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The Role of Sensations: Some Observations on J. J. Gibson’s Statements on Sensations

According to J. J. Gibson: ‘Perception is based on the pickup of information, not on the arousal of sensation and the two processes are distinct. Having sensations is at most only an accompaniment of perceiving, not a prerequisite of perceiving. Visual sensations are a sort of luxury incidental to the serious business of perceiving the world‘ [l]. It is somewhat surprising to find him dismissing sensations as an incidental luxury to the act of perception. Even if one accepts his hypothesis of perception wholeheartedly, as I do, it is difficult to believe that he means that sensations are no more than a bonus for existing. From the logic of Gibson’s own statements, the existence of sensations would appear to be useful and meaningful for human beings. The senses, after all, cannot be divorced from perceptual processes. Perception depends on the detection of formless invariants [2] over time by action/reaction resonance toenergy inputs in a perceptual system [3,4], even though the most efficient functioning of a perceptual system takes place with no awareness of a particular sense being used. However, the fact that sensations yield an awareness of receptors [4] is a possible indicator of their role in cognition. Sensations are not part of the processes of perception but awareness of sensations could form part of the total cognitive process. I believe that the formulation by Gibson of information-based perception makes possible a meaningful discussion of the role of sensations. Perceptual processes must be multi-level hierarchical ones, where the output of one stage constitutes the input to the next stage in a perceptual system (with feedback, of course). This multi-level process operates towards the maintenance of a stable state. As Gibson says: ‘A perceptual system is supposed to seek an equilibrium and reach an optimum, as a system should‘ [5]. Each sub-loop of the action/reaction part of the process (the active feedback regulation of input/output) constitutes a level in the hierarchy and each sub-loop must function optimally. When the optimum state of a level has been reached, a neural current that is an analogue of that level’s activity should be discharged as an input into the next level. Perhaps I may conjecture that, if any part of the process is affected either by the external disturbance or by internal cause in such a way that the input does not cause the total perceptual system to mxmte in a manner appropriate to the overall optimum operation of the total hierarchy, then one is aware of a sensation.