creators_name: Froese, Tom creators_name: Spiers, Adam creators_id: t.froese@gmail.com creators_id: a.spiers@bristol.ac.uk type: confpaper datestamp: 2008-01-08 00:29:59 lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:57:02 metadata_visibility: show title: Toward a Phenomenological Pragmatics of Enactive Perception ispublished: pub subjects: phil-mind full_text_status: public keywords: enaction, phenomenology, perceptual supplementation, sensory substition, enactive perception abstract: The enactive approach to perception is generating an extensive amount of interest and debate in the cognitive sciences. One particularly contentious issue has been how best to characterize the perceptual experiences reported by subjects who have mastered the skillful use of a perceptual supplementation (PS) device. This paper argues that this issue cannot be resolved with the use of third-person methodologies alone, but that it requires the development of a phenomenological pragmatics. In particular, it is necessary that the experimenters become skillful in the use of PS devices themselves. The "Enactive Torch" is proposed as an experimental platform which is cheap, non-intrusive and easy to replicate, so as to enable researchers to corroborate reported experiences with their own phenomenology more easily. date: 2007-11 date_type: published pagerange: 105-108 refereed: TRUE referencetext: Bach-y-Rita, P., Collins, C.C., Saunders, F.A., White, B. & Scadden, L. (1969), “Vision Substitution by Tactile Image Projection”, Nature, 221(5184), pp. 963-964 Bach-y-Rita, P. & Kercel, S.W. (2003), “Sensory substitution and the human-machine interface”, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(12), pp. 541-546 Block, N. (2003), “Tactile sensation via spatial perception”, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(7), pp. 285-286 Dennett, D.C. (1991), Consciousness Explained, Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Company Dennett, D.C. (2003), “Who’s on first? Hetero-phenomenology explained”, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 10(9-10), pp. 19-30 Depraz, N., Varela, F.J. & Vermersch, P. (2003), On Becoming Aware: A pragmatics of experiencing, The Netherlands, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co Gallagher, S. (1997), “Mutual enlightenment: Recent phenomenology in cognitive science”, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 4(3), pp. 195-214 Heidegger, M. (1927), Being and Time, trans. by: J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 1962 Hurley, S. & Noë, A. (2003), “Neural Plasticity and Consciousness”, Biology and Philosophy, 18, pp. 131-168 Jonas, H. (1966), The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2001 Lenay, C., Gapenne, O., Hanneton, S., Marque, C. & Genouëlle, C. (2003), “Sensory Substitution: Limits and Perspectives”, in Y. Hatwell et al. (eds.), Touching for Knowing: Cognitive psychology for haptic manual perception, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins, pp. 275-292 Noë, A. (2004), Action in Perception, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press O’Regan, J.K. & Noë, A. (2001), “A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(5), pp. 939-1031 Petitmengin, C. (2006), “Describing one’s subjective experience in the second person: An interview method for the science of consciousness”, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences¸ 5(3-4), pp. 229-269 Prinz, J. (2006), “Putting the Brakes on Enactive Perception”, Psyche, 12(1), pp. 1-19 Spiers, A. (2004), “A Tactile Navigational Aid for Visually Impaired People”, Unpublished B.Sc. Thesis, Department of Cybernetics, University of Reading, UK Spiers, A. & Harwin, W. (2004), “The Haptic Torch: A Torch for the Blind”, Int. Conf. on Disability, Virtual Reality and Assistive Technology, June 2004, Oxford, UK Thompson, E. (2005), “Sensorimotor subjectivity and the enactive approach to experience”, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 4(4), pp. 407-427 Varela, F.J. (1997), “The Naturalization of Phenomenology as the Transcendence of Nature: Searching for generative mutual constraints”, Alter: Revue de Phénoménologie, 5, pp. 355-381 Varela, F.J. & Shear, J. (1999), ‘First-person Methodologies: What, Why, How?’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6(2-3), pp. 1-14 Varela, F.J, Thompson, E. & Rosch, E. (1991), The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press citation: Froese, Mr Tom and Spiers, Mr Adam (2007) Toward a Phenomenological Pragmatics of Enactive Perception. [Conference Paper] document_url: http://cogprints.org/5889/1/csrp593.pdf