Losing Oneself

Tag: perception

  • the sensing of a sensation

    In one of our conversations post movement (on 2 February 2024) I ask Katye:

    Are we expressing sensation? Can you talk more about sensation and movement? You say “sensation then movement”. What is this thing called “sensation”?

    I then wonder out loud if sensation is different from sensing.

    Once Katye and I have worked through the transcripts more carefully I’ll get to that conversation. But as I’m reflecting now what I suspect (or perhaps propose) is that there is no separation between sensation, sensing, experience, awareness and consciousness. That is, when perceiving (or feeling) a sensation (say pressure or tension on the outside of the left calcaneus) that is the experience one is aware of and that is in the open flow of consciousness. This is not to say that all sensations enter consciousness (far from it), but rather that the feeling or perception of a sensation (or the sensing of a sensation!) is indistinct from experience, awareness and consciousness.

    I’ll write more about the enfolding of perception, feeling, sensation, experience, awareness, consciousness, perception and action another time. It seems important to be able to disambiguate them as well as recognise when they are being used interchangeably. I should say also that I don’t think the above is quite right …

  • interpretations of sensory signals

    Anil Seth is a cognitive neuroscientist who thinks and writes about consciousness. He is known for describing perception as a form of controlled hallucination.

    The third and most important ingredient in the controlled hallucination view is the claim that perceptual experience – in this case the subjective experience of ‘seeing a coffee cup’ – is determined by the content of the (top-down) predictions, and not by the (bottom-up) sensory signals. We never experience sensory signals themselves, we only ever experience interpretations of them.

    – Anil Seth (2021) Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. London: Faber & Faber (Loc 1391)

    What I like about this idea is how strongly it contradicts the phenomenal experience of sensing the body in motion. This is particularly intriguing in a movement practice (or indeed any activity) that is not goal-oriented. There is no ‘best outcome’ here, or some other measure of success – just sensing, moving (or not) and being in a wide-open field of awareness.

    The question then might be, why interpret these sensory signals in this way and not that? I doubt this is a question that is answerable.