A study of contemporary philosophical and neuroscientific perspectives on the relation of action, perception, and cognition as it is lived in embodied and socially embedded experience.

A study of contemporary philosophical and neuroscientific perspectives on the relation of action, perception, and cognition as it is lived in embodied and socially embedded experience.

Research suggests that perceptual experience of our movements adapts together with movement control when we are the agents of our actions. Is this agency critical for perceptual and motor adaptation? We had participants view cursor feedback during elbow extension–flexion movements when they actively moved their arm, or had their arm passively moved. We probed adaptation of movement perception by having participants report the reversal point of their unseen movement. We probed adaptation of movement control by having them aim to (...) a target. Perception and control of active movement were influenced by both types of exposure, although adaptation was stronger following active exposure. Furthermore, both types of exposure led to a change in the perception of passive movements. Our findings support the notion that perception and control adapt together, and they suggest that some adaptation is due to recalibrated proprioception that arises independently of active engagement with the environment. (shrink)

Control theory is a popular theoretical framework for explaining cognitive domains such as motor control and “mindreading.” Such accounts frequently characterize their “internal models” as “simulating” things outside the brain. But in what sense are these “simulations”? Do they involve the kind of “replication” simulation found in the simulation theory of mindreading? I will argue that some but not all control -theoretic appeals to “simulation” involve R-simulation. To do so, I examine in detail a recent computational model of motor control (...) and action perception based in control theory. I argue that the architecture does not use R-simulation during motor control, but does during action perception. A novel result of this analysis is that the forward model—the control - theoretic mechanism most often described as performing simulation—is not well characterized in terms of R- simulation. I conclude with some lessons for research on the mechanisms of mindreading. (shrink)

Mammalian brains contain a variety of self-centered socio-emotional systems. An understanding of how they interact with more recent cognitive structures may be essential for understanding empathy. Preston & de Waal have neglected this vast territory of proximal brain issues in their analysis.

The discovery of so-called ‘mirror neurons’ - found to respond both to own actions and the observation of similar actions performed by others - has been enormously influential in the cognitive sciences and beyond. Given the self-other symmetry these neurons have been hypothesized as underlying a ‘mirror mechanism’ that lets us share representations and thereby ground core social cognitive functions from intention understanding to linguistic abilities and empathy. I argue that mirror neurons are important for very different reasons. Rather than (...) a symmetric ubiquitous or context- independent mechanism, I propose that these neurons are part of broader sensorimotor circuits, which help us navigate and predict the social affordance space that we meet others in. To develop both the critical and positive project I analyze the interpretive choices and the debate surrounding the mirror neuron research and show how the field is marred by highly questionable assumptions about respectively motor and social cognition. The discovery of mirror neurons - and the sensorimotor circuits of which these neurons are a part – actually empirically challenge many of these tacit assumptions. Findings of sensorimotor goal representations at levels of abstraction well beyond actual sensory information and kinetic movements challenge the idea of motor cognition as primarily output production. Additionally, the focus on 3rd person mindreading of hidden mental states is misguiding the field of social cognition. Much ‘mind-reading’ seems rooted in sensorimotor representations and a developmentally primary 2nd person understanding of actions and the mental lives of others, which precisely breaks the assumed dichotomy between mind and behavior. I propose a Social Affordance model where parallel fronto-parietal sensorimotor circuits support representations not just of other people’s actions but of the overall social affordance space. It is a process that monitors concrete goals and teleological possibilities that the environment affords respectively oneself and other present agents. With this model I hypothesize that the complex spectrum of sensorimotor integrations are indeed essential not only to normal action choice calibration but also to social cognitive abilities, as the sensorimotor teleological representations let us relate to others and understand their action choices in a shared pragmatic and intentional context. (shrink)

Among all their sensations, agents need to distinguish between those caused by themselves and those caused by external causes. The ability to infer agency is particularly challenging under conditions of uncertainty. Within the predictive processing framework, this should happen through active control of prediction error that closes the action-perception loop. Here we use a novel, temporally-sensitive, behavioural proxy for prediction error to show that it is minimised most quickly when volatility is high and when participants report agency, regardless (...) of the accuracy of the judgement. We demonstrate broad effects of uncertainty on accuracy of agency judgements, movement, policy selection, and hypothesis switching. Measuring autism traits, we find differences in policy selection, sensitivity to uncertainty and hypothesis switching despite no difference in overall accuracy. (shrink)

