Sense Experience and Motility

Contributing to the long tradition of treating Consciousness as disembodied is the general agreement among various schools that sense experience is likewise incorporeal. Typical of that contribution is the Empiricist positing of a 'sense datum', e. g. a color, as the basis of experience, in independence of any supposition of the existence of a sense organ, e. g. an eye, a premise subscribed to by Kantianism and Phenomenology, as well. So, one of the significant achievements of Whitehead's system is to re-incorporate the sense organs into empirical processes. However, Whitehead, nevertheless continues the tradition of conceiving the functioning of those organs as fundamentally passive, which still permits a Bergsonian interpretation that sense organs function as filters of immaterial energy en route to immaterial mind, and, hence, as not a positive part of the concrete data of Consciousness. Like his predecessors, he does not appreciate sense experience as active--looking at, listening to, and touching, in contrast with seeing, hearing, and feeling. Plus, as, the sniffing by a dog, or a 'taste test' demonstrates, even the other two of the five sense are active processes. When interpreted as active, the sense organs can be appreciated as as much sources of outward-directed motility as the legs. On that basis, the incorporealization of Sense Experience, and of Consciousness, in general, seems to difficult to accomplish.