Enactivism, a theory that links perception to action, needs a richer concept of action to fully explain human perception. The standard enactive notion of sensorimotor dependencies fails to account for socially dependent perceptions (SDPs), which are crucial to how perception functions in daily life. This article argues that the central enactive concept should be perceptual practices, inspired by Wittgenstein. Perceptual practices are culturally structured, normatively rich techniques for engaging with meaningful sensory material, such as food, dance, dress, and music. This notion explains three key features of SDP: attentional focus, the salience of aspects, and modal-specific harmony-like relations.
The author responds to a comment by McGann, who claimed that a previous article overlooked a group of enactivist theories called participatory sense-making. The author explains the omission because those theories are not accounts of perception. Unlike participatory sense-making, the original article focuses not on the perceptual aspects of social things, but on the social aspects that constitute perception in general. The reply concludes by underscoring the central argument: that the appropriate concept to make enactivism about perception social is that of "perceptual practices," a notion of perception based on social practices.