The Enactive Torch

There will be a seminar about the Enactive Torch taking place for the Life and Mind seminar series at the University of Sussex on Wednesday, the 17th Nov. 2007.

You can find more details here.

We are going to demonstrate the Enactive Torch at this year’s Enactive Interfaces conference. We will also hold a talk (see abstract below).

Toward a Phenomenological Pragmatics of Enactive Perception

The enactive approach to perception is generating an extensive amount of interest and debate in the cognitive sciences. One particularly contentious issue has been how best to characterize the perceptual experiences reported by subjects who have mastered the skillful use of a perceptual supplementation (PS) device. This paper argues that this issue cannot be resolved with the use of third-person methodologies alone, but that it requires the development of a phenomenological pragmatics. In particular, it is necessary that the experimenters become skillful in the use of PS devices themselves. The ‘Enactive Torch’ is proposed as an experimental platform which is cheap, non-intrusive and easy to replicate, so as to enable researchers to corroborate reported experiences with their own phenomenology more easily.

Presented at the 4th Int. Conf. on Enactive Interfaces, (Enactive/07), 19-22 Nov. 2007, Grenoble, France.