How the brain shapes reality - with Andy Clark

Join philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark as he challenges our conventional understanding of the mind's interaction with the world.

This Discourse was recorded at the Ri on 26 January 2024.

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This innovative concept suggests that the brain operates as a dynamic prediction engine, continually shaping our perception of our bodies and the surrounding environment. Through a complex interplay of sensory data and expectations, the brain orchestrates every facet of human experience, from the everyday to the extraordinary.

In this thought-provoking Discourse, Andy will guide us through the inner workings of the predictive brain, exposing its profound implications for our well-being, mental health, and society. For instance, chronic pain and mental disorders often result from subtle disruptions in our unconscious predictions, offering promising avenues for more precise and effective treatments. As we scrutinise the boundaries between ourselves and the external world, we'll uncover the intricate connections between our environments, memories, thoughts, and emotions. This journey reveals perception as a carefully controlled form of 'controlled hallucination.'

Join us as we delve into the extraordinary explanatory power of the predictive brain. Discover how it revolutionizes our comprehension of perception and reality, all without resorting to hyperbolic language or clichés.

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Andy Clark is a Professor of Cognitive Philosophy at the University of Sussex. His interests include artificial intelligence, embodied and extended cognition, robotics, and computational neuroscience. From 2017-2021 he was PI on a European Research Council Advanced Grant: Expecting Ourselves: Embodied Prediction and the Construction of Conscious Experience. He is PI on an ERC Synergy Grant, XScape and Material Minds: Exploring the Interactions between Predictive Brains, Cultural Artifacts, and Embodied Visual Search.

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[d.lav.]

As much a fan as I am of the Predictive Processing approach to mind/brain, as someone who suffers from a misdiagnosed chronic health problem, I know for a fact that the complexity of the body's capacity to malfunction can outstrip the much more coarse-grained diagnostic capacity of the medical profession. Some poorly understood chronic conditions really are somatically derived rather than model-driven.

[nilesspindrift]

Great talk and I shall be ordering the book. Also got to say how much I loved Professor Clark's suit!

[liarspeaksthetruth]

My wife is late-deafened -- she says the listening exercise @7:30 is EXACTLY what it's like to learn to hear with a cochlear implant. (she did fantastically well - she learned VERY quickly)

[tonyevans]

This has been very helpful for me, thank you. Fascinating

[terrizittritsch]

Interesting lecture by knowledgable person. Gives one a lot to think about on numerous topics and experiences.

[jpopelish]

Those trying to program self driving vehicles really need to be thinking of programming in these terms, and about how to make the program humble about the likelihood of sometimes predicting incorrectly, and jumping to a better, alternate hypothetical reality, gracefully.

[jameseats]

My son is autistic and this talk has given me a new way to think about how he interprets the world and why he reacts the way he does.

[Juniperrrrrr]

For years there was a futon in my brothers bedroom. My parents removed it at some point, and the first time I looked in there after that, I hallucinated for a split second that it was still there. I hypothesized it was due to the expectation at the time and it’s interesting to learn more about it here!

[ginogarcia]

Could prediction error be the basis for comedy where you expect one thing but something totally new comes

[bitterbum]

I wonder how this could relate to the anecdotal recollections from people struggling with different psychiatric illnesses/afflictions, and their resulting radical shifts of perspective after taking (often accidentally) high dosages of hallucinogens. Not that the change is always good or bad, but just radical change in perspective in general. If the brain updates itself with this balance of "generative model" vs. "sensory input, " it seems that radical perturbations to either really changes our "internal judge" that assigns weights to either.

On the other side of the same coin would be when we receive extreme sensory input (which we are unable to immediately justify with our internal models), that would result in PTSD--where we now expect this input to occur again despite it being very unlikely. Could we perturb the system (either through modifying the internal model or by controlling sensory input) to recalibrate the judge?

[admiral_franz_von_hipper]

With the sine wave speech examples, I understood the exames pretty well on the initial playthrough. I suspect that a major reason behind it is that I have been using communications radios for a while and the voices that come through those can get pretty close to the stripped sine wave voices.

[NishanthSalahudeen]

42:59 pain in phantom limbs could be brought about in this way, and that would explain why the mirrorbox therapy as described by V Ramachandran helps to cure it. Am guessing that phobias work the same way too.

[TommyEfreeti]

What you believe you expect to perceive your senses will "receive", to paraphrase Bohm.

"Reality is what we take to be true.
What we take to be true is what we believe.
What we believe is based upon our perceptions.
What we perceive depends on what we look for.
What we look for depends on what we think.
What we think depends on what we perceive.
What we perceive determines what we believe.
What we believe determines what we take to be true.
What we take to be true is our reality."
- Bohm

[jaytsecan]

What a fantastic and highly informative and engrossing video. Thank you so much for sharing!

[arinco]

This is my favourite talk from this channel. I've been obsessed with AI for the last year but I feel like I'm gonna go down a neuroscience rabbit hole now lol

[VYBEKAT]

hitting the ground hard enough to punch a screw (clearly visible in the picture) through multiple layers of thick rubber and leather is going to hurt regardless of not having been pierced by the object

[KribensaUK]

Based on what you said, the case of the construction worker sounds like the brain also weighing up the consequences of a pain response or lack thereof.
The nail could have damaged the foot in a way that also disrupted the usual pain signals, so not feeling pain and so walking on it could cause more damage.
So it erred on the side of a pain response until further evidence was obtained

[dionysusnow]

There is a huge difference between a nail and a screw when it comes to something embedded in your foot. I speak from experience.

[d_wigglesworth]

In addition to the convex-/concave- mask "illusion/prediction" and the effectiveness of even the "honest placebo", there is also the vertigo that is induced when some people (yours truly, for instance) step onto a motionless escalator: even though i know "it's all in my head", and I'm prepared to experience a moment of vertigo yet again (every time), I still experience it... Presumably, if I had never seen an escalator in my life, I would experience no vertigo.

[stanleykubrick]

Gazans are predicting that one day they’ll get food in their bellies and be treated with dignity. Does anyone care to guess when that prediction will come true?