ABSTRACT
This chapter problematises perception, which united with affective tones and sensory-somatic impressions proportionate the capacity for symbolic thought. It approaches the framework of ‘predictive processing’ of information as the dominant perspective that explains the emergence and endurance of mental representations. As image-schemas are both a type of and ‘animators’ of mental representations, for operating their aspect of portraying spatial relations of movements and forces in time, extracted from bodily experience, this chapter argues for a less cortico-centred discussion of the brain’s capacity to anticipate its encounter with and responses to reality. Considering that PMA, which is subcortically located, affectively charges image-schemas, endowing them with emotional values that mediate the individual’s interactions with their unfolding, it criticises three major points of the predictive processing of perception, that disembody and make of it an emotionless act. Thus, it discusses the undeniable inferential aspect of sensory inputs within perception, the a-rational quality of cognition that marks the knowingness involved in the perceptual event, in which the pre-conceptual is taken as influenced by the non-conceptual, defending the unavoidable participation that affects and non-conscious or peripherally conscious contents – be it derived from memories, procedural or implicit knowledge – have on the overall outcome of perception.
