In a majority of situations the normal adult maintains posture or moves without consciously monitoring motor activity. Posture and movement are usually close to automatic; they tend to take care of themselves, outside of attentive regard. One's body, in such cases, effaces itself as one is geared into a particular intentional goal. This effacement is possible because of the normal functioning of a body schema. Body schema can be defined as a system of preconscious, subpersonal processes that play a dynamic (...) role in governing posture and movement (Head, 1920). There is an important and often overlooked conceptual difference between the subpersonal body schema and what is usually called body image . The latter is most often defined as a conscious idea or mental representation that one has of one's own body (for example, Adame, Radell, Johnson, and Cole, 1991; Gardner and Moncrieff, 1988; Schilder, 1935). Despite the conceptual difference many researchers use the terms interchangeably, leading to both a terminological and conceptual confusion. (shrink)

This is a book about how we see: the environment around us (its surfaces, their layout, and their colors and textures); where we are in the environment; whether or not we are moving and, if we are, where we are going; what things are good for; how to do things (to thread a needle or drive an automobile); or why things look as they do.The basic assumption is that vision depends on the eye which is connected to the brain. The (...) author suggests that natural vision depends on the eyes in the head on a body supported by the ground, the brain being only the central organ of a complete visual system. When no constraints are put on the visual system, people look around, walk up to something interesting and move around it so as to see it from all sides, and go from one vista to another. That is natural vision—and what this book is about. (shrink)

Many current neurophysiological, psychophysical, and psychological approaches to vision rest on the idea that when we see, the brain produces an internal representation of the world. The activation of this internal representation is assumed to give rise to the experience of seeing. The problem with this kind of approach is that it leaves unexplained how the existence of such a detailed internal representation might produce visual consciousness. An alternative proposal is made here. We propose that seeing is a way of (...) acting. It is a particular way of exploring the environment. Activity in internal representations does not generate the experience of seeing. The out- side world serves as its own, external, representation. The experience of seeing occurs when the organism masters what we call the gov- erning laws of sensorimotor contingency. The advantage of this approach is that it provides a natural and principled way of accounting for visual consciousness, and for the differences in the perceived quality of sensory experience in the different sensory modalities. Sev- eral lines of empirical evidence are brought forward in support of the theory, in particular: evidence from experiments in sensorimotor adaptation, visual “filling in,” visual stability despite eye movements, change blindness, sensory substitution, and color perception. (shrink)

La tradition phénoménologique s'oppose aux sciences cogmttves contemporaines en ceci que le corps propre n'est pas, pour elle, une simple chose du monde physique dont l'esprit-cerveau contiendrait une représentation mentale, mais qu'il est plutôt constitué en son sens d'être pour le sujet par son usage et son appropriation active par ce même sujet, en tant qu'être agissant. Or, il existe une affinité, encore non reconnue, entre cette conception et celle qui ressort de la littérature en cartographie cérébrale des vingt dernières (...) années, d'une neurodynamique morphogénétique fonctionnelle induite et modulée par l'expérience, en une relative autonomie par rapport aux structures anatomiques du corps comme aux frontières cytoarchitectoniques du cerveau. Tirant parti de cette affinité, nous prenons appui sur les données des neurosciences pour réhabiliter contre sa dévalorisation par les sciences cognitives la théorie de la constitution de Husserl, en revenant de ses adaptations ultérieures (Merleau-Ponty) à sa forme authentique, qui est celle de l'auto-constitution subjective (transcendantale) du corps propre sur la base de l'expérience pratico-kinesthésique du «je meus mon corps ». (shrink)

