No, we are absolutely predicting when we are looking at a photo; firstly, we really do not see the ‘whole thing’, our eyes make quick, stereotyped (cough predictive cough) movements to a few spots on the image and mentally imagine the rest. Secondly, that’s assuming we recognized something in the image, if it’s unclear, like a grainy photo or lots of shadows, we start to make informed guesses about what could be there.
All of our sensory systems work this way - we use an enormous amount of context to bubble up predictive categories and the collect marginal amounts of information until one prediction dominates over all others.
When one doesn’t, we get gestalt like illusions; like the cubes that are projected both forwards or backwards - or dresses that are blue and black and white and gold - or laurel and yanni in perfect harmony, etc.
This is a pop-sci article, so take it with a grain of salt, but there is a growing body of research that attempts to frame many cognitive processes as inherently predictive (inferential?). I think this view arises pretty naturally when you start thinking about us having a 'model' of reality that we is updated based on sensory information, but I digress.
I think I see where you're coming from.
A human might not be 'predicting', since the term has some kind of temporal element connotation. But we could say that it's 'inferring' what the photo represents?
Ya that's what I was basing my comment on mostly. I do understand your parents reasoning though, although it is comming from a more logical