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- Ned Block (2002). Behaviorism Revisited. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5):977-978.O'Regan and Noe declare that the qualitative character of experience is constituted by the nature of the sensorimotor contingencies at play when we perceive. Sensorimotor contingencies are a highly restricted set of input-output relations. The restriction excludes contingencies that don’t essentially involve perceptual systems. Of course if the ‘sensory’ in ‘sensorimotor’ were to be understood mentalistically, the thesis would not be of much interest, so I assume that these contingencies are to be understood non-mentalistically. Contrary to their view, experience is a matter of what mediates between input and output, not input-output relations all by themselves. However, instead of mounting a head-on collision with their view, I think it will be more useful to consider a consequence of their view that admits of obvious counterexamples. The consequence consists of two claims: (1) any two systems that share that highly restricted set of input-output relations are therefor experientially the same and (2) conversely, any two systems that share experience must share these sensorimotor contingencies. Once stated, the view is so clearly wrong that my ascription of it to them might be challenged. At least it is a consequence of a major strand in their view. Perhaps this will be an opportunity for them to disassociate themselves from it. I will limit myself to (1).Reading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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What is the relation between perceptual experience and the suite of sensorimotor skills that enable us to act in the very world we perceive? The relation, according to ‘sensorimotor models’ (O’Regan and Noe¨ 2001, Noe¨ 2004) is tight indeed. Perceptual experience, on these accounts, is enacted via skilled sensorimotor activity, and gains its content and character courtesy of our knowledge of the relations between (typically) movement and sensory stimulation. I shall argue that this formulation is too extreme, and that it fails to accommodate the substantial firewalls, dis-integrations, and specialpurpose streamings that form the massed strata of human cognition. In particular, such strong sensorimotor models threaten to obscure the computationally potent insensitivity of key information-processing events to the full subtleties of embodied cycles of sensing and moving.
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| | Scholar | More options ... While applauding the bulk of the account on offer, we question one apparent implication viz, that every difference in sensorimotor contingencies corresponds to a difference in conscious visual experience.
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| | Scholar | More options ... Although sensorimotor contingencies may explain visual perception, it is difficult to extend this concept to speech perception. However, the basic concept of perception as active hypothesis testing using attention does extend well to speech perception. We propose that the concept of sensorimotor contingencies can be broadened to sensory-attentional contingencies, thereby accounting for speech perception as well as vision.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Sensorimotor theories understand perception to be a process of active, exploratory engagement with the environment, mediated by the possession and exercise of a certain body of knowledge concerning sensorimotor dependencies. This paper aims to characterise that exercise, and to show that it places constraints upon the content of sensorimotor knowledge itself. Sensorimotor mastery is exercised when it is put to use in the service of intentional action-planning and selection, and this rules out certain standard readings of sensorimotor contingency knowledge. Rather than holding between movements and sensory inputs or appearances, sensorimotor contingencies concern the suite of ways in which an object can be revealed through exploration. Sensorimotor knowledge is thus directed through experience to the world itself.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Two cross-modal experiments provide partial support for O'Regan & Noë's (O&N's) claim that sensorimotor contingencies mediate perception. Differences in locating a target sound accompanied by a spatially disparate neutral light correlate with whether the two stimuli were perceived as spatially unified. This correlation suggests that internal representations are necessary for conscious perception, which may also mediate sensorimotor contingencies.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... There are two well-developed formalizations of discrete time dynamic systems that evidently share many concerns but suffer from a lack of mutual awareness. One formalization is classical systems and automata theory. The other is the logic of actions in which the situation and event calculi are the strongest representatives. Researchers in artificial intelligence are likely to be familiar with the latter but not the former. This is unfortunate, for systems and automata theory have much to offer by way of insight into problems raised in the logics of action. This paper is an outline of how the input-output view of systems and its associated solution of state realization may be applied to the formalization of dynamics that uses a situation calculus approach. In particular, because the latter usually admits incompletely specified dynamics, which induces a non-deterministic input-output system behavior, we first show that classical state realization can still be achieved if the behavior is causal. This is a novel systems-theoretic result. Then we proceed to indicate how situation calculi dynamic specifications can be understood in systems-theoretic terms, and how automata can be viewed as models of such specifications. As techniques for reasoning about automata are abundant, this will provide yet more tools for reasoning about actions.
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| | Other links: springerlink.com dx.doi.org jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... An experimenter studies “sensorimotor contingencies”; the stimulus is primary and the subject's response consequential. But the subject, looking at the world from his or her distinctive viewpoint, is occupied with “motorsensory contingencies”; the response is now primary and the sensory consequential. These two categories are gathered together under the one term in the target article. This commentary disambiguates the confusion.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Sensorimotor contingencies are certainly of great importance for perception but they are no substitute for the internal representation of perceived information. I argue that internal, non-iconic representations of perceptions must, and do, exist and that sensorimotor contingencies are an integral part of them. Further, I argue that mastery of the sensory apparatus or environment is not a prerequisite for perception and that perception is possible in the absence of any control over the perceptual process.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... 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.
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| | Other links: onlinelibrary.wiley.com dx.doi.org doi.wiley.com | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The theoretical proposal that perceptual experience be thought of as expectancies about sensorimotor contingencies, rather than as expressions of mental representations, is endorsed; examples that effectively enforce that view are discussed; and one example (of perceptual coupling) that seems to demand a mental representation, with all of the diagnostic value such a tool would have, is raised for consideration.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Discussion of Ned Block, Behaviorism revisited
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