaption as unwarranted in light of the evidence available.

Key words: concepts, mathematical models, visual perception.