Clark (2017)
Clark, Andy. (2017) Busting Out: Predictive Brains, Embodied Minds, and the Puzzle of the Evidentiary Veil. Noûs 51 (4), 727-753.
| Title | Busting Out: Predictive Brains, Embodied Minds, and the Puzzle of the Evidentiary Veil |
|---|---|
| Resource Type | journal article |
| Author(s) | Andy Clark |
| Year | 2017 |
| Journal | Noûs |
| Volume | 51 |
| Number | 4 |
| Pages | 727-753 |
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.
