Predictive States Shape Existence

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The free energy principle posits that living systems must minimize free energy to maintain their identity and function. This involves preferentially inhabiting states that align with their biological needs and predictive models. For instance, a fish inherently predicts its necessity to be in water, guiding its actions towards that environment. This duality of high road and low road perspectives illustrates the complexity of how organisms perceive their surroundings and make decisions, with the high road emphasizing the overarching requirements of persistent existence.

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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