Looking through sensory motor skills

"Sensory Motor Skills" are defined in an interesting book called Action in Perception by Alva Noë.1 In this book Noë presents a theory of cognitive perception he calls "The Enactive View" or "Action in Perception". The introduction states that this book is for artists, among others.

The primary argument is intended to show that visual cognition depends upon an inseparable connection between the embodied conscious human and the surrounding environment. "Embodied" meaning the entire human being in space. This is in opposition to the (apparently) more common view that claims visual cognition can be adequately studied by scientists strictly in terms of brain activity. Think of the latter theory as the "Brain in a Vat" approach because Noë's presentation of it leads one to believe that all that is required for study is a brain completely isolated from the body and environment that surrounds it.

The Enactive View considers visual cognition to include a bundle of "sensory motor skills", the embodied human's techniques for investigating the environment around him. Turning one's head to get a better look at something is an example of this kind of skill. They are part of the vivid and immediate awareness of the world around us that seems transparent. These kinds of skills are so basic and even automatic that they are typically taken for granted. Their taken-for-grantedness makes them excellent subjects for study.

The Enactive View can be interpreted as a theory of consciousness. It claims that our conscious life depends as much on the world around us that presents itself in lawful ways as the mind that is responding to sensory information. This is an abbreviated description that does not convey what is most profound about the theory, which is the replacement of the single mental master memory model of the world with a multi layered, multi channeled consciousness that makes memory dependent on the environment. In other words, when we look around our mind is not comparing the information received from the eyes against an ideal model that has somehow been created in the mind. Instead the predictable, lawful changes in the looks of the world around us is processed immediately in different locations in the brain with little or no reference to memory. Memory, on this account, is outside of us, in the world around us. I may have overlooked it, but there is no other account of memory in the book.

Do arguments that seek to pin down the so-called essential character of media, such as the notorious "the essence of painting is flatness" argument adequately account for the impact of sensory motor skills? Perhaps we could say it's the particular sensory motor skills that are brought to bear on a work of art and the craft logic of the medium and the successful interplay between these two that are the essential character. In this case what is important is dealing with sensory motor skills together (or in isolation, as the case may be) as the subject and defining force of the work. In this sense the hunt for minimal threshold case studies for what qualifies as art is a diminished issue. There is no reason to ask "Is it a painting?" or "Is it art?" when all along the sensory motor skills of the viewer are providing the definition.

There was a time when it was fashionable in Europe to present naturalistic paintings behind a screen with a peep hole. Viewers would look through the peephole with one eye. The purpose was to restrict the sensory motor skills the viewer could bring to bear on viewing the work in order to heighten the optical effects. Moving left or right in front of a painting of a naturalistic scene reveals the flat shape of the work because stereoscopic vision and motion parallax discovers the foreground and background are fixed. Restricting peregrination, eliminating motion parallax and reducing binocular vision to monocular vision as is the case with looking through a peephole reduces the sensory motor skills that can be brought to bear on viewing the work. The skills that remain available are not sufficient to fully discover the flat nature of the painting and so the optical illusion of natural depth is enhanced, or at least the limitations of the depiction of the scene are not so easily discovered.

Another interesting argument in the book is for making the distinction between "knowing how" and "knowing that". The argument makes the following point. What qualifies as "knowing that" is the ability to form a coherent verbal description of a skill. Qualification of "know how" requires successful demonstration of the skill in question. The rival position argues that a coherent verbal description is sufficient proof of "know how" and "knowing that". Noë brings this up as part of the defense of the larger position of the book. His poignant example is that of a concert pianist who loses her arms to amputation. In this case argues Noë, the pianist loses "know how" with the loss of her arms, with a diminishing "knowing that" which follows from the supply of "know how" being cut off. If he is right then we are vulnerable to our surroundings and circumstances to a very high degree.

The book is primarily directed at cognitive scientists and certain philosophers but it is fascinating to read it for insights into art.