The Regularity Account of Phenomenal Unity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wanja Wiese
Keyword(s):  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Formal Description ◽  
Rigorous Formulation ◽  
Formal Concepts ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Processing Framework ◽  
Phenomenal Unity

This chapter presents the regularity account of phenomenal unity (RPU). The basic idea of RPU is that when the brain tracks a regularity that is predictive of different features (or of different objects or events), there will be an experienced connection between those features (or the respective objects or events). We can then say that the regularity connects those features (or objects or events). According to RPU, unity comes in degrees, and in ordinary conscious experience we find a hierarchy of experienced wholes. This chapter provides a preliminary taxonomy of experienced wholes, with many examples. Drawing on formal concepts of the predictive processing framework, a formal description of possible computational underpinnings of experienced wholeness is given. Finally, a rigorous formulation of the mélange model (first proposed in chapter 4) is provided.

Priors and Prejudice: How prior knowledge shapes intergroup perception

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh McGovern ◽  
Marte Otten
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Social Neuroscience ◽  
Intergroup Bias ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Intergroup Perception ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Processing Framework

Bayesian processing has become a popular framework by which to understand cognitive processes. However, relatively little has been done to understand how Bayesian processing in the brain can be applied to understanding intergroup cognition. We assess how categorization and evaluation processes unfold based on priors about the ethnic outgroup being perceived. We then consider how the precision of prior knowledge about groups differentially influence perception depending on how the information about that group was learned affects the way in which it is recalled. Finally, we evaluate the mechanisms of how humans learn information about other ethnic groups and assess how the method of learning influences future intergroup perception. We suggest that a predictive processing framework for assessing prejudice could help accounting for seemingly disparate findings on intergroup bias from social neuroscience, social psychology, and evolutionary psychology. Such an integration has important implications for future research on prejudice at the interpersonal, intergroup, and societal levels.

scholarly journals Spotlight commentary: REBUS and the anarchic brain

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tehseen Noorani ◽  
Ben Alderson-Day
Keyword(s):  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Mechanisms Of Action ◽  
Unified Model ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Altered States ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Processing Framework

Abstract In ‘REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Towards a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelics’, Carhart-Harris and Friston offer an important analysis of what the predictive processing framework has to offer our understanding of psychedelic experiences, providing an invaluable ground for psychedelic psychiatry. While applauding this, we encourage paying greater attention to contextual factors shaping extreme experiences and their sequalae, and suggest that the authors’ comparisons with certain non-psychedelic altered states may overlook more informative parallels that can be drawn elsewhere. Addressing both points will prove fruitful, ultimately, in identifying the mechanisms of action of greatest interest in psychedelic experiences.

Experienced Wholeness

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wanja Wiese
Keyword(s):  
Prediction Error ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Second Step ◽  
Error Minimization ◽  
Gestalt Theory ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
Prediction Error Minimization ◽  
Hierarchical Bayesian Inference ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Phenomenal Unity

The unity of the experienced world and the experienced self have puzzled humanity for centuries. How can we understand this and related types of phenomenal (i.e., experienced) unity? This book develops an interdisciplinary account of phenomenal unity. It focuses on examples of experienced wholes such as perceived objects (chairs and tables, but also groups of objects), bodily experiences, successions of events, and the attentional structure of consciousness. As a first step, the book investigates how the unity of consciousness can be characterized phenomenologically: what is it like to experience wholes, what is the experiential contribution of phenomenal unity? This raises conceptual and empirical questions. In addressing these questions, connections are drawn to phenomenological accounts and research on Gestalt theory. As a second step, the book suggests how phenomenal unity can be analyzed computationally, by drawing on concepts and ideas of the framework of predictive processing. The result is a conceptual framework, as well as an interdisciplinary account of phenomenal unity: the regularity account of phenomenal unity. According to this account, experienced wholes correspond to a hierarchy of connecting regularities. The brain tracks these regularities by hierarchical prediction error minimization, which approximates hierarchical Bayesian inference.

Supercharged Apes versus Super-Sized Minds

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-112
Author(s):  
Louise Barrett
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Processing Activity ◽  
Evolutionary Continuity ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Processing Framework ◽  
The Way

Clark’s philosophy brings body, brain, and world together again, offering a new conception of both human and nonhuman cognition. This chapter agrees that the predictive processing framework provides our best bet for a species-neutral cognitive science. However, the use of cognitivist, representational language often seems unnecessary, especially when J. J. Gibson introduced a “resonance” metaphor to replace notions of representation, hypothesis, and inference. This chapter is therefore interested to know why Clark resists embracing Gibson, when this seems one of the best ways to embrace evolutionary continuity. The chapter also raises the apparent tension between the predictive processing position and that of the extended mind: Is the brain the principal seat of information-processing activity? Or is it userless tools all the way down? Finally, the chapter raises the issue of epistemic artefacts, and whether these increase or decrease cognitive load.