During the perception of human actions by robotic assistants, the robotic assistant needs to direct its computational and sensor resources to relevant parts of the human action. In previous work we have introduced HAMMER, a computational architecture that forms multiple hypotheses with respect to what the demonstrated task is, and multiple predictions with respect to the forthcoming states of the human action. To confirm their predictions, the hypotheses request information from an attentional mechanism, which allocates the robot’s (...) resources as a function of the saliency of the hypotheses. In this paper we augment the attention mechanism with a component that considers the content of the hypotheses’ requests, with respect to the content’s reliability, utility and cost. This content-based attention component further optimises the utilisation of the resources while remaining robust to noise. Such computational mechanisms are important for the development of robotic devices that will rapidly respond to human actions, either for imitation or collaboration purposes. (shrink)

"Perception is not something that happens to us, or in us," writes Alva Noe. "It is something we do." In Action in Perception, Noe argues that perception and perceptual consciousness depend on capacities for action and thought — that ...

Action is a means of acquiring perceptual information about the environment. Turning around, for example, alters your spatial relations to surrounding objects and, hence, which of their properties you visually perceive. Moving your hand over an object’s surface enables you to feel its shape, temperature, and texture. Sniffing and walking around a room enables you to track down the source of an unpleasant smell. Active or passive movements of the body can also generate useful sources of perceptual information (Gibson (...) 1966, 1979). The pattern of optic flow in the retinal image produced by forward locomotion, for example, contains information about the direction in which you are heading, while motion parallax is a “cue” used by the visual system to estimate the relative distances of objects in your field of view. In these uncontroversial ways and others, perception is instrumentally dependent on action. According to an explanatory framework that Susan Hurley (1998) dubs the “Input-Output Picture”, the dependence of perception on action is purely instrumental: "Movement can alter sensory inputs and so result in different perceptions… changes in output are merely a means to changes in input, on which perception depends directly" (1998: 342). -/- The action-based theories of perception, reviewed in this entry, challenge the Input-Output Picture. They maintain that perception can also depend in a noninstrumental or constitutive way on action (or, more generally, on capacities for object-directed motor control). This position has taken many different forms in the history of philosophy and psychology. Most action-based theories of perception in the last 300 years, however, have looked to action in order to explain how vision, in particular, acquires either all or some of its spatial representational content. Accordingly, these are the theories on which we shall focus here. -/- We begin in Section 1 by discussing George Berkeley’s Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709), the historical locus classicus of action-based theories of perception, and one of the most influential texts on vision ever written. Berkeley argues that the basic or “proper” deliverance of vision is not an arrangement of voluminous objects in three-dimensional space, but rather a two-dimensional manifold of light and color. We then turn to a discussion of Lotze, Helmholtz, and the local sign doctrine. The “local signs” were felt cues for the mind to know what sort of spatial content to imbue visual experience with. For Lotze, these cues were “inflowing” kinaesthetic feelings that result from actually moving the eyes, while, for Helmholtz, they were “outflowing” motor commands sent to move the eyes. -/- In Section 2, we discuss sensorimotor contingency theories, which became prominent in the 20thcentury. These views maintain that an ability to predict the sensory consequences of self-initiated actions is necessary for perception. Among the motivations for this family of theories is the problem of visual direction constancy—why do objects appear to be stationary even though the locations on the retina to which they reflect light change with every eye movement?—as well as experiments on adaptation to optical rearrangement devices (ORDs) and sensory substitution. -/- Section 3 examines two other important 20th century theories. According to what we shall call the motor component theory, efference copies generated in the oculomotor system and/or proprioceptive feedback from eye-movements are used together with incoming sensory inputs to determine the spatial attributes of perceived objects. Efferent readiness theories, by contrast, look to the particular ways in which perceptual states prepare the observer to move and act in relation to the environment. The modest readiness theory, as we shall call it, claims that the way an object’s spatial attributes are represented in visual experience can be modulated by one or another form of covert action planning. The bold readiness theory argues for the stronger claim that perception just is covert readiness for action. -/- In Section 4, we move to the disposition theory, most influentially articulated by Gareth Evans (1982, 1985), but more recently defended by Rick Grush (2000, 2007). Evans’ theory is, at its core, very similar to the bold efferent readiness theory. There are some notable differences, though. Evans’ account is more finely articulated in some philosophical respects. It also does not posit a reduction of perception to behavioral dispositions, but rather posits that certain complicated relations between perceptual input and behavioral provide spatial content. Grush proposes a very specific theory that is like Evans’ in that it does not posit a reduction, but unlike Evans’ view, does not put behavioral dispositions and sensory input on an undifferentiated footing. (shrink)

