Thing-Perception and Enactivism

Why seeing something is an embodied action

Abstract

This paper proposes an enactive account of thing-perception by integrating a descriptive, phenomenological analysis of thing-perception with the American philosopher John Haugeland’s account of “objective perception.” Enactive views of perception hold that perception is a form of embodied action. They apply well to the kind of perception that directly guides embodied action, but so far there is no convincing account as to how they might accommodate “thing-perception,” or the kind of perception that merely presents physical objects as things as such. Phenomenologically speaking, thing-perception is a temporally extended process of transforming an inarticulate appearance of a physical object into an articulate one. Furthermore, such transformation is shaped by embodied action guided by a normative sensitivity to the environment. Accordingly, phenomenological description suggests that ordinary thing-perception depends on the operation of bodily skills or bodily habits of certain kinds. On the other hand, Haugeland submits that our perceptual experience has the structure of objectivity by virtue of our antecedent commitment to certain constitutive standards. In particular, thing-perception is essentially dependent on our commitment to the constitutive standard for thinghood: We experience things as perceptual objects because of our preparedness to maintain in our experience a pattern of phenomena in accord with this constitutive standard. I claim that it is one and the same thing to have a commitment to the constitutive standard for thinghood and to have a bodily habit of seeing physical objects as things as such. Furthermore, I argue by thus integrating the two accounts described so far that thing-perception is essentially dependent on a form of embodied action. To have a bodily habit of seeing something as such is to have a commitment to the constitutive standard for thinghood, and the latter commitment is necessary for thing-perception to take place. Therefore, thing-perception is essentially a form of embodied action.