In recent years there has been some hard-won but still limited agreement that phenomenology may be of central importance to the cognitive sciences. This realization comes in the wake of dismissive gestures made by philosophers of mind like Dennett (1991), who mistakenly associates phenomenological method with the worst forms of introspection. For very different reasons, resistance can also be found on the phenomenological side of this issue. There are many thinkers well versed in the Husserlian tradition who do not even (...) want to consider the usefulness of phenomenology for enlightening the sciences of the mind. For them cognitive science is simply too computational or too reductionistic to be seriously considered as capable of explaining experience or consciousness. [1] This is surprising in light of the fact that a highly respected phenomenologist like Merleau-Ponty was integrating phenomenological analyses with considerations drawn from the empirical sciences of psychology and neurology long before cognitive science was constructed as a framework to include just those aspects of psychology and neurology that focus on cognitive experience. Merleau-Ponty aside, philosophers on both sides of this issue have only gradually come to acknowledge the possibility that phenomenology may be directly relevant for a scientific understanding of cognition. Sometimes the empirical scientists themselves have arrived at this conclusion even before, and in spite of the philosophers. Francisco Varela's work on neurophenomenology provides an important example (Varela, 1996). Even the hardest of hard scientists have made peace offerings to phenomenology. Recently, for example, the neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux declares that his purpose "is not to go to war against phenomenology; to the contrary, [he wants] to see what constructive contribution it can make to our knowledge of the psyche, acting in concert with the neurosciences" (Changeux and Ricoeur, 2000, p. 85). (shrink)

Penseur singulier et inclassable, auteur de La gnose de -, Raymond Ruyer développa en plein XXe siècle le projet d'une méta-physique panpsychiste contemporaine des dernières avancées de l'embryologie, de la cybernétique et de la physique quantique. Salué par Merleau-Ponty et Deleuze, Ruyer est redécouvert aujourd'hui, notamment grâce aux travaux de Fabrice Colonna qui signe la préface de cette nouvelle édition de Néo-finalisme. Raymond Ruyer y entreprend rien de moins qu'une réhabilitation du thème finaliste que la philosophie et la science modernes (...) semblaient avoir définitivement remisé. Appuyée sur les résultats de la science, la réflexion philosophique conduit à reconnaître qu'une finalité réelle et créatrice est à l'oeuvre dans les replis de la nature partout où se manifeste une activité organisatrice de structures spatio-temporelles. Les questions les plus fondamentales de la métaphysique s'en trouvent transformées : le sens de la vie corporelle, la signification de la liberté, la possibilité d'un Dieu. (shrink)

Philosophical considerations as well as several recent studies from neurophysiology, neuropsychology, and psychophysics converged in showing that the peripersonal space is structured in a body-centred manner and represented through integrated sensory inputs. Multisensory representations may deserve the function of coding peripersonal space for avoiding or interacting with objects. Neuropsychological evidence is reviewed for dynamic interactions between space representations and action execution, as revealed by the behavioural effects that the use of a tool, as a physical extension of the reachable space, (...) produces on visual–tactile extinction. In particular, tool-use transiently modifies action space representation in a functionally effective way. The possibility is discussed that the investigation of multisensory space representations for action provides an empirical way to consider in its specificity pre-reflexive self-consciousness by considering the intertwining of self-relatedness and object-directness of spatial experience shaped by multisensory and sensorimotor integrations. (shrink)

Philosophical considerations as well as several recent studies from neurophysiology, neuropsychology, and psychophysics converged in showing that the peripersonal space is structured in a body-centred manner and represented through integrated sensory inputs. Multisensory representations may deserve the function of coding peripersonal space for avoiding or interacting with objects. Neuropsychological evidence is reviewed for dynamic interactions between space representations and action execution, as revealed by the behavioural effects that the use of a tool, as a physical extension of the reachable space, (...) produces on visual–tactile extinction. In particular, tool-use transiently modifies action space representation in a functionally effective way. The possibility is discussed that the investigation of multisensory space representations for action provides an empirical way to consider in its specificity pre-reflexive self-consciousness by considering the intertwining of self-relatedness and object-directness of spatial experience shaped by multisensory and sensorimotor integrations. (shrink)

Despite the subjective experience of a continuous and coherent external world, we will argue that the perception and categorisation of visual space is constrained by the spatial resolution of the sensory systems but also and above all, by the pre-reflective representations of the body in action. Recent empirical data in cognitive neurosciences will be presented that suggest that multidimensional categorisation of perceptual space depends on body representations at both an experiential and a functional level. Results will also be resumed that (...) show that representations of the body in action are pre-reflective in nature as only some aspects of the pre-reflective states can be consciously experienced. Finally, a neuro-cognitive model based on the integration of afferent and efferent information will be described, which suggests that action simulation and associated predicted sensory consequences may represent the underlying principle that enables pre-reflective representations of the body for space categorisation and selection for action. (shrink)