A traditional view of perception and action makestwo assumptions: that the causal flow betweenperception and action is primarily linear or one-way,and that they are merely instrumentally related toeach other, so that each is a means to the other.Either or both of these assumptions can be rejected. Behaviorism rejects the instrumental but not theone-way aspect of the traditional view, thus leavingitself open to charges of verificationism. Ecologicalviews reject the one-way aspect but not theinstrumental aspect of the traditional view, (...) so thatperception and action are seen as instrumentallyinterdependent. It is argued here that a betteralternative is to reject both assumptions, resultingin a two-level interdependence view in whichperception and action co-depend on dynamicallycircular subpersonal relations and as a result may bemore than merely instrumentally interdependent. Thisis illustrated by reference to motor theories ofperception and control theories of action. (shrink)

This volume will be an essential resource for anyone working in the central areas of philosophy, and the starting point for future research in this fascinating ...

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 13, Issue 1, Page 63-78, January 2021.

Vision is the main entrance for environmental input to the human brain. Even if vision is our most used sensory modality, its importance is not limited to environmental exploration. Rather it has strong links to motor competences, further extending to cognitive and social aspects of human life. These multifaceted relationships are particularly important in developmental age and become dramatically evident in presence of complex deficits originating from visual aberrancies. The present review summarizes the available neuropsychological evidence on the development of (...) visual competences, with a particular focus on the associated visuo-motor integration skills in health and disease. With the aim of supporting future research and interventional settings, the goal of the present review is to constitute a solid base to help the translation of neuropsychological hypotheses into straightforward empirical investigations and rehabilitation/training protocols. This approach will further increase the impact, ameliorate the acceptance, and ease the use and implementation of lab-derived intervention protocols in real-life situations. (shrink)

What mediates between sensory input and motor output? What makes it possible to act on what you perceive? Bence Nanay argues that pragmatic representations provide the perceptual guidance for performing actions. They play a key role in our mental lives, and help explain why the majority of our mental processes are very similar to those of animals.

Abstract: When I throw a ball at you, do you see it as catch-able? Do we perceive objects as edible, climbable or Q-able in general? One could argue that it is just a manner of speaking to say so: we do not really see an object as edible, we only infer on the basis of its other properties that it is. I argue that whether or not an object is edible or climbable is indeed represented perceptually: we see objects as (...) edible, and do not just believe that they are. My argument proceeds in two steps. First, I argue that in order to perform an action Q with respect to an object, we need to represent this object as Q-able and, second, I argue that we represent objects as having these properties perceptually. (shrink)

I present an account of how agents can know what they are doing when they intentionally execute object-oriented actions. When an agent executes an object-oriented intentional action, she uses perception in such a way that it can fulfil a justificatory role for her knowledge of her own action and it can fulfil this justificatory role without being inferentially linked to the cognitive states that it justifies. I argue for this proposal by meeting two challenges: in an agent's (...) knowledge of her action perception can only play an enabling role (and no justificatory role) for the agent's knowledge and if perception has a justificatory role, then the agent's knowledge must be inferential. (shrink)

I offer an explanation of how subjects are able to perceive the intrinsic spatial properties of objects, given that subjects always perceive from a particular location. The argument proceeds in two steps. First, I argue that a conception of space is necessary to perceive the intrinsic spatial properties of objects. This conception of space is spelled out by showing that perceiving intrinsic properties requires perceiving objects as the kind of things that are perceivable from other locations. Second, I show that (...) having such a conception of space presupposes that a subject represent her location in relation to perceived objects. More precisely the thesis is that a subject represents her location as the location from which she both perceives objects and would act in relation to objects were she to act. So I argue that perception depends on the capacity to know what it would be to act in relation to objects. (shrink)

Abstract:When I throw a ball at you, do you see it as catch‐able? Do we perceive objects as edible, climbable or Q‐able in general? One could argue that it is just a manner of speaking to say so: we do not reallyseean object as edible, we only infer on the basis of its other properties that it is. I argue that whether or not an object is edible or climbable is indeed represented perceptually: weseeobjects as edible, and do not just (...) believe that they are. My argument proceeds in two steps. First, I argue that in order to perform an action Q with respect to an object, we need to represent this object as Q‐able and, second, I argue that we represent objects as having these propertiesperceptually. (shrink)

