The predictive mind / Jakob Hohwy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hohwy, Jakob, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cognitive neuroscience.

Perception.

Physical Description:

ix, 282 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2013.

Summary:

A new theory is taking hold in neuroscience. It is the theory that the brain is essentially a hypothesis-testing mechanism, one that attempts to minimise the error of its predictions about the sensory input it receives from the world. It is an attractive theory because powerful theoretical arguments support it, and yet it is at heart stunningly simple. Jakob Hohwy explains and explores this theory from the perspective of cognitive science and philosophy. The key argument throughout The Predictive Mind is that the mechanism explains the rich, deep, and multifaceted character of our conscious perception. It also gives a unified account of how perception is sculpted by attention, and how it depends on action. The mind is revealed as having a fragile and indirect relation to the world. Though we are deeply in tune with the world we are also strangely distanced from it. The first part of the book sets out how the theory enables rich, layered perception. The theory's probabilistic and statistical foundations are explained using examples from empirical research and analogies to different forms of inference. The second part uses the simple mechanism in an explanation of problematic cases of how we manage to represent, and sometimes misrepresent, the world in health as well as in mental illness. The third part looks into the mind, and shows how the theory accounts for attention, conscious unity, introspection, self and the privacy of our mental world. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I The Mechanism

1 Perception as causal inference 13

Constraints on perceptual inference 14

Perception and Bayes' rule 15

Perceptual inference and binocular rivalry 19

How do neurons know Bayes? 23

From inference to phenomenology 25

A hierarchy of causal regularities 27

Perceptual variance and invariance 28

Message passing between hierarchical levels 31

Additional constraints on hierarchical inference 32

On Bayes' rule 34

Summary: hierarchical neuronal inferential mechanisms 37

Notes 38

2 Prediction error minimization 41

A statistical illustration 42

Reconceiving the relation to the world 46

Being supervised by the world 48

A deeper perspective 51

Recognition and model inversion 53

Summary: perception in prediction 55

Notes 56

3 Prediction error, context, and precision 59

Context and uncertainty 60

Plugging the leaky dam 62

Expected precisions 64

Precisions and prediction error gain 66

The basic mechanism: matters arising 67

Summary: passive perceivers? 73

Notes 74

4 Action and expected experience 75

Active inference in perception 76

Modelling the agent, and acting 81

Bounding surprise 84

Active inference: matters arising 89

Prediction error minimization: challenges 92

Summary: tooling up for understanding the mind 95

Notes 96

Part II The World

5 Binding is inference 101

The binding problem and causal inference 102

Initial pleas for the Bayesian story 106

From common cause to sensory binding 110

Binding, attention, and precision 111

Summary: binding in error minimization 115

Notes 115

6 Is predicting seeing? 117

Cognitive penetrability: initial moves 118

Cognitive penetrability under mounting uncertainty 122

Making room for cognitive impenetrability 124

Possible cases of cognitive penetrability 129

Summary: a balanced notion of cognitive penetrability 137

Notes 138

7 Precarious prediction 140

Trading off perception and misperception 141

Accuracy and noise 143

Precisions, sampling, and prior belief 145

Reality testing 147

The courtroom of perception 152

Mental illness and prediction error 156

Delusions and expected precisions 157

Autism and expected precisions 161

Balancing passive and active inference 165

Summary: prediction error failures in illness and health 168

Notes 169

8 Surprise and misrepresentation 172

Misperception as failure of prediction error minimization 174

Misperception and rule-following 179

Hierarchical modes of presentation 181

In the Bayesian room 185

Summary: a mechanism for representation 187

Notes 188

Part III The Mind

9 Precision, attention, and consciousness 191

From mental searchlight to precision expectations 192

Learning patterns of noise and uncertainty 194

Patterns of expected precisions in attention 195

Volitional attention as active inference 197

Inattentional blindness as low gain and prior 199

Endogenous and exogenous attention 200

Attention and conscious perception 201

Summary: statistical aspects of attention and consciousness 205

Notes 206

10 Perceptual unity in action 207

From causal inference to consciousness? 207

Perceptual unity 209

Unity, and ignition of the global neuronal workspace 211

Ignition, active inference, and unity 214

Action-based unity and indirectness 219

Summary: unity and causal seclusion 221

Notes 221

11 The fragile mirror of nature 224

Truth trackers or just a penchant for error minimization? 224

Is perception indirect? 227

The Bayesian body 230

Fragility, internality, and situatedness 237

Summary: a disconcerting and comforting perceptual relation? 240

Notes 241

12 Into the predictive mind 242

Emotions and bodily sensations 242

Introspection is inference on mental causes 245

The private mind in interaction 249

The self as a sensory trajectory 254

Summary: the probabilistic and causal mind 256

Notes 257.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [261]-276) and index.

ISBN:

9780199682737

0199682739

9780199686735

0199686734

OCLC:

866836560