Predictive processing and thought

Our brains are prediction machines. In the recent years, this idea has been taken increasinglyseriously by both cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind. One specific framework within the new stream of research, Predictive Processing (PP), has enjoyed especial popularity. PP has been used to account for a wide variety of perceptual and cognitive processes in multiple domains, including vision, body-awareness, language, emotion, and abnormal psychiatry. The wide applicability of PP makes it an attractive candidate for a unifying framework of human cognition. So far, however, the largest body of research in PP has focused on (visual) perception and its particular neural mechanisms. Our project tries to answer the question “Can PP be extended to higher-order cognitive processes?” and intends to address the relationship between PP, conscious thought, and its phenomenology.