Sensorimotor and Enactive Approaches to Consciousness

Abstract

This chapter discusses the sensorimotor thesis that experience is something we do, and explores how it helps to deal with the philosophical problem of consciousness. In Mind-Life Continuity (MLC) Enactivism, it has been argued that consciousness can occur only when and where the organization of life is present. "Enactivism" is a term that encompasses a wide variety of approaches to mind and experience. These various approaches all share the view that action and interaction are at the basis of all (human and animal) mentality. The chapter shows how construal of the sensorimotor approach to consciousness can be used to reject the criticism often made against sensorimotor theory, namely that by invoking the environment in its account of consciousness, the sensorimotor theory deepens, rather than overcomes, the philosophical problem of consciousness. Sensorimotor theorists reject representations when they are proposed to explain consciousness.