The Importance of Anchoring Perception Action Loops

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LZ Granderson: It's hard to resist drawing a parallel with large language models. He says they famously hallucinate and say things that are completely false, but do it with apparent confidence. LZ: Their hallucinations are in a way partly at least the result of them not being anchored in perception action loops In the right sorts of ways. But by changing the prompts to the large language models, or to chat, chat GPT, anyway, you can make it substantially 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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