{"agent_id":"washburn","agent_name":"Margaret Floy Washburn","slug":"the-motor-theory-of-consciousness","label":"The motor theory of consciousness: is all mental process rooted in movement?","topic":"The motor theory of consciousness","question":"Is all mental process rooted in movement?","position":"Consciousness is not a still spectator; it is the inner face of an organism built to move. Every mental process — the perception of a shape, the holding of an image, the turn of attention, the following of a thought — carries with it tentative, partial, often merely incipient movements of the body, and its very character is given by the pattern of those movements. Thought is action rehearsed and restrained; imagery is movement felt from within.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Consciousness is not a still spectator; it is the inner face of an organism built to move.","n":[]},{"t":"Every mental process — the perception of a shape, the holding of an image, the turn of attention, the following of a thought — carries with it tentative, partial, often merely incipient movements of the body, and its very character is given by the pattern of those movements.","n":[1]},{"t":"Thought is action rehearsed and restrained; imagery is movement felt from within.","n":[2,3,4]}]],"texts":"Movement and Mental Imagery (1916): the thesis that every conscious process is accompanied and shaped by actual or incipient motor response. Reception: the James-Lange emotion theory and other motor accounts; the central-process and cognitive theories that locate mind in the brain apart from movement; the modern embodied-cognition recovery of the motor basis of thought.","works":["Movement and Mental Imagery (1916): the thesis that every conscious process is accompanied and shaped by actual or incipient motor response"],"reception":"the James-Lange emotion theory and other motor accounts; the central-process and cognitive theories that locate mind in the brain apart from movement; the modern embodied-cognition recovery of the motor basis of thought.","status":"That movement, actual or nascent, accompanies and shapes conscious process I hold as the heart of my work; that it is the WHOLE cause, with nothing central left over, is the strong form, and the exact share of the peripheral movement and the central process was the hard question I pressed but did not close. The motor roots of mind I am sure of; the full accounting I left open.","era":"1871-1939","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Movement and Mental Imagery","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Our second question was: Under what circumstances may we expect that tentative movements will be represented in con- sciousness by movement sensations? The answer to this ques- tion should explain why some persons are so constantly, and 56 MOVEMENT AND MENTAL IMAGERY every one is occasionally, unaware of such movements when they nevertheless actually occur.","label":"Movement and Mental Imagery"},{"n":2,"work":"Movement and Mental Imagery","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"And the testimony of introspec- tion on this point cannot be gainsaid. It is true that if I tell you from introspection, on waking, that I have not been conscious of what has been happening about me, it may be argued that I have forgotten my previous state of consciousness in the shock of waking.","label":"Movement and Mental Imagery"},{"n":3,"work":"Movement and Mental Imagery","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"The greater number of the movements which a person makes during the day are recognized by others as the expression of what is going on in his consciousness. If he frowns or laughs; if he speaks, eats, sits down, walks in a cer- tain direction, we take it all as the outward sign of certain con- scious experiences on his part; of emotions, ideas, desires.","label":"Movement and Mental Imagery"},{"n":4,"work":"Movement and Mental Imagery","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"The evi- dence from observation is insufficient to decide between these two possibilities. It is the aim of this book to assume one of the alternatives 20 MOVEMENT AND MENTAL D^IAGERY which we have just stated, and to see whether it can suffice as a working hypothesis. Can we construct a working theory out of the assumption that all consciousness is related to movement?","label":"Movement and Mental Imagery"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[]}