Sensorimotor contingencies

This paper asks about the ways in which embodimentoriented
cognitive science contributes to our understanding of phenomenal
consciousness. It is first argued that central work in the field
of embodied cognitive science does not solve the hard problem of consciousness
(Chalmers, 1996) head on. It is then argued that an
embodied turn toward neurophenomenology makes no distinctive
headway on the puzzle of consciousness; for neurophenomenology
either concedes dualism in the face of the hard problem or represents
only a slight methodological variation on extant cognitive-scientific
approaches to the easy problems of consciousness. The paper closes
with the positive suggestion that embodied cognitive science supports
a different approach to phenomenal consciousness, according to
which the mind is massively representational (and cognitive processing
teems with body-related representations), cognitive science has no
use for the personal-level posits that tend to drive philosophical theorizing
about consciousness and mind, and the hard problem is
illusory.

Anil Seth’s target paper connects the framework of PP (predictive processing) and the FEP (free-energy principle) to cybernetic principles. Exploiting an analogy to theory of science, Seth draws a distinction between three types of active inference. The first type involves confirmatory hypothesis-testing. The other types involve seeking disconfirming and disambiguating evidence, respectively. Furthermore, Seth applies PP to various fascinating phenomena, including perceptual presence. In this commentary, I explore how far we can take the analogy between explanation in perception and explanation in science.
In the first part, I draw a slightly broader analogy between PP and concepts in theory of science, by asking whether the Bayesian brain is Kuhnian or Popperian. While many aspects of PP are in line with Karl Popper’s falsificationism, other aspects of PP conform to how Thomas Kuhn described scientific revolutions. Thus, there is both a sense in which the Bayesian brain is Kuhnian, and a sense in which it is Popperian. The upshot of these considerations is that falsification in PP can take many different forms. In particular, active inference can be used to falsify a model in more ways than identified by Seth.
In the second part of this commentary, I focus on Seth’s PPSMCT (predictive processing account of sensorimotor contingency theory) and its application to perceptual presence, which assigns a crucial role to counterfactual richness. In my discussion, I question the significance of counterfactual richness for perceptual presence. First, I highlight an ambiguity inherent in Seth’s descriptions of the target phenomenon (perceptual presence vs. objecthood). Then I suggest that counterfactual richness may not be the crucial underlying feature (of either perceptual presence of objecthood). Giving a series of examples, I argue that the degree of represented causal integration is an equally good candidate for accounting for perceptual presence (or objecthood), although more work needs to be done.

This article surveys and synthesizes dynamic systems models of development from biology, neuroscience, and psychology in order to propose an integrated account of growth, learning, and behavior. Key to this account is the concept of self-differentiation or symmetry-breaking. I argue that development can be understood as a cascade of symmetry-breaking events brought about by the ongoing interactions of multiple, nested, nonlinear dynamic systems whose self-organizing behaviors gradually alter their own anatomical conditions.

We experience our encounters with the world and others in different degrees of intensity – the presence of things and others is gradual. I introduce this kind of presence as a ubiquitous feature of every phenomenally conscious experience, as well as a key ingredient of our ‘feeling of being alive’, and distinguish explanatory agendas that might be relevant with regard to this phenomenon (1-3). My focus will be the role of the body-brain nexus in realizing these experiences and its treatment in recent accounts of the bodily constitution of experience. Specifically, I compare a sensorimotor approach to perceptual presence that focuses on properties of the moving body (O’Regan 2011; Noë 2012) with a more general enactivism that focuses on properties of the living body (Thompson 2007).
First, I develop and discuss a theory of access derived from sensorimotor theory that might be suited to explain the phenomenon of gradual presence. This is a theory that sees the mastery of sensorimotor, bodily engagements with the world as key elements in setting up a phenomenal experience space. I object that in current versions of sensorimotor theory the correlation posited between presence and changes in the subject’s physical relation to the environment is too rigid. Nevertheless I defend the claim that gradual presence is constituted by our temporally extended engagement with the environment (4-7).
Second, I consider some objections stemming from enactivism with regard to self-regulatory properties of the living body and the phenomenological claim that the organism’s value-laden relations with its environment have to be included in the theory. I will show that the latter is a necessary amendment to sensorimotor theory and its concept of gradual presence (8-10).

