The Role of Proprioception in Motor Control

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Proprioception is a system of internal sensing that lets us know how our body is currently arranged in space. So proprioceptive predictions are especially placed here and act as motor commands. The other kinds of predictions don't. Your brain sort of thinks intentionally or unintentionally that your arm is somewhere slightly different than it is. And then the muscles move it to make that more accurate. But I think if we call it targeted disattention, we understand it a bit better.

What is the mind, and what does it try to do? An overly simplified materialist view might be that the mind emerges from physical processes in the brain. But you can be a materialist and still recognize that there is more to the mind than just the brain: the rest of our bodies play a role, and arguably we should count physical artifacts that contribute to our memory and cognition as part of "the mind." Or so argues today's guest, philosopher/cognitive scientist Andy Clark. As to what the mind does, it tries to predict what happens next. This simple idea provides a powerful lens through which to interpret all the different things our minds do, including the idea that "perception is controlled hallucination."

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Andy Clark received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Sussex. He is currently Professor of Cognitive Philosophy at Sussex. He was Director of the Philosophy/Neuroscience/Psychology Program at Washington University in St Louis, and Director of the Cogntive Science Program at Indiana University. His new book is The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality.

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