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Virtual action: O'Regan & Noë meet Bergson

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2005

Stephen E. Robbins
Stephen E. Robbins*
Affiliation:
Center for Advanced Product Engineering, Metavante Corporation, Milwaukee, WI53224
*
[email protected]
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Abstract:

Bergson, writing in 1896, anticipated “sensorimotor contingencies” under the concept that perception is “virtual action.” But to explain the external image, he embedded this concept in a holographic framework where time-motion is an indivisible and the relation of subject/object is in terms of time. The target article's account of qualitative visual experience falls short for lack of this larger framework.

[Objects] send back, then, to my body, as would a mirror, their eventual influence; they take rank in an order corresponding to the growing or decreasing powers of my body. The objects which surround my body reflect its possible action upon them.

– Henri Bergson (1896/1912, pp. 6–7)

Type
Continuing Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 27 , Issue 6 , December 2004 , pp. 906 - 907
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2004

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Footnotes

Commentary onO'Regan & Noë (2001). A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness. BBS 24(5):939–1031.