
“The so-called perceptual ‘stimulus’ and motor ‘response’ cannot be considered separately, outside the context of their interaction, though Dewey hints that indeed the motor element – normally seen as the response – may be primary. Perception is an active, not a passive process – or better, it is a profoundly interactive process. Movement lies behind, and in, every one of our senses. This idea has gathered further scientific backing in recent years. The Colombian neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás has argued, starting from the examination of simple marine invertebrates such as the sea squirt, that the capacity for motion underlies all knowledge: What I must stress here is that the brain’s understanding of anything, whether factual or abstract, arises from our manipulations of the external world, by our moving within the world and thus from our sensory-derived experience of it.230 Similarly neuroscientist György Buzsáki claims that perception is founded on motion and cognition, not motion and cognition founded on perception. He regards activity ‘as not only interwoven with perception but prior to perception, prior both in terms of evolution and in terms of initiating processes within and outside the organism that result in the organism’s perceiving.’231 In relation to the evolutionary claim, he points to some primitive sea animals that are capable only of a rhythmic movement of cilia to bring in nutrients, with no (presumed) perceptual abilities at all.232”
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The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World
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