October 1975
Note on Proprioception in Relation to Somaesthesis, Self-awareness, and Introspection
J. J. Gibson, Cornell University
The World Wide Web distribution of James Gibson’s “Purple Perils” is for scholarly use with the understanding that Gibson did not intend them for publication. References to these essays must cite them explicitly as unpublished manuscripts. Copies may be circulated if this statement is included on each copy.
If the old channels of sense are rejected and exteroception is considered to be the complement of proprioception in all the perceptual systems and subsystems, a quite new theory is required of self-detection in any of its forms. To abandon Johannes Muller’s doctrine of the modalities of the receptors is also to abandon Sherrington’s doctrine of exteroception, proprioception, and interoception. Amodal perception of the world implies amodal awareness of the self. The same information about the environment can be picked up by more than one perceptual system (although some degree of specialization of perception remains because the receptors are specialized, and light, sound, chemical, and mechanical stimulus-arrays do not wholly overlap in their capacity to specify the sources of stimulation). Information about theself can also be picked up by each of the perceptual systems (i.e., the basic “orienting” system, the haptic system, the auditory system, the “chemical value” system, and the visual system, in my description of 1966) but they do not all detect the same features of the self to the same degree.
Consider some examples of different kinds of “ego reception” for various sorts of activities from simple to complex:
Posture and Stance. The individual both sees his posture (and movements) and also of course feels them. The latter information is multiple and covariant, being obtained by the inner ear, the joints, the muscle tensions, and the contacts of the skin with the surfaces of support. (However you cannot hear or smell your postures.)
Locomotion. This is more complex. Transpositions and rotations (turns) relative to the ground are seen very precisely, whether the movements are active or passive. They are also “felt” by changing contacts with the surface of support. And footsteps are “heard” as well as felt. (Remember that flying or swimming relative to the medium is different from locomotion relative to the ground.) The starting and stopping of the movements of the head, linear, and angular, whether active or passive, are registered by the vestibular organ. The positions and rotations of the joints are felt, and probably the tensions of the muscles. So there are many kinds of so-called kinesthesis and various levels of information about so-called movement. Hence, to talk about “feedback” as if we had a unitary theory of what it is seems to me ridiculous.
Manipulation. Visual proprioception (kinesthesis) is just as crucial for manipulation as it is for locomotion. The feeling of hand-movement (in the blind) is no substitute for the seeing of hand movement, although the capacity of the hand for haptic touch is quite good, since the oriented joints and the changing skin pressure combine (Systems, p. 112 ff.). Moreover, there is a special kind of manipulation, trace-making, in which a persisting record of the visual kinesthesis of the hand is left on a surface. This “fundamental graphic act” is momentous for a whole set of higher human behaviors.
Somaesthesis. The individual can see part of the surface of his body, and also feel that surface with his hands, and also see it as others do by using a mirror. He can also see his nose, and feel it, and touch it (as babies are soon taught to do by fond mothers). He can both feel the posture of his body relative to the chair in which he sits and feel the shape of the chair relative to the posture of his body (by what I called haptic touch). The two kinds of “feeling” refer to proprioception and exteroception respectively, but they go together.
One can both feel and hear the activity of breathing but not see it (except in cold weather). The same is true of the heartbeat, when strenuous. The activity of the digestive system can be felt and occasionally heard. But the superordinate activity of the nutritive system involves seeing and smelling as well as feeling, tasting, touching, and the sound of crunching. There is always the perception of food along with the proprioception of eating. What about interoception? (What Boring calls “organic sensibility” in Chapter 14 of Sensation & Perception). Does the awareness of breathing and the pumping of the heart have no reference to anything external? Is the awareness of the activity of the stomach purely internal? Does the rule that environment perception goes along with self-awareness fail in these cases? Is the somaesthetic system different from the haptic system?
Vocal Proprioception. I have argued that self-produced vocal sounds are heard as coming from within the head, i.e., “here”, just as outer sounds are heard as coming from a source in the environment, “there” (Perceptual Systems, p. 85 and 95). Even self-produced non-vocal sounds from stomping or clapping, and from instruments, are unmistakably propriospecific, and no musician confuses the sounds he makes with the sounds his neighbors make. One also feels himself making instrumental sounds, of course, and even vocal sounds. But when it comes to speech sounds the auditory proprioception is crucial, because the articulation has to conform to that of the speech community. Hence the deaf child can vocalize and feel himself doing so but cannot “learn to speak”.
The relation between ego-produced speech and other-produced speech (the difference between them on the one hand and their equivalence on the other) is therefore important for the awareness of the socialself as distinguished from the somatic self. But the ego vs. the other animal must be a differentiation of the basic contrast of the ego vs. the other surface, the so-called “outer” environment.
Introspection. Finally, the human observer seems to be capable of becoming aware of himself when thinking as well as when moving or behaving. This has been called awareness of his “mind” and has been given the misleading name of introspection or “looking inward”. Hence comes all sorts of unsolved puzzles for psychology (what entities are looked at in this kind of looking?). But if consciousness of the self when thinking is not different in kind from consciousness of the self when moving, manipulating, exploring, speaking, and communicating, but is only an awareness of an extremely complex covert activity, these puzzles are bypassed.
Evidently there are various kinds and levels of self-awareness. Our terminology is inadequate and our descriptions are biased by our theories. But perhaps an information-based theory of perception can make a fresh start.