The Importance of Attention in Learning New Things

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The first time we go to a beach, it's all new and we really expend a lot of mental energy taking it in. The 20th time, we already have a background and the errors are not that big. Well-predicted sensory inputs cause less neuro-activity than other sensory inputs. So there's something odd there. These are the ones we deal with very fluidly and yet there's less going on in the brain when you deal with them than in other cases. That's one of the signatures that led, I think, to predicted coding coming on the sea.

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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