Andy Clark

Human minds are not elusive, ghostly inner things. They are seething, swirling oceans of prediction, continuously orchestrated by brain, body, and world. We should be careful what kinds of material, digital, and social worlds we build, because in building those worlds we are building our own minds too.

Andy Clark

Nothing we do or experience … is untouched by our own expectations. Instead, there is a constant give-and-take in which what we experience reflects not just what the world is currently telling us, but what we — consciously or nonconsciously — were expecting it to be telling us. One consequence of this is that we are never simply seeing what’s “really there,” stripped bare of … [ Read more ]

The Experience Machine: Cognitive Philosopher Andy Clark on the Power of Expectation and How the Mind Renders Reality

“My experience is what I agree to attend to.” – William James

“Nothing we do or experience … is untouched by our own expectations. Instead, there is a constant give-and-take in which what we experience reflects not just what the world is currently telling us, but what we — consciously or nonconsciously — were expecting it to be telling us. One consequence of this is that … [ Read more ]