A grand new vision of cognitive science that explains how our minds build our worlds
For as long as we've studied the mind, we've believed that information flowing from our senses determines what our mind perceives. But as our understanding has advanced in the last few decades, a hugely powerful new view has flipped this assumption on its head. The brain is not a passive receiver, but an ever-active predictor.
At the forefront of this cognitive revolution is widely acclaimed philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark, who has synthesized his ground-breaking work on the predictive brain to explore its fascinating mechanics and implications. Among the most stunning of these is the realization that experience itself, because it is guided by prior expectation, is a kind of controlled hallucination. We don't passively take in the world around us; instead our mind is constantly making and refining predictions about what we expect to see. This even applies to our bodies, as the way we experience pain and other states is shaped by our expectations, and this has broader implications for the understanding and treatment of conditions from PTSD to schizophrenia to medically unexplained symptoms. From the most mundane experiences to the most sublime, it is our predictions that sculpt our experience.
A landmark study of cognitive science, The Experience Machine lays out the extraordinary explanatory power of the predictive brain for our lives, mental health and society.
About the Author
Andy Clark is a Professor of Cognitive Philosophy at the University of Sussex, and at Macquarie University, Australia. He is the author of six books including Supersizing the Mind, Natural-Born Cyborgs and Surfing Uncertainty. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the British Academy, and is an occasional Academic Consultant for Google, UK.
Industry Reviews
Enjoyable and surprising -- Steven Poole * Guardian *
For those who want to know more about an important and growing field of neuroscience, The Experience Machine is an excellent primer * New Scientist *
A predictably groundbreaking exploration of the predictive basis of our extended minds from one of our deepest and clearest thinkers, and a true pioneer of this transformational view of who we are and how we work.The Experience Machine delivers a remarkable combination of profound insight and practical relevance, and it showcases Clark's ability to convey complex ideas with fluent and accessible language -- Anil Seth, author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness
Rare among science books, this one has changed the way I experience the world. I now feel the experience machine doing its work as I pay attention, am surprised, or catch myself having made completely ridiculous predictions. It's a book that will help you understand the way you see, think and act-and it is also a pleasure to read -- Susan Blackmore, author of Consciousness: An Introduction and THE Meme Machine
It's tempting to think that our eyes and ears passively record the world like cameras and microphones, but our perceptions are much more interesting than that. Andy Clark is a leading figure in understanding the brain as a prediction machine -- we don't passively take in the world, we're constantly anticipating it and interpreting it accordingly. This thoroughly readable book will convince you that the brain and the world are partners in constructing our understanding -- Sean Carroll, author of The Biggest Ideas in The Universe
