The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality

The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality - Paperback

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The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality
  • The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality
The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality - Paperback

The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality - Paperback

by Andy Clark
$19.00
$19.00

Book Overview

A brilliant new theory of the mind that upends our understanding of how the brain interacts with the world

"This thoroughly readable book will convince you that the brain and the world are partners in constructing our understanding." --Sean Carroll, New York Times bestselling author of The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion

For as long as we've studied human cognition, we've believed that our senses give us direct access to the world. What we see is what's really there--or so the thinking goes. But new discoveries in neuroscience and psychology have turned this assumption on its head. What if rather than perceiving reality passively, your mind actively predicts it?

Widely acclaimed philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark unpacks this provocative new theory that the brain is a powerful, dynamic prediction engine, mediating our experience of both body and world. From the most mundane experiences to the most sublime, reality as we know it is the complex synthesis of sensory information and expectation. Exploring its fascinating mechanics and remarkable implications for our lives, mental health, and society, Clark nimbly illustrates how the predictive brain sculpts all human experience. Chronic pain and mental illness are shown to involve subtle malfunctions of our unconscious predictions, pointing the way towards more effective, targeted treatments. Under renewed scrutiny, the very boundary between ourselves and the outside world dissolves, showing that we are as entangled with our environments as we are with our onboard memories, thoughts, and feelings. And perception itself is revealed to be something of a controlled hallucination.

Unveiling the extraordinary explanatory power of the predictive brain, The Experience Machine is a mesmerizing window onto one of the most significant developments in our understanding of the mind.
ISBN9780525567257
Author Andy Clark
PublisherVintage
GenreEducation
FormatPaperback
PublishedNovember 2024
LanguageENG- English
Pages304
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

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Nonfiction Science

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More by Andy Clark

The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality

The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality - Paperback

The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality - Paperback

By Andy Clark

About Andy Clark

Andy Clark is Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, at Edinburgh University in Scotland. He is the author of Being There (1997), Mindware (2001), Natural-Born Cyborgs (2003), and Supersizing the Mind (2008). His interests include artificial intelligence, embodied cognition, robotics, and the predictive mind. In 2018 he was profiled in The New Yorker.

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