Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 5, 2026

Visualizing Visual Adaptation
Published on: April 24, 2017
The scope and limits of enactive approaches to visual experience
1Institut Jean Nicod, UMR 8129, EHESS/ENS-DEC/CNRS, F 75007 Paris, France. jacob@ehess.fr
Abstract:
I pursue here three related aims. First, I criticise some of the metaphysical claims made on behalf of the so-called 'enactive' approach to visual experience. Secondly, I explain why the enactive view of visual experience is hard to square with the evidence in favour of the two-visual-systems model of human vision. Finally, I explore one possible way to develop the 'pre-emptive perception' framework and explain why, contrary to first appearances, some of the fundamental discoveries of brain mechanisms, whose function might be to underlie pre-emptive perception, do not really support the enactive approach to visual experience.
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