Looking into the Future. Anticipation in Alva Noë’s Sensorymotor Theory of Perception.

The philosopher Alva Noë developed an “enactivist” framework and a theory of perception defined as a series of sensorimotor anticipations. This article analyses the relevance of this sensorimotor theory of perception. We first evaluate the sensorimotor theory of perception developed in Action in Perception and in several more recent papers. Then, we underline two difficulties inherent in this definition which concern the exact meaning of what he calls “anticipation” and “motor skills”. Finally, we emphasize the different modalities of socialization of the anticipation processes by distinguishing between the anticipation of the object’s movements, on one hand, and the anticipation of the subject own movements, on the other. The purpose of this discussion is to develop a theory of the socialization based on enactivist theories and data.