Brain as a Prediction Machine
This is my first post on here since Dara invited me a few months ago. Feels like it might be a fun place to discuss consciousness and brains.
In my Cognition and Emotion class in grad school, we just watched this video. In it, Andy Clark discusses the Predictive Processing framework for consciousness. As I understand it, basically the hypothesis is that brains are prediction machines. They model the world the state of the environment moment-to-moment. They're constantly updating models of the world and using both outside data and internal models to construct perception. The main "stuff" of consciousness (qualia) are prediction errors--data that wasn't already predicted by the models.
What do ya'll think about this hypothesis?
Edit: Video I put in the URL doesn't seem to be showing up, so pasting it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1Ghrd7NBtk