Enactively Conscious Robots: Why Enactivism Does Not Commit the Intermediate Level Fallacy *

Abstract

Conscious experience is needed to adapt to novel and significant events, to perform actions, to have perceptions. This contribution shows how a robot can be enactively conscious. It questions the view by Manzotti and Chella (2018) according to which the enactive approach to consciousness falls into the so called "intermediate level fallacy" and shows that the authors’ remark is implausible because it is based on a partial and reductive view both of enactivism and of one of its main tenets called embodiment. The original enactive approach to experience as it was developed by Varela/Thompson/Rosch (1991) is discussed. Manzotti’s and Chella’s criticism that in enactivism it is unclear why the knowledge of the effects of movement on sensory stimulation should lead to conscious experience is rejected. In this contribution, it is explained why sensorimotricity and the actionist approach to perception do lead to (robot) conscious experience in the perception of objects located in outer space.