Are basic actors brainbound agents? Narrowing down solutions to the problem of probabilistic content for predictive perceivers
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences March 31, 2021 George Britten-Neish
A philosophical puzzle arises from predictive processing (PP) accounts of perception: the brain encodes probabilistic information about sensory causes, yet conscious experience presents a single, determinate world. Clark proposes that action-guiding constraints on subpersonal representations resolve this disconnect, but his solution relies on a Davidsonian view of agency that conflicts with the extended-embodied mind thesis he also endorses. The author argues this inconsistency can be resolved either by abandoning the extended-embodied approach or by adopting a more radical enactivist, world-involving account of agency and perception.