We can easily discriminate self-produced from externally generated sensory signals. Recent studies suggest that the prediction of the sensory consequences of one’s own actions made by forward model can be used to attenuate the sensory effects of self-produced movements, thereby enabling a differentiation of the self-produced sensation from the externally generated one. The present study showed that attenuation of sensation occurred both when participants themselves performed a goal-directed action and when they observed experimenter performing the same action, although (...) they clearly reported that the tones were produced by other during action observation and by themselves during their own action. These results suggest that sensory prediction of action modulates ongoing auditory processing irrespective of who produces the sounds and that the explicit judgment of agency does not necessarily rely on the same mechanisms on which implicit perceptual measures such as sensory attenuation rely. (shrink)

This paper aims to establish some of the taxonomical groundwork required for developing a robust philosophy of perception on the basis of the Thomistic doctrine of the cogitative power . The formal object of the cogitative power will be divided into aspectual, actional, and affectional percepts. Accordingly, the paper contends that there is an internal sense power capable of a non-conceptual and pre-linguistic perceptual estimation of what some particular is, what could be done with respect to it, and what (...) is to be done with respect to it. The argument begins with a synopsis of Thomas Aquinas’s philosophical anthropology. It then presents an extensive taxonomical analysis of three different kinds of cogitative percepts. This analysis is followed by a short exegetical defense of the threefold division of percepts. Finally, the essay concludes with a comparison of the Thomistic doctrine of the cogitative power with recent work in the philosophy of perception. (shrink)

There is an ancient and ambiguous philosophical doctrine that perception is passive. This can mean that the mind contributes nothing to the content of our sensory experience: its power of perception is a mere receptivity. In this sense the principle has often been questioned, and is indeed doubtful on empirical grounds, given one reasonable interpretation of what it would be for the mind to make such a contribution.

Nos connaissances en neuropsychologie sur la perception, en particulier sur la vision, se sont tres fortement enrichies ces dernieres annees. Mais la philosophie de la perception n'a pas ete en reste. Rompant avec la distinction recue entre la perception comme jugement et la perception comme sensation, elle demande si toute perception n'exige pas l'articulation entre un referent et un certain mode de presentation, et donc ne renferme pas un contenu dont la nature perceptive ou conceptuelle (...) est a examiner. Le present recueil s'interroge d'abord sur la validite de la notion de contenu perceptif et sur la necessite de distinguer entre voir une chose, la voir sous tel aspect, et la voir comme ceci ou cela. Il etudie ensuite comment nous pouvons voir les choses a distance de nous, a travers le milieu aerien, ou encore comme une image. Enfin, la vision n'etant pas separable de la motricite, il cherche a savoir si l'on voit des actions ou seulement des mouvements, et compare la perception de l'observateur a celle de l'acteur. (shrink)

Perceiving things to be a certain way may in some cases lead directly to action that is intelligent. This phenomenon has not often been discussed, though it is of broad philosophical interest. It also raises a difficult question: how can perception produce intelligent action? After clarifying the question—which I call the question of “practical perception”—and explaining what is required for an adequate answer, I critically examine two candidate answers drawn from work on related topics: the first, (...) inspired by Hubert Dreyfus's phenomenological analysis of absorbed coping, focuses on awareness of situational features; the other, suggested by Gilbert Ryle's classic treatment of knowledge-how, focuses on possession of behavioral dispositions. I argue that neither approach is adequate. Subsequently, I develop and defend an alternative answer that emphasizes the agent's conceptual understanding. (shrink)

What is the relationship between perception and action, between an organism and its environment, in explaining consciousness? These are issues at the heart of philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences. This book explores the relationship between perception and action from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, ranging from theoretical discussion of concepts to findings from recent scientific studies. It incorporates contributions from leading philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, and an artificial intelligence theorist. The contributions take a range of (...) positions with respect to the view that perception is an achievement by an agent acting in a complex environment in which sensorimotor dynamics constitute an essential ingredient to perceptual experience. A key focus of the book is on the debate about action-oriented theories of visual perception versus the dual-visual systems hypothesis The former champions the role of sensorimotor dynamics in perceptual awareness while the latter favours a functional dichotomy between perception and action. At least on the surface, these two approaches are in conflict. Where one emphasizes the interdependence of action and perception, the other suggests that action and perception are functionally distinct. The dialogue between these two approaches brings out wider theoretical issues underlying the research paradigm of cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind. Exploring one of the major debates in the philosophy and psychology, this book is fascinating reading for all those in the cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Philosophy of perception is guilty of focusing on the perception of far space, neglecting the possibility that the perception of the space immediately surrounding the body, which is known as peripersonal space, displays different properties. Peripersonal space is the space in which the world is literally at hand for interaction. It is also the space in which the world can become threatening and dangerous, requiring protective behaviours. Recent research in cognitive neuroscience has yielded a vast array of (...) discoveries on the multisensory and sensorimotor specificities of the processing of peripersonal space. Yet very little has been done on their philosophical implications. Here I will raise the following question: in what manner does the visual experience of a big rock close to my foot differ from the visual experience of the moon in the sky? (shrink)

