Multiscale Enaction Model (MEM): the case of complexity and “context-sensitivity” in vision

Abstract

I review the data on human visual perception that reveal the critical role played by non-visual contextual factors influencing visual activity. The global perspective that progressively emerges reveals that vision is sensitive to multiple couplings with other systems whose nature and levels of abstraction in science are highly variable. Contrary to some views where vision is immersed in modular hard-wired modules, rather independent from higher-level or other non-cognitive processes, converging data gathered in this article suggest that visual perception can be theorized in the larger context of biological, physical, and social systems with which it is coupled, and through which it is enacted. Therefore, any attempt to model complexity and multiscale couplings, or to develop a complex synthesis in the fields of mind, brain, and behavior, shall involve a systematic empirical study of both connectedness between systems or subsystems, and the embodied, multiscale and flexible teleology of subsystems. The conceptual model (Multiscale Enaction Model [MEM]) that is introduced in this paper finally relates empirical evidence gathered from psychology to biocomputational data concerning the human brain. Both psychological and biocomputational descriptions of MEM are proposed in order to help fill in the gap between scales of scientific analysis and to provide an account for both the autopoiesis-driven search for information, and emerging perception.

Macrocognition through the Multiscale Enaction Model (MEM) Lens: Identification of a Blind Spot of Macrocognition Research

“…We consider this distinction misleading. As discussed earlier in this paper, microcognition is also emergent, complex, and dynamic (Laurent, 2014 ). Distinguishing micro from macrocognition research on the basis of emergence, complexity, and dynamics (or “reality”) is neither empirically nor theoretically or logically founded.…”

“…Enactive systems produce information and knowledge by acting in their environment. In MEM (Laurent, 2014 ), each cell is conceived as an autopoietic structure 2 which tends to optimize its own functioning by interacting with other cells or groups of cells. Perception-action cycles in MEM rely on those interactions because what is searched for in the environment depends on internal needs and goals.…”

“…We suggest studying the generic properties of cognition through flexible analysis scales rather than creating specific fields or categories of cognition as a function of the scale of interest. In the following lines, we rely on a multiscale model of perception-action cycles' emergence, the Multiscale Enaction Model (MEM; Laurent, 2014 ), in which context is conceived of as being both multiple and multiscale. First, this model allows us to consider multiple interactions between processes, in line with macrocognition research's aims.…”

“… 3 Even if our view may be different from Maturana's regarding goals and needs, we completely agree with him when he considers that a similar organization can be found in many different structures: “any given organization may be realized through many different structures, and […] different subsets or relations included in the structure of a given entity, may be abstracted by an observer […] as organizations that define different classes of composite unities (Maturana, 1980 , p. XX). For more information about biocomputational bases for goal and need summations, see Laurent ( 2014 ). …”

Visual-motor embodiment of language: a few implications for the neuropsychological evaluation (in Alzheimer's disease)

“…Beyond the specific case of language, the proposed approach asks basic questions about our conception of cognitive processes. The discussed effects remind us how much cognition is situated, grounded, embodied in specific perceptual (Goldstone and Barsalou, 1998 ; Barsalou, 1999 ) and perceptual-motor (Laurent, 2014 ) systems, which allow recursive processes, conceptual elaboration, and the enaction of what is more classically regarded as modular “cognitive functions.”…”