Nivedita Gangopadhyay, Michael Madary, and Finn Spencer (Eds.), Perception, action, and consciousness: sensorimotor dynamics and the two visual systems (original) (raw)

2012, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

Perception, Action, and Consciousness is a volume devoted to exploring the tensions and potential routes for reconciliation between two types of approaches to visual perception: the sensorimotor, action-oriented view of perception 1 and the two visual systems hypothesis. 2 These views hold conflicting positions as to the contribution that action makes to the qualitative character of a perceptual event. The actionoriented or sensorimotor views represented here, to varying degrees, hold that action plays a central, even constitutive, role in determining the phenomenal character of visual experience. 3 In contrast, the two visual systems model is committed to the idea that action and visual perception are processed independently and thus remain functionally distinct. Accordingly, the two visual systems model holds that the dorsal stream, which is responsible for processing vision for action, has no direct impact on conscious perceptual experience, which is processed separately by the ventral stream. This volume is essential reading for any philosopher of perception or vision researcher interested in the relationship between action and perception. The volume contains several contributions, which both frame and advance the debate between the two systems theorists and the adherents of the sensorimotor view. This book is exceptional in several ways that relate to interaction and communication: (1) this is a truly interdisciplinary volume with contributions from philosophers, psychologists, neurologists, and cognitive neuroscientists, and (2) theorists and scientists are Phenom Cogn Sci