Context: The dominant approach to the study of perception is representational/computational, with an emphasis on the achievements of the brain and the nervous system, which are taken to construct internal models of the world. Alternatives include ecological, embedded, embodied, and enactivist approaches, all of which emphasize the centrality of action in understanding perception. Problem: Despite sharing many theoretical commitments that lead to a rejection of the classical approach, the alternatives are characterized by important contrasts and points of (...) divergence. Here we focus on the enactive and ecological approaches, in particular, on how they construe the status of the environment and the content of perception. Method: We begin with a review of James Gibson’s ecological psychology, highlighting it as a psychology for all organisms not just humans. Against this backdrop, we consider enactivist arguments against direct perception - a central assertion of the ecological approach - and in favor of interpreting the activity of perceptual agents as a kind of construction of a perceptually meaningful world. Results: We assess the merits of this interpretation and we conclude that it cannot be grounded on fundamental principles such as thermodynamics and organism-environment mutuality. Implications: As a consequence, enactivism remains close to representationalism and entails a form of dualism. Constructivist content: We advance a criticism of the constructivist foundations of the enactive approach to perception. Perception-action mutuality at the heart of enactivism does not require mental construction; indeed, perception-action mutuality obviates construction. (shrink)

This book is an interdisciplinary exploration of the relationship between perception and action, with a focus on the debate about the dual visual systems hypothesis, against action oriented theories of perception.

Cognitive organisms have three rather different techniques for intelligently regulating their intake of environmental information. In order of the time needed to uncover information they are: 1. control of attention: within an image produced by a given sensor certain elements can be selected for additional processing; 2. control of gaze: the orientation and resolution (center of foveation) of the sensor can be regulated to create a new image; 3. control of activity: certain non-perceptual actions can be performed to increase the (...) probability of unearthing salient information that currently is unavailable, hard to detect, or hard to compute. (shrink)

There are many ways to assess face perception skills. In this study, we describe a novel task battery FEAST (Facial Expression Action Stimulus Test) developed to test recognition of identity and expressions of human faces as well as stimulus control categories. The FEAST consists of a neutral and emotional face memory task, a face and object identity matching task, a face and house part-to-whole matching task, and a human and animal facial expression matching task. The identity and part-to-whole (...) matching tasks contain both upright and inverted conditions. The results provide reference data of a healthy sample of controls in two age groups for future users of the FEAST. (shrink)

Summary of recent research on perception, action and what's in between, with the help of a recurring culinary metaphor.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book characterizes a notion of type that covers both linguistic and non-linguistic action, and lays the foundations for a theory of action based on a Theory of Types with Records (TTR). Robin Cooper argues that a theory of (...) language based on action allows the adoption of a perspective on linguistic content that is centred on interaction in dialogue; this approach is crucially different to the traditional view of natural languages as essentially similar to formal languages such as logics developed by philosophers or mathematicians. At the same time, he claims that the substantial technical advantages made by the formal language view of semantics can be incorporated into the action-based view, and that this can lead to important improvements in both intuitive understanding and empirical coverage. This enterprise uses types rather than possible worlds as commonly employed in studies of the semantics of natural language. Types are more tractable than possible worlds and offer greater potential for understanding the implementation of semantics both on machines and in biological brains. (shrink)

Traditional accounts of perception endorse an input–output model: perception is the input from world to mind and action is the output from mind to world. In contrast, enactive accounts propose action to be constitutive of perception. We focus on Noë's sensorimotor version of enactivism, with the aim of clarifying the proper limits of enactivism more generally. Having explained Noë's particular version of enactivism, which accounts for the contents of perceptual experience in terms of sensorimotor knowledge, (...) we use taste as a test for his central thesis. We conclude that taste and other similar senses do not display the central features which Noë claims apply to all perceptual experience. (shrink)

There is an ancient and ambiguous philosophical doctrine that perception is passive. This can mean that the mind contributes nothing to the content of our sensory experience: its power of perception is a mere receptivity. In this sense the principle has often been questioned, and is indeed doubtful on empirical grounds, given one reasonable interpretation of what it would be for the mind to make such a contribution.