This book analyzes the philosophical foundations of sensorimotor theory and discusses the most recent applications of sensorimotor theory to human computer interaction, child’s play, virtual reality, robotics, and linguistics. Why does a circle look curved and not angular? Why does red not sound like a bell? Why, as I interact with the world, is there something it is like to be me? An analytic philosopher might suggest: ``if we ponder the concept of circle we find that it is the essence of a circle to be round’’. However, where does this definition come from? Was it set in stone by the Gods, in other words by divine arbiters of circleness, redness and consciousness? Particularly, with regard to visual consciousness, a first attempt to explain why our conscious experience of the world appears as it does has been attributed to Kevin O’Regan and Alva Noe, who published their sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness in 2001. Starting with a chapter by Kevin O’Regan, Contemporary Sensorimotor Theory continues by presenting fifteen additional essays on as many developments achieved in recent years in this field. It provides readers with a critical review of the sensorimotor theory and in so doing introduces them to a radically new enactive approach in cognitive science.

Mastering the sensorimotor capabilities of our body is a skill that we acquire and refine over time, starting at the prenatal stages of development. This learning process is linked to brain development and is shaped by the rich set of multimodal information experienced while exploring and interacting with the environment. Evidence coming from neuroscience suggests the brain forms and mantains body representations as the main strategy to this mastering. Although it is still not clear how this knowledge is represented in our brain, it is reasonable to think that such internal models of the body undergo a continuous process of adaptation. They need to match growing corporal dimensions during development, as well as temporary changes in the characteristics of the body, such as the transient morphological alterations produced by the usage of tools. In the robotics community there is an increasing interest in reproducing similar mechanisms in artificial agents, mainly motivated by the aim of producing autonomous adaptive systems that can deal with complexity and uncertainty in human environments. Although promising results have been achieved in the context of sensorimotor learning and autonomous generation of body representations, it is still not clear how such low-level representations can be scaled up to more complex motor skills and how they can enable the development of cognitive capabilities. Recent findings from behavioural and brain studies suggests that processes of mental simulations of action-perception loops are likely to be executed in our brain and are dependent on internal motor representations. The capability to simulate sensorimotor experience might represent a key mechanism behind the implementation of further cognitive skills, such as self-detection, self-other distinction and imitation. Empirical investigation on the functioning of similar processes in the brain and on their implementation in artificial agents is fragmented. This e-book comprises a collection of manuscripts published by Frontiers in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, under the section Humanoid Robotics, on the research topic re-enactment of sensorimotor experience for cognition in artificial agents. This compendium aims at condensing the latest theoretical, review and experimental studies that address new paradigms for learning and integrating multimodal sensorimotor information in artificial agents, re-use of the sensorimotor experience for cognitive development and further construction of more complex strategies and behaviours using these concepts. The authors would like to thank M.A. Dylan Andrade for his art work for the cover.

How accurate is the picture of the human mind that has emerged from studies in neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science? Anybody with an interest in how minds work - how we learn about the world and how we remember people and events - may feel dissatisfied with the answers contemporary science has to offer. Sensorimotor Life draws on current theoretical developments in the enactive approach to life and mind. It examines and expands the premises of the sciences of the human mind, while developing an alternative picture closer to people's daily experiences. Enactive ideas are applied and extended, providing a theoretically rich, naturalistic account of meaning and agency. The book includes a dynamical systems description of different types of sensorimotor regularities or sensorimotor contingencies; a dynamical interpretation of Piaget's theory of equilibration to ground the concept of sensorimotor mastery; and a theory of agency as organized networks of sensorimotor schemes, as well as its implicatons for embodied subjectivity. Written for students and researchers of cognitive science, the authors offer a fuller view of the mind, a view better attuned to the experiences of people who live, work, love, struggle, and age, thrown into a world of meaningful relations they help create. Additionally, the book is of interest to neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and philosophers of science.

