The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality

by Andy Clark

The Experience Machine by cognitive philosopher Andy Clark is about predictive processing. This is the view that we construct our reality from expectations, and that our relationship with the world is active: we are never simply passive recipients of incoming data. Clark provides an engaging overview of the state of research and how predictive processing should change how we think about what we are.

Recommendations from our site

“The broader aim of the book is to give accessible insight into some of the most interesting interdisciplinary research in the area of cognitive science, about how rather than being passive recipients of information, we project expectations on the world. According to Clark, we should rethink everything about human beings in terms of predictive processing, the ways that our senses supply correctives of our projections, and don’t give us a reliable picture of reality that we receive passively.” Read more...

The Best Philosophy Books of 2023

Nigel Warburton, Philosopher