Designs on consciousness: literature and predictive processing

Abstract

Predictive processing is a recent approach in cognitive science that describes the brain as an engine of probabilistic hierarchical inference. Initially proposed as a general theory of brain function, predictive processing has recently been expanding to account for questions of consciousness in philosophy and neuroscience. In my previous work (Kukkonen 2020 Probability designs: literature and predictive processing . New York, NY: Oxford University Press), I have shown how predictive processing can also be used to model our engagement with literary texts. In this article, I use my account of our engagement with literature in predictive processing terms, as well as recent work on predictive processing and consciousness, to explore how literature can shed light on various aspects of conscious experience, including qualia, counterfactual depth in conscious experience and sense of self. In the final section, I propose a number of theoretical questions that could be addressed by drawing on literature as a source of hypotheses and stimuli for possible experimental designs. The upshot is a picture where literature is not just a source of illustrative examples about conscious experience, but a designer environment through which we can explore and rethink consciousness. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives’.

Aesthetics and predictive processing: grounds and prospects of a fruitful encounter

“…The first part of the issue, entitled “General Issues”, gathers contributions that clarify the conceptual bases of the encounter between PP and aesthetics and expand it in new directions [ 98 , 142 , 148 , 149 ]. The three parts that follow—devoted to “Visual Art” [ 63 , 123 ], “Music” [ 102 , 132 , 133 ] and “Literature, Narrative and Cinema” [ 56 , 95 , 96 , 125 ] respectively—offer an articulate picture of the insights that PP can provide when applied to different art forms (including some that have so far been little or never explored from a PP perspective), and what in turn these art forms, when considered from a PP perspective, can tell us about our mental functioning. The last part, entitled “Responses and Critical Perspectives” contains papers that compare the PP picture of our aesthetic encounters with other leading proposals in the field and provide useful criticisms and indications for future research [ 64 , 107 , 108 ].…”

“…[ 93 , 123 ] for some preliminary suggestions about visual art, [ 53 , 94 ] about literature and [ 55 , 56 , 96 ] about cinema) and even beyond exteroceptive inference to embrace proprioceptive and interoceptive inference as well. By revealing systematic connections between aspects of our phenomenology and facts about neural dynamics, this line of research might well contribute to research in ‘neurophenomenology' [ 124 ] and even inform theoretical discussions about consciousness from a PP perspective (see [ 64 , 125 ] for preliminary suggestions in this direction).…”