The issue of the relationship between cognition and motor processes can be - and has been - raised at different levels of analysis. At the neurophysiological level it refers to the interactions between afferent and efferent information. At the neurological and neuropsychological level it relates to the mutual dependencies between the sensory and the motor part of the brain, or, more precisely, between sensory and motor functions of various parts of the brain. In psychology, the issue under debate concerns, at a molecular level, the relationship between percep tion and movement or, at a more molar level, the relations between cognition and action. For the title of this book we deliberately decided to combine two terms that are taken from two of these levels ,in order to emphasize both the multilevel structure of the issues involved and the multidis ciplinary nature of the following contributions. Although the term "cognition" has been tremendously misused in recent years (at least in psychology), it is still the only term available to serve as a convenient collective name for all sorts of cognitive processes and functions.

An engrossing history of the century that transformed our knowledge of the body’s inner senses The years between 1833 and 1945 fundamentally transformed science’s understanding of the body’s inner senses, revolutionizing fields like philosophy, the social sciences, and cognitive science. In How We Became Sensorimotor, Mark Paterson provides a systematic account of this transformative period, while also demonstrating its substantial implications for current explorations into phenomenology, embodied consciousness, the extended mind, and theories of the sensorimotor, the body, and embodiment. Each chapter of How We Became Sensorimotor takes a particular sense and historicizes its formation by means of recent scientific studies, case studies, or coverage in the media. Ranging among a diverse array of sensations, including balance, fatigue, pain, the “muscle sense,” and what Maurice Merleau-Ponty termed “motricity,” Paterson’s analysis moves outward from the familiar confines of the laboratory to those of the industrial world and even to wild animals and their habitats. He uncovers important stories, such as how forgotten pain-measurement schemes transformed criminology, or how Penfield’s outmoded concepts of the sensory and motor homunculi of the brain still mar psychology textbooks. Complete with original archival research featuring illustrations and correspondence, How We Became Sensorimotor shows how the shifting and sometimes contested historical background to our understandings of the senses are being extended even today.

Enactivist Interventions is an interdisciplinary work that explores how theories of embodied cognition illuminate many aspects of the mind, including intentionality, representation, the affect, perception, action and free will, higher-order cognition, and intersubjectivity. Gallagher argues for a rethinking of the concept of mind, drawing on pragmatism, phenomenology and cognitive science. Enactivism is presented as a philosophy of nature that has significant methodological and theoretical implications for the scientific investigation of the mind. Gallagher argues that, like the basic phenomena of perception and action, sophisticated cognitive phenomena like reflection, imagining, and mathematical reasoning are best explained in terms of an affordance-based skilled coping. He offers an account of the continuity that runs between basic action, affectivity, and a rationality that in every case remains embodied. Gallagher's analysis also addresses recent predictive models of brain function and outlines an alternative, enactivist interpretation that emphasizes the close coupling of brain, body and environment rather than a strong boundary that isolates the brain in its internal processes. The extensive relational dynamics that integrates the brain with the extra-neural body opens into an environment that is physical, social and cultural and that recycles back into the enactive process. Cognitive processes are in-the-world rather than in-the-head; they are situated in affordance spaces defined across evolutionary, developmental and individual histories, and are constrained by affective processes and normative dimensions of social and cultural practices.

There has been an explosion of work on consciousness in the last 30–40 years from philosophers, psychologists, and neurologists. Thus, there is a need for an interdisciplinary, comprehensive volume in the field that brings together contributions from a wide range of experts on fundamental and cutting-edge topics. The Routledge Handbook of Consciousness fills this need and makes each chapter’s importance understandable to students and researchers from a variety of backgrounds. Designed to complement and better explain primary sources, this volume is a valuable "first-stop" publication for undergraduate or graduate students enrolled in any course on "Consciousness," "Philosophy of Mind," or "Philosophy of Psychology," as well as a valuable handbook for researchers in these fields who want a useful reference to have close at hand. The 34 chapters, all published here for the first time, are divided into three parts: Part I covers the "History and Background Metaphysics" of consciousness, such as dualism, materialism, free will, and personal identity, and includes a chapter on Indian philosophy. Part II is on specific "Contemporary Theories of Consciousness," with chapters on representational, information integration, global workspace, attention-based, and quantum theories. Part III is entitled "Major Topics in Consciousness Research," with chapters on psychopathologies, dreaming, meditation, time, action, emotion, multisensory experience, animal and robot consciousness, and the unity of consciousness. Each chapter begins with a brief introduction and concludes with a list of "Related Topics," as well as a list of "References," making the volume indispensable for the newcomer and experienced researcher alike.