Philosophy of Biology and Cognitive Sciences

This contribution has two goals: (I) exploring the anticipatory function of kinaesthesia (the sense of movement) and proprioception (the inward-looking sense of the relative position and velocity of bodily parts) in perception and cognition; (II) exploring how the anticipatory functioning of the sense of movement may be rooted in the biological temporality of preconscious rhythms internal to the organism (e.g. heart rate, respiration, metabolic rate, cerebral frequencies).

 

(I) Drawing on the phenomenology of Erwin Straus and the work in neurophysiology and neurophenomenology of Alain Berthoz and Jean-Luc Petit, I will develop the view that the sense of movement, or the sense of action, must be seen as a veritable “sixth sense” (Berthoz & Petit 2006) that is a condition for all the other senses to acquire meaning. For Straus, the movement of an organism as motivated by a vital aim is a primary operative factor in the process of the subjective constitution of the world. Thus, there would be a primordial sense of action, which involves a sense of possessing a body, its movements and its “heft” and “puissance” to act, which is constitutive of the sense of the different senses (Straus 1956; Straus 1960).

 

Berthoz & Petit follow the view that all sensing is essentially simulated action, always anticipating the effects of action. For them, this means that the sense of movement must be seen as a constitutive source of cognition with regard to both the exteroceptive and proprioceptive senses. One of the central questions they address is how anticipation may be conceived on both a phenomenological and a physiological level.

The central nervous system is said to create and use an “internal model”, for example of gravity or of memorized relationships between several sensory and motor components of action, such as the position of limbs, the state of a target in space, etc. (Berthoz 2000). Such internal models are used as a kind of “a priori knowledge” to anticipate and “simulate” what is “given” to perception, and are a good example of what is better explained by a biological, not a computational, theory of the brain. That is to say, the brain does not simulate action by constructing geometrical space or topographic space, but rather by constructing units of space intrinsically connected to movement and action.

 

In the first part of my contribution to the workshop, it is my goal to investigate how, according to Berthoz & Petit, this principle of simulation by internal models breaks with computational models of the brain and brings cognitive science back to the doorsteps of Husserl’s phenomenological theory of constitution. I will do so by examining their interpretation of protention (anticipation) and retention (memory) as fundamental properties of the organism equipped with a neural system.

 

(II) In the second part of my paper, I will turn to Giuseppe Longo & Maël Montévil’s recent book, Perspectives on Organisms. Biological Time, Symmetries and Singularities, in which they have further developed Berthoz & Petit’s phenomenological approach in terms of biological rhythms and time. On their view, biological time, rhythms and retentional and protentional activities are proper biological observables that organize life. Time and rhythm must thus be seen as an operator that acts in biological dynamics in a constitutive way.

 

Longo & Montévil distinguish between external and internal biological rhythms. The former are constrained by phenomena exterior to the organism (e.g. seasonal rhythms, circadian rhythms) and have theoretical symmetries that may be identified with physical time. Internal rhythms, on the other hand, are of an endogenous origin. They depend on specific physiological functions of the organism (e.g. heart rate, respiration, metabolic rate) and give organisms a degree of autonomy with regard to physical time. According to Longo & Montévil, one can consider the specific constitution of the flow of biological time as the expression of rudimentary forms of retention and protention. The combination of these two elements would generate the specific physiological time relative to physical time.

The second goal of my paper is to investigate how, according to Longo &Montévil, the anticipatory functioning of the sense of movement may be rooted in the biological temporality of preconscious rhythms internal to the organism. May these rhythms themselves be regarded as primordial organizational operators that act in biological dynamics in a constitutive, anticipatory way?

 

Bibliography
Berthoz, A. 2000. The Brain’s Sense of Movement. Trans. By G. Weiss. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press.
Berthoz, A. & Petit, J. L. 2006. Phénoménologie et physiologie de l’action. Paris: Odile Jacob.
Longo, G. & Montévil, M. 2014. Perspectives on Organisms. Biological Time, Symmetries and Singularities. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Verlag.
Straus, E. 1956. Vom Sinn der Sinne. Ein Beitrag zur Grundlegung der Psychologie. Berlin, Göttingen, Heidelberg: Springer Verlag.
Straus, E. 1960. Psychologie der Menschlichen Welt. Gesammelte Schriften von Erwin Straus. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Verlag.