May 9th: Scholarpedia article published: Sensorimotor theory of consciousness. Jan Degenaar & J. Kevin O’Regan (2015). Scholarpedia 10 (5): 4952.
The sensorimotor theory of perceptual consciousness (e.g. O’Regan & Noë 2001; O’Regan 2011) aims to account for the phenomenal character of perceptual experience (sometimes referred to as ‘qualia’). The theory rejects traditional accounts appealing to inner representational models, stressing instead patterns of sensorimotor dependencies (or ‘sensorimotor contingencies’), defined as the regularities in how sensory stimulation depends on the activity of the perceiver. The theory addresses both the particular quality of experiences (e.g. the differences between different experiences) and why there is conscious experience at all (e.g. why some things are consciously experienced while others are not). Sensorimotor theory offers a new way to think about experience, and has given rise to a productive empirical research program. [read more]