In 1986 Francisco Varela illustrates the concept of structural coupling presenting Bittorio an environmentally coupled cellular automaton. Taking inspiration from this work, this paper describes the emergent behaviors resulting from the structural coupling between a one-dimensional cellular automaton and a simulated walker.
Keywords: Environmentally Coupled Cellular Automaton· Structural Coupling Embodiment· Emergence

11/04/2022 UPDATE
Materialist theories of phenomenal consciousness claim the physical basis of consciousness is to be found only in the brain, and really often in a quite limited subset of brain processes. Defenders of the extended consciousness thesis argue against this view, claiming that the material basis of consciousness also includes non-neuronal components, such as a subject's active body and dedicated environmental structures. This is a bold-and in the eyes of many, provocative-position which is currently gaining momentum in the philosophy of mind. Yet, oftentimes, the arguments deployed to secure such a view are a bit obscure, and charges of misunderstanding are quite common in the dedicated literature-hence this contribution. Here, I pursue two distinct aims: the first is that of systematizing, rationally reconstructing, and clarifying many popular arguments to the effect that consciousness extends; the second is that of evaluating whether any such argument offers us a compelling reason to think that the physical basis of phenomenality includes some non-neuronal component. My conclusion is negative: at present, we have no compelling reason to believe that consciousness extends.

Mirror neuron research has come a long way since the early 90’s, and many theorists are now stressing the heterogeneity and complexity of the sensorimotor properties of fronto-parietal circuits. However, core aspects of the initial ‘mirror mechanism’ theory, i.e. the idea of a symmetric encapsulated mirroring function translating sensory action perceptions into motor formats, still appears to be shaping much of the debate. This article challenges the empirical plausibility of the sensorimotor segregation implicit in the original mirror metaphor. It is proposed instead that the teleological organization found in the broader fronto-parietal circuits might be inherently sensorimotor. Thus the idea of an independent ‘purely perceptual’ goal understanding process is questioned. Further, it is hypothesized that the often asymmetric, heterogeneous and contextually modulated mirror and canonical neurons support a function of multisensory mapping and tracking of the perceiving agents affordance space. Such a shift in the interpretative framework offers a different theoretical handle on how sensorimotor processes might ground various aspects of intentional action choice and social cognition. Mirror neurons would under the proposed “social affordance model” be seen as dynamic parts of larger circuits, which support tracking of currently shared and competing action possibilities. These circuits support action selection processes—but also our understanding of the options and action potentials that we and perhaps others have in the affordance space. In terms of social cognition ‘mirror’ circuits might thus help us understand not only the intentional actions others are actually performing—but also what they could have done, did not do and might do shortly.

Social factors have so far been neglected in embodied theories of perception despite the wealth of phenomenological insights and empirical evidence indicating their importance. I examine evidence from developmental psychology and neuroscience and attempt an initial classification according to whether social factors play a contextual, enabling, or constitutive role in the ability to perceive objects in a detached manner, i.e. beyond their immediate instrumental use. While evidence of cross-cultural variations in perceptual styles and the influence of social cues on visual attention could not be said to play more than a contextual role, other factors such as the intricate developmental links between dyadic and triadic interactions in infancy, as well as episodes of peer-learning in children, play enabling roles. A common element in these factors is the presence and resolution of interpersonal conflict. Detached object perception could not develop without these social factors. I argue, in addition, that social skills such as managing partial social acts which are addressed to and completed by others, linguistic mediation, make-believe play, and the ability to control perspectival switches are constitutive — i.e. are of the essence — of the ability to see objects as present with a detached attitude. I discuss the prospects of incorporating such social elements into dynamical interpretations of the sensorimotor approach through the enactive notion of participatory sense-making.

This paper aims to defend the thesis that we can only perceive what we understand. Such a theory would seem to be unable to account for our learning to perceive what we do not yet understand. To address this objection, the paper presents a non- representationalist, direct realist theory of perception. In this, the sensorimotor theory of Noë and O’Regan plays a crucial role (although one important modification to the interpretation of that theory is proposed). The result is an account of how we are in contact with the world itself during perceptual experience; and this leads to an account of how the world itself guides our understanding, as we move from non-sense to sense.

