Deep Analysis
Long-form theoretical analysis connecting somatic practice, phenomenology, process philosophy and AI architectures.
Somaesthetics and the Trained Perceiver: Why Better Sensors Do Not Produce Better Perception
Richard Shusterman's philosophical project of somaesthetics rests on a claim that cuts against an assumption widespread in motion AI: that bodily perception is not fixed equipment but a trainable capacity, and that improving it is a distinct undertaking from improving what is measured. This analysis…
Thinking in Movement: Maxine Sheets-Johnstone and the Intent Layer as a Site of Cognition, Not Execution
The May deep analysis established, through Merleau-Ponty, that movement is organised by motor intentionality — a forward-model-like reaching toward possibility that precedes explicit representation. The June deep analysis established, through Thomas Fuchs, that the resulting movement skill is sedime…
Body Memory and the Limits of Statistical Learning: Thomas Fuchs on What AI Cannot Train On
The May 2026 deep analysis established that Merleau-Ponty's motor intentionality and current predictive AI architectures are structurally homologous — both are forward models — but differ in three fundamental respects: the content of their predictions (felt vs. visual), the history through which the…
The Moving Body as Forward Model: Merleau-Ponty's Motor Intentionality and Predictive Architectures in Generative AI
There is a moment in the phenomenology of movement that Maurice Merleau-Ponty describes with unusual precision: the moment when a practised action — reaching for a glass, landing from a jump, beginning a turn — is initiated by the body without passing through conscious deliberation. The hand moves t…
Kinesthetic Intelligence and the Limits of Motion Manifold Learning: A Phenomenological Critique
Contemporary machine learning approaches to movement representation share a foundational assumption so pervasive it is rarely articulated: that movement can be adequately described as the coordinated displacement of body segments through Euclidean space over time. Motion capture systems, skeletal po…