Research objects

 

Actualités :

PhiTeCo :
Séminaire Interdisciplinaire Philosophie Technologie Cognition
du 21 au 25 janvier 2013
FROM PERCEPTUAL INTERACTION TO EXTENDED COGNITION
Programme...






The CRED (previously the Perceptual Supplementation Group) has as its main object of research the question of perception, in particular prosthetically augmented. Fundamental research, in the form of experiments, modelling and also philosophical studies, is carried out concerning the genesis of novel perceptual modalities, perceptual learning, and prosthetically modified lived experience.

In addition, the Group works on the development of original devices for artificial perception (link to resources) inspired by the so-called “sensory substitution” devices. Initially developed towards the end of the 60s in the USA, in particular by Prof. Paul Bach y Rita, these technical devices create a very favourable context for the
controlled study of the genesis of perception. These experimental devices seem to indicate, in particular, that the construction of a space of perception comes about through the constitution in act of sensorimotor/bodily/gestural invariants; this leads to profound conceptual shifts concerning cognition in general (and not just perception). In this respect, the paradigm of enaction – as founded by the work of H. Maturana and F. Varela – is a structual source of inspiration for the work of the Group.

On this basis, three fields of research seem today to be quite inseparable:
- the technological development of artificial coupling devices (in particular tactile and haptic devices);
- the learning of perception, considered as the acquisition and composition of sensorimotor invariants of higher and higher levels of organization;
- the collective constitution of a system of values, and possibly a specific language, attached to these nvariants.
Besides, and in connection with this cross-fertilisation, some of the work carried out has an incidence on questio of design, of Human-Computer Interaction, on Virtual Reality, or even home appliances.