The Predictive Processing Hypothesis

2018 ◽  
pp. 128-146
Author(s):  
Jakob Hohwy
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Extended Cognition ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Initial Impression ◽  
4E Cognition ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Perception Action ◽  
Processing Framework

Prediction may be a central concept for understanding perceptual and cognitive processing. Contemporary theoretical neuroscience formalizes the role of prediction in terms of probabilistic inference. Perception, action, attention, and learning may then be unified as aspects of predictive processing in the brain. This chapter first explains the sense in which predictive processing is inferential and representational. Then follows an exploration of how the predictive processing framework relates to a series of considerations in favor of enactive, embedded, embodied, and extended cognition (4E cognition). The initial impression may be that predictive processing is too representational and inferential to fit well to 4E cognition. But, in fact, predictive processing encompasses many phenomena prevalent in 4E approaches, while remaining both inferential and representational.

From many to one: Meditation and the plasticity of the predictive mind

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruben Laukkonen ◽  
Heleen A Slagter
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Enhancement ◽  
The Self ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Conceptual Processing ◽  
Current State ◽  
Contemplative Science ◽  
Open Monitoring ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
The Brain

How profoundly can humans change their own minds? In this paper we offer a unifying account of meditation under the predictive processing view of living organisms. We start from relatively simple axioms. First, the brain is an organ that serves to predict based on past experience, both phylogenetic and ontogenetic. Second, meditation serves to bring one closer to the here and now by disengaging from anticipatory processes. We propose that practicing meditation therefore gradually reduces predictive processing, in particular counterfactual cognition—the tendency to construct abstract and temporally deep representations—until all conceptual processing falls away. Our Many- to-One account also places three main styles of meditation (focused attention, open monitoring, and non-dual meditation) on a single continuum, where each technique progressively relinquishes increasingly engrained habits of prediction, including the self. This deconstruction can also make the above processes available to introspection, permitting certain insights into one’s mind. Our review suggests that our framework is consistent with the current state of empirical and (neuro)phenomenological evidence in contemplative science, and is ultimately illuminating about the plasticity of the predictive mind. It also serves to highlight that contemplative science can fruitfully go beyond cognitive enhancement, attention, and emotion regulation, to its more traditional goal of removing past conditioning and creating conditions for potentially profound insights. Experimental rigor, neurophenomenology, and no-report paradigms combined with neuroimaging are needed to further our understanding of how different styles of meditation affect predictive processing and the self, and the plasticity of the predictive mind more generally.

Consciousness

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anil K. Seth
Keyword(s):  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Real Problem ◽  
Active Inference ◽  
Biological Mechanisms ◽  
Specific Content ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Biomimetic Approach ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
The Brain

Consciousness is perhaps the most familiar aspect of our existence, yet we still do not know its biological basis. This chapter outlines a biomimetic approach to consciousness science, identifying three principles linking properties of conscious experience to potential biological mechanisms. First, conscious experiences generate large quantities of information in virtue of being simultaneously integrated and differentiated. Second, the brain continuously generates predictions about the world and self, which account for the specific content of conscious scenes. Third, the conscious self depends on active inference of self-related signals at multiple levels. Research following these principles helps move from establishing correlations between brain responses and consciousness towards explanations which account for phenomenological properties—addressing what can be called the “real problem” of consciousness. The picture that emerges is one in which consciousness, mind, and life, are tightly bound together—with implications for any possible future “conscious machines.”

scholarly journals Extending the extended consciousness debate: perception, imagination, and the common kind assumption

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Deery
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Mental Event ◽  
The World ◽  
Predictive Approach ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Brain

AbstractFor some, the states and processes involved in the realisation of phenomenal consciousness are not confined to within the organismic boundaries of the experiencing subject. Instead, the sub-personal basis of perceptual experience can, and does, extend beyond the brain and body to implicate environmental elements through one’s interaction with the world. These claims are met by proponents of predictive processing, who propose that perception and imagination should be understood as a product of the same internal mechanisms. On this view, as visually imagining is not considered to be world-involving, it is assumed that world-involvement must not be essential for perception, and thus internalism about the sub-personal basis is true. However, the argument for internalism from the unity of perception and imagination relies for its strength on a questionable conception of the relationship between the two experiential states. I argue that proponents of the predictive approach are guilty of harbouring an implicit commitment to the common kind assumption which does not follow trivially from their framework. That is, the assumption that perception and imagination are of the same fundamental kind of mental event. I will argue that there are plausible alternative ways of conceiving of this relationship without drawing internalist metaphysical conclusions from their psychological theory. Thus, the internalist owes the debate clarification of this relationship and further argumentation to secure their position.

The Embodiment of Concepts

2018 ◽  
pp. 640-660
Author(s):  
Michiel Van Elk ◽  
Harold Bekkering
Keyword(s):  
Prediction Error ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Prediction Errors ◽  
Conceptual Representation ◽  
Recurrent Processing ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
Prior Models ◽  
Processing Framework

We characterize theories of conceptual representation as embodied, disembodied, or hybrid according to their stance on a number of different dimensions: the nature of concepts, the relation between language and concepts, the function of concepts, the acquisition of concepts, the representation of concepts, and the role of context. We propose to extend an embodied view of concepts, by taking into account the importance of multimodal associations and predictive processing. We argue that concepts are dynamically acquired and updated, based on recurrent processing of prediction error signals in a hierarchically structured network. Concepts are thus used as prior models to generate multimodal expectations, thereby reducing surprise and enabling greater precision in the perception of exemplars. This view places embodied theories of concepts in a novel predictive processing framework, by highlighting the importance of concepts for prediction, learning and shaping categories on the basis of prediction errors.

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