
The Mind-Expanding Ideas of Andy Clark (2018) - ColinWright
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/02/the-mind-expanding-ideas-of-andy-clark
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randcraw
I don't know the bases of Friston's theory of intentionality, but it sounds
like it was likely motivated by the notion made popular a decade or so ago
that free will didn't really exist, that evidence from Functional MRI-based
analyses indicated that human action preceded the brain's decision to act.
Presumably that idea was fundamental to Friston's suggestion that volition
arose only after the arm was already in the act of moving, where the mind's
will to move arose as a surprise reaction to the arm NOT already moving.

Fortunately the bases for this freaky model of reaction preceding initiative
seems to have since been resolved as error -- we improperly interpreted the
FMRI signals.

I wonder how this resequencing in the mind of cause to once again precede
effect has reshaped Friston's theory of perception and free will. Or Clark's.

A well written article nonetheless. I'm often impressed that writers can so
capably embrace the conceptual models of others without injecting their own
doubts or biases, even when the bases for these theories often seem tentative
at best.

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smoyer
I think you can argue the opposite as well ... the world is in fact defined in
our minds as perceived by our senses. So the two people in the opening part of
the article may both believe they know where MOMA is, but do they really share
the same perception of the location? More simply, we agree on what defines the
color red, but we have no real way of knowing that our mental model of red is
the same.

EDIT: I just noticed there was another link on the front-page that describes
this duality better than I can -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22374366](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22374366)

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dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16684973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16684973)

