sensorimotor organization

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Sensorimotor organization is the dynamically maintained pattern of perception and action through which an embodied agent sustains meaningful possibilities in a changing environment. RB2 attributes the self-individuating agency account to Di Paolo and collaborators while comparing ecological and sensorimotor approaches. The organization includes learned history, current constraints and scaffolds; it is more than reactive input–output behavior or selecting actions from a permanently fixed menu.

Explanation

The direct agency passage says coupling alone is insufficient: a repertoire of possible actions must maintain coherence and viability. Possibilities are regulated through activity rather than supplied once for all. This is an attributed enactive proposal, not a claim that every moving system already has the complete human capacity for reflective, norm-guided origination.

The ecological discussion treats movements as integral to information pickup, while Noë’s sensorimotor emphasis concerns mastery of how movement changes stimulation. RB2 presents these as complementary interpretations from different traditions. The entry keeps that distinction rather than declaring every neural, ecological and phenomenological account one identical theory.

Scaffolds include tools, bodily habits and social practices that carry prior coordination forward. AB’s native note names the self-individuating account, while RB1 distinguishes enactive perception from the author’s further architecture of agency. The proposal therefore retains historically formed practical capacities without inferring an inner controller, cost-free autonomy or automatic moral status.

Scope and attribution

Retain history, scaffolding and theoretical differences while avoiding a fixed-menu or inner-controller interpretation.

AB — The Actual Book

The native note preserves Di Paolo’s agency refinement.

Occurrence locators: Notes: 241.

RB1 — The Real Book, Volume I: The Possible Is Real

Perceptual know-how and the fuller agency architecture retain distinct roles.

Occurrence locators: 302.

RB2 — The Real Book, Volume II: Becoming Is Being

Self-individuating action possibilities and sensorimotor mastery remain attributed and scaffolded.

Occurrence locators: 49, 52, 64, 65, 78, 79, 119, 120, 181.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.