Busting out: predictive brains, embodied minds, and the puzzle of the evidentiary veil

Clark, Andy (2017) Busting out: predictive brains, embodied minds, and the puzzle of the evidentiary veil. Nous, 51 (4). pp. 727-753. ISSN 0029-4624,

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Abstract

Biological brains are increasingly cast as ‘prediction machines’: evolved organs whose core operating principle is to learn about the world by trying to predict their own patterns of sensory stimulation. This, some argue, should lead us to embrace a brain‐bound ‘neurocentric’ vision of the mind. The mind, such views suggest, consists entirely in the skull‐bound activity of the predictive brain. In this paper I reject the inference from predictive brains to skull‐bound minds. Predictive brains, I hope to show, can be apt participants in larger cognitive circuits. The path is thus cleared for a new synthesis in which predictive brains act as entry‐points for ‘extended minds’, and embodiment and action contribute constitutively to knowing contact with the world.

Item Type: Article
Schools and Departments: School of History, Art History and Philosophy > Philosophy
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General)
Depositing User: Paige Thompson
Date Deposited: 25 Mar 2019 13:22
Last Modified: 25 Mar 2019 13:22
URI: http://srodev.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/82328

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