Can the predictive mind represent time? A critical evaluation of predictive processing attempts to address husserlian time-consciousness

Predictive processing, a framework from cognitive neuroscience that treats the brain as a prediction machine minimizing error, has been used to explain conscious experience, including the sense of time. This paper critically evaluates such accounts from a Husserlian perspective. The author introduces "orthodox predictive processing" to describe versions committed to representational views of cognition. Current predictive processing accounts of time-consciousness are orthodox because they rely on representational views of brain function and perception, and prioritize imagination over perception. The author argues these accounts align more with a Kantian-Brentanian approach to time-consciousness than with the Husserlian account they claim to explain.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract Predictive processing is an increasingly popular explanatory framework developed within cognitive neuroscience. It conceives of the brain as a prediction machine that tries to minimise prediction error. Predictive processing has also been employed to explain aspects of conscious experience. In this paper, I critically evaluate current predictive processing approaches to the phenomenology of time-consciousness from a Husserlian perspective. To do so, I introduce the notion of orthodox predictive processing to refer to interpretations of the predictive processing framework that subscribe to representational views of cognition. As it turns out, current predictive processing accounts of time-consciousness are orthodox given their commitment to representational views of both brain functioning and perception, and, on the other hand, their reliance on the primacy of imagination over perception. However, I argue that such accounts are in fact closer to a Kantian-Brentanian approach to the phenomenology of time-consciousness than to the Husserlian account that they attempt to account for.