ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how sensorimotor enactivists account for the qualities of phenomenal experience in terms of the dynamics of sensorimotor interaction with the environment. It aims to clarify how this externalist theory of what we experience can be used to argue for an externalist variety of how-explanations – the thesis of extended consciousness. The thesis of extended consciousness claims that the biological machinery that realises conscious experience can sometimes include a mixture of neural, bodily, and environmental elements. The chapter provides a worked-out account of how sensorimotor enactivism might be taken to imply extended consciousness. According to sensorimotor enactivism, mastery of sensorimotor contingencies (SMC) determines the phenomenal character of an experience. In perceptual adaptation, for instance, the perceiver gains a familiarity with SMCs that have changed as a result of wearing inverting goggles. Andy Clark’s argument seems to show that the phenomenological similarities between perception, dreaming, and imagining undermine sensorimotor enactivism.
