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This chapter highlights the importance of the body as a basis for consciousness. The first section addresses primary consciousness as a source of awareness in the perception of ongoing musical material in which the body is involved. The second focuses on higher-order consciousness — our capacity to become self-conscious. It can be argued that both types of consciousness, traditionally studied separately, can be considered as belonging to a continuum, as stated by Merleau–Ponty: ‘all thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness’. Based on this idea of a continuum, it is also argued that primary and higher-order consciousness are both built on bodily input and that the feeling of that body is possible through proprioception. The third section uses ideas from O'Regan and Noë's sensorimotor contingency theory to offer an explanation of how musical consciousness takes place.

Cognitive science is witnessing a pragmatic turn away from the traditional representation-centered framework of cognition toward one that focuses on understanding cognition as being “enactive.” The enactive view holds that cognition does not produce models of the world but rather subserves action, as it is grounded in sensorimotor skills. Results from this Ernst Strüngmann Forum suggest that strong conceptual advances are possible when cognition is framed by an action-oriented paradigm. Experimental evidence from cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, robotics, and philosophy of mind supports this position. This chapter provides an overview to the discourse surrounding this collaborative effort. Core topics which guided this multidisciplinary perusal are identified and challenges that emerged are highlighted. Action-oriented views from a variety of disciplines have started to cross-fertilize, thus promoting an integration of concepts and creating fertile ground for a novel theory of cognition to emerge.

An action-oriented perspective changes the role of an individual from a passive observer to an actively engaged agent interacting in a closed loop with the world as well as with others. Cognition exists to serve action within a landscape that contains both. This chapter surveys this landscape and addresses the status of the pragmatic turn. Its potential influence on science and the study of cognition are considered (including perception, social cognition, social interaction, sensorimotor entrainment, and language acquisition) and its impact on how neuroscience is studied is also investigated. A review of its implications in robotics and engineering includes a discussion of the application of enactive control principals to couple action and perception in robotics as well as the conceptualization of system design in a more holistic, less modular manner. Practical applications that can impact the human condition are reviewed. All of this foreshadows the potential societal implications of the pragmatic turn. The chapter concludes that an action-oriented approach emphasizes a continuum of interaction between technical aspects of cognitive systems and robotics, biology, psychology, the social sciences, and the humanities, where the individual is part of a grounded cultural system.

The action-oriented approach in cognitive science emphasizes the role of action in shaping, or constituting, perception, cognition, and consciousness. This chapter summarizes a week-long discussion on how the action-oriented approach changes our understanding of consciousness and the structure of experience, combining the viewpoints of philosophers, neuroscientists, psychologists, and clinicians. This is exciting territory, since much of the resurgent activity in consciousness science has so far focused on the neural, cognitive, and behavioral correlates of perception, independent of action. A wide-ranging discussion included questions such as how actions shape consciousness, and what determines consciousness of actions. The specific context of self-experience, from its bodily aspects to its social expression were considered. The discussions were related to specific theoretical frameworks, which emphasize the role of action in cognition, and identified an emerging empirical agenda including action-based experiments in both normal subjects and clinical populations. An intensive consideration of action is likely to have a lasting impact on how we conceive of the phenomenology and mechanisms of consciousness, and on the ways in which consciousness science will unfold in the years ahead.