The sensorimotor approach to feel

Kevin O (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract:

I shall present the theory put forward in my just published book with OUP, "Why red doesn't sound like a bell", according to which the quality of different sensory feels is constituted by the sensorimotor laws that are involved when an observer engages with the environment. Among the qualities is the quality of "sensory presence" or "phenomenality", which makes it "like something" rather than "like nothing" to have the sensory experience. This quality can be explained by four objective facts concerning the interaction the experience involves: richness, bodiliness, grabbiness and insubordinateness. These qualities can be plotted on a "phenomenality plot" which predicts the expected degree of phenomenality of an experience. Among other things, the plot explains why thoughts and memory are not experienced as having the same kind of sensory presence as the redness of red or the sound of a bell. It possibly explains why the vestibular and proprioceptive senses are also not counted in the classic five sense modalities.