Abstract
I argue for an overlooked distinction between perceptual presence and volumetric content, and flesh it out in terms of predictive processing. Within the predictive processing framework we can distinguish between agent-active and object-active expectations. The former expectations account for perceptual presence, while the latter account for volumetric content. I then support this position with reference to how experiences of presence are created by virtual reality technologies, and end by reflecting on what this means for the relationship between sensorimotor enactivism and predictive processing.
Highlights
I argue for an overlooked distinction between perceptual presence and volumetric content, and flesh it out in terms of predictive processing
Should these expectations be restricted to how the sensorium would change if I were to act in certain ways? Sure, one might argue, expectations about how the sensorium would change if the object itself were to move in certain ways are as important, or more so
With these two ingredients in place, namely, (i) the counterfactual depth of predictive models, and (ii) the deployment of predictive models that feature ourselves as part of the world, our nervous system has an implicit understanding of sensorimotor contingencies insofar as it deploys predictive models about how the sensorium will change if I were to act in certain ways
Summary
When I see a tomato, I typically see it as three-dimensional: a roughly spherical object with a rear surface that is occluded from view How is it that my experience has this volumetric, three-dimensional content given that all that is presented to me are the surfaces of the tomato that are facing me?1 The account that Alva Noë (e.g. O’Regan and Noë 2001; Noë 2004) gives is that I have certain embodied expectations about how the visual sensorium would change if I were to act in certain ways. These are expectations that are contingent on my actions ( the term “sensorimotor contingencies”). An upshot of this is that predictive processing doesn’t flesh out Noë’s account: it accommodates its core insights and improves upon it
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