In response to the cognitivistic paradigm and its problems, the embodied cognition viewpoint was proposed. In robotics, this resulted in a radical move away from higher-level cognitive functions toward direct, almost "brain-less" interaction with the environment (e.g., behavior-based robotics).  While some remarkable behaviors were demonstrated, the complexity of tasks the agents could master remained limited. A natural extension of this approach lies in letting the agents extract regularities in sensorimotor space and exploit them for more effective action guidance. We will use a collection of case studies featuring a quadruped robot to concretely explore this space of “minimally cognitive” phenomena and contrast the concepts of body schema, forward internal models, and sensorimotor contingencies. The results will be interpreted from a "grounded cognition" and a non-representationalist or enactive perspective. Finally, the utility of robots as cognitive science tools and their compatibility with different cognitive science paradigms will be discussed.

Since the publication of O'Regan and Noë's original article
in Behavioral and Brain Sciences in 2001, which rst set out the sensorimotor account by which sensory experience and motor engagement are inextricably intertwined, there have been not just one but many sensorimotor accounts. However, in many ways that original article remains the canonical account. In this paper, I discuss a particular theory of concepts from philosophy of mind -- the unified conceptual space theory, based on Peter Gärdenfors' conceptual spaces theory -- and, in that light, set out what I take to be the key points of the 2001 account, along with its strengths and weaknesses. I discuss the ways in which the 2001 account
aligns with, and departs from, the unied conceptual space theory; and I offer an extension to it that I call sensorimotor++, which adds to the 2001 account a key role for emotional affect and the somatosensory system, with which one might ground salience, and a key role for (so-called 'mental') representation, properly understood. I argue that sensorimotor++ makes for a better theory of concepts: one that is not just embedded and embodied but enactive -- and, perhaps, a better sensorimotor
theory more broadly.

This article focuses on the question of the function of imitation and whether current accounts of imitative function are consistent with our knowledge about imitation's origins. We first review theories of imitative origin concluding that empirical evidence suggests that imitation arises from domain-general learning mechanisms. Next, we lay out a selective account of function that allows normative functions to be ascribed to learned behaviours. We then describe and review four accounts of the function of imitation before evaluating the relationship between the claim that imitation arises out of domain-general learning mechanisms and theories of the function of imitation. A central topic in the contemporary philosophy of mind, as well as in social neuroscience and developmental psychology, is the study of imitative behaviour. Humans imitate across a wide range of tasks and domains with high fidelity and subtle sensitivity to context, more so than any other species (Subiaul, 2016; Whiten, 2011). Two overarching questions can be asked in our attempts to understand imitation behaviour: Where does it come from? What is it for? In the present article, we focus primarily on the second question, describing different theories of the function of imitation and considering how our current theories of the origins of imitation relate to what we use imitation for. To preview the structure of this article, we will first consider definitions of imitation and will briefly review the debate on the origins of imitation. We suggest that the weight of evidence supports the claim that imitation arises out of general sensorimotor learning mechanisms (Cook, Bird, Catmur, Press & Heyes, 2014). We then consider what it means to define a function and describe four †

Contributions by Matthew Ratcliffe, Jan Slaby, Achim Stephan, Riccardo Manzotti, Alice Holzhey-Kunz, Thomas Fuchs, Joerg Fingerhut, Fiorella Battaglia, Arbogast Schmitt, Eva-Maria Engelen, Tanja Klemm, Matthias Jung, Sabine Marienberg.

The question of what characterizes feelings of being alive is a puzzling and controversial one. Are we dealing with a unique affective phenomenon or can it be integrated into existing classifications of emotions and moods? What might be the natural basis for such feelings? What could be considered their specifically human dimension? These issues are addressed by researchers from various disciplines, including philosophy of mind and emotions, psychology, and history of art.

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Many philosophers claim that the neurocomputational framework of predictive processing entails a globally inferentialist and representationalist view of cognition. Here, I contend that this is not correct. I argue that, given the theoretical commitments these philosophers endorse, no structure within predictive processing systems can be rightfully identified as a representational vehicle. To do so, I first examine some of the theoretical commitments these philosophers share, and show that these commitments provide a set of necessary conditions the satisfaction of which allows us to identify representational vehicles. Having done so, I introduce a predictive processing system capable of active inference, in the form of a simple robotic "brain". I examine it thoroughly, and show that, given the necessary conditions highlighted above, none of its components qualifies as a representational vehicle. I then consider and allay some worries my claim could raise. I consider whether the anti-representationalist verdict thus obtained could be generalized, and provide some reasons favoring a positive answer. I further consider whether my arguments here could be blocked by allowing the same representational vehicle to possess multiple contents, and whether my arguments entail some extreme form of revisionism, answering in the negative in both cases. A quick conclusion follows.

