The Probability of Predictability in Music

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Karen Cuconen, a literary theorist in Scandinavia somewhere, has written a nice book called Probability Designs. And so she is using the vision of the predictive brain as a way of understanding the shape of literary materials, poems, and all. I wonder if you could use this idea or set of ideas to make predictive models for what kind of games people would like to play? You want some rhythms, some predictability, but you also want some surprise also. There's a sweet spot in the middle.

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."

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

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.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.