A grand new vision of cognitive science that explains how our minds build our worlds 'One of
the most important books yet published this century' Spectator 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.