How should we understand the relationship between conscious perception and action? Does an appeal to action have any place in an account of colour experience? This essay aims to shed light on the first question by giving a positive response to the second. I consider two types of enactive approach to perceptual consciousness, and two types of account of colour perception. Each approach to colour perception faces serious objections. However, the two views can be combined in a way that resists the criticisms to each. Furthermore, the hybrid view we arrive at lets us see which enactive account of perceptual consciousness we should prefer in the case of colour.

The sensorimotor theory of perception and consciousness is frequently presented as a variety of anti-representationalist cognitive science, and there is thus a temptation to suppose that those who take representation as bedrock should reject the approach. This paper argues that the sensorimotor approach is compatible with representationalism, and moreover that representationalism about phenomenal qualities, such as that advocated by Tye, would be more complete and less vulnerable to criticism if it incorporated the sensorimotor account of conscious feel. The paper concludes by arguing that the project of naturalizing phenomenal qualities would nonetheless be better served by abandoning ‘representation’ talk altogether, a move that would require only a small modification of existing representationalist accounts.

Can we see the expressiveness of other people's gestures, hear the intentions in their voice, see the emotions in their posture? Traditional theories of social cognition still say we cannot because intentions and emotions for them are hidden away inside and we do not have direct access to them. Enactive theories still have no idea because they have so far mainly focused on perception of our physical world. We surmise, however, that the latter hold promise since, in trying to understand cognition, enactive theory focuses on the embodied engagements of a cognizer with his world. In this paper, we attempt an answer for the question What is social perception in an enactive account? In enaction, perception is conceived as a skill, crucially involving action (perception is action and action is perception), an ability to work successfully within the set of regularities, or contingencies that characterize a given domain. If this is the case, then social perception should be a social skill. Having thus  transformed the question of what social perception is into that of what social skill is, we examine the concept of social contingencies and the manner in which social skills structure—both constrain and empower—social interaction. Some of the implications of our account for how social and physical perception differ, the role of embodiment in social interaction and the distinction between our approach and other social contingency theories are also addressed.

The enactivist tradition, out of which neurophenomenology arose, rejects various internalisms – including the representationalist and information-processing metaphors – but remains wedded to one further internalism:the claim that the structure of perceptual experience is directly, constitutively linked only to internal, brain-based dynamics.
I aim to reject this internalism and defend an alternative analysis.
The paper presents a direct-realist, externalist, sensorimotor account of perceptual experience. It uses the concept of counterfactual meaningful action to defend this view against various objections.
This account of experience matches certain first-person features of experience better than an internalist account could. It is fully tractable as “normal science.”
The neuroscientific conception of brain function should change from that of internal representation or modelling to that of enabling meaningful, embodied action in ways that constitutively involve the world. Neurophenomenology should aim to match the structure of first-person experience with the structure of meaningful agent-world interactions, not with that of brain dynamics.
The sensorimotor approachshows us what external objects are, such that we may enact them, and what experience is, such that it may present us with those enacted objects.

The optimal power problem seeks to find an optimal profile of active and reactive power generation along with the voltage magnitudes in such a manner as to minimize the total operating cost of electric power system, while satisfying network security constraints .The Simple Genetic Algorithm with fixed penalty and variable penalty advantages finds its own utility in optimal power flow solutions .This paper presents three algorithm with an effect of variable penalty using Fuzzy Logic selection on the convergence of OPF. Fuzzy Logic variable penalty based study is provided to visualize the effect of selection of control variables on OPF convergence with solution time and improved value. Extensive study is provided on IEEE 30 bus system to draw certain important conclusions

In this chapter, I put forward and sustain an articulation of the notion of bodily skill based on the ecological psychology, and I show how it is relevant for the debate between Dreyfus and McDowell about the skillful coping and also for the debate about whether know-how is reducible or not to propositional knowledge. The right metaphor to understand bodily skills isn't the computer metaphor but the radio one. These skills results from a process of organism attunement to its environment.
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Neste capítulo, apresento e sustento uma articulação da noção de habilidade corporal ou sensoriomotora a partir da psicologia ecológica e mostro como ela é relevante para o debate entre Dreyfus e McDowell sobre a lida habilidosa e também para o debate sobre se saber-fazer se reduz ou não a conhecimento proposicional. A metáfora correta para compreender habilidades corporais não é a do computador, mas a do rádio. Essas habilidades resultam de um processo de sintonização do organismo com o seu ambiente.

How and when do we learn to understand other people’s perspectives and possibly divergent beliefs? This question has elicited much theoretical and empirical research. A puzzling finding has been that toddlers perform well on so-called implicit false belief (FB) tasks but do not show such capacities on traditional explicit FB tasks. I propose a navigational approach, which offers a hitherto ignored way of making sense of the seemingly contradictory results. The proposal involves a distinction between how we navigate FBs as they relate to 1) our current affordances (here & now navigation) as opposed to 2) presently non-actual relations, where we need to leave our concrete embodied/situated viewpoint (counterfactual navigation). It is proposed that whereas toddlers seem able to understand FBs in their current affordance space, they do not yet possess the resources to navigate in abstraction from such concrete affordances, which explicit FB tests seem to require. It is hypothesized that counterfactual navigation depends on the development of ‘sensorimotor priors’, i.e. statistical expectations of own kinestetic re-afference, which evidence now suggests matures around age four, consistent with core findings of explicit FB performance.

I strongly agree with Kirchhoff and Hutto that consciousness and embodied action are one and the same, but I disagree when they say this identity cannot be fully explained and must sim- ply be posited. Here I attempt to sketch the outlines of just such an explanation.

With robots leaving factory environments and entering less controlled domains, possibly sharing living space with humans, safety needs to be guaranteed. To this end, some form of awareness of their body surface and the space surrounding it is desirable. In this work, we present a unique method that lets a robot learn a distributed representation of space around its body (or peripersonal space) by exploiting a whole-body artificial skin and through physical contact with the environment. Every taxel (tactile element) has a visual receptive field anchored to it. Starting from an initially blank state, the distance of every object entering this receptive field is visually perceived and recorded, together with information whether the object has eventually contacted the particular skin area or not. This gives rise to a set of probabilities that are updated incrementally and that carry information about the likelihood of particular events in the environment contacting a particular set of taxels. The learned representation naturally serves the purpose of predicting contacts with the whole body of the robot, which is of clear behavioral relevance. Furthermore, we devised a simple avoidance controller that is triggered by this representation, thus endowing a robot with a "margin of safety'' around its body. Finally, simply reversing the sign in the controller we used gives rise to simple "reaching'' for objects in the robot's vicinity, which automatically proceeds with the most activated (closest) body part.

The sensorimotor theory of perceptual consciousness offers a form of enactivism in that it stresses patterns of interaction instead of any alleged internal representations of the environment. But how does it relate to forms of enactivism stressing the continuity between life and mind (and more particularly autopoiesis, autonomy, and valence)? We shall distinguish sensorimotor enactivism, which stresses perceptual capacities themselves, from autopoietic enactivism, which claims an essential connection between experience and autopoietic processes or associated background capacities. We show how autopoiesis, autonomous agency, and affective dimensions of experience may fit into sensorimotor enactivism, and we identify differences between this interpretation and autopoietic enactivism. By taking artificial consciousness as a case in point, we further sharpen the distinction between sensorimotor enactivism and autopoietic enactivism. We argue that sensorimotor enactivism forms a strong default position for an enactive account of perceptual consciousness.

The optimal power problem seeks to find an optimal profile of active and reactive power generation along
with the voltage magnitudes in such a manner as to minimize the total operating cost of electric power
system, while satisfying network security constraints .The Simple Genetic Algorithm with fixed penalty and
variable penalty advantages finds its own utility in optimal power flow solutions .This paper presents three
algorithm with an effect of variable penalty using Fuzzy Logic selection on the convergence of OPF. Fuzzy
Logic variable penalty based study is provided to visualize the effect of selection of control variables on
OPF convergence with solution time and improved value. Extensive study is provided on IEEE 30 bus
system to draw certain important conclusions