title: Embodied cognition and circular causality: on the role of constitutive autonomy in the reciprocal coupling of perception and action.
abstract: The reciprocal coupling of perception and action in cognitive agents has been firmly established: perceptions guide action but so too do actions influence what is perceived. While much has been said on the implications of this for the agent's external behavior, less attention has been paid to what it means for the internal bodily mechanisms which underpin cognitive behavior. In this article, we wish to redress this by reasserting that the relationship between cognition, perception, and action involves a constitutive element as well as a behavioral element, emphasizing that the reciprocal link between perception and action in cognition merits a renewed focus on the system dynamics inherent in constitutive biological autonomy. Our argument centers on the idea that cognition, perception, and action are all dependent on processes focussed primarily on the maintenance of the agent's autonomy. These processes have an inherently circular nature-self-organizing, self-producing, and self-maintaining-and our goal is to explore these processes and suggest how they can explain the reciprocity of perception and action. Specifically, we argue that the reciprocal coupling is founded primarily on their endogenous roles in the constitutive autonomy of the agent and an associated circular causality of global and local processes of self-regulation, rather than being a mutual sensory-motor contingency that derives from exogenous behavior. Furthermore, the coupling occurs first and foremost via the internal milieu realized by the agent's organismic embodiment. Finally, we consider how homeostasis and the related concept of allostasis contribute to this circular self-regulation.
authors.affiliation: Interaction Lab, School of Informatics, University of Skövde Skövde, Sweden.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Vernon
authors.affiliation: Interaction Lab, School of Informatics, University of Skövde Skövde, Sweden ; Division of Cognition and Communication, University of Gothenburg Gothenburg, Sweden.
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lowe
authors.affiliation: Interaction Lab, School of Informatics, University of Skövde Skövde, Sweden.
authors.forename: Serge
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Thill
authors.affiliation: Interaction Lab, School of Informatics, University of Skövde Skövde, Sweden ; Human-Centered Systems, Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University Linköping, Sweden.
authors.forename: Tom
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ziemke
keywords: agency; allostasis; autonomy; circular causality; embodied cognition; homeostasis