Predictive Processing: Reconstructing the Mind?
Cambridge University
ConvenorsJuliet Griffin (University of Cambridge)Daniel Williams (University of Cambridge) SummaryPredictive processing is one of the most exciting ideas in recent cognitive science. It construes the brain as a prediction machine that self-organizes around the imperative to minimize a certain kind of error: the mismatch between its own internally-generated predictions of sensory inputs and the externally-generated sensory inputs themselves. This framework for thinking about the brain can seem radically revisionist. It makes expectations central to the construction of perceptual experience, relegating sensory input to the role of mere feedback on these predictions. It offers a unifying framework for understanding the full panoply of psychological phenomena that make up the mind in terms of a single common principle - often eliding commonsense distinctions in the process. Further, this conceptual radicalism looks to be increasingly matched by an impressive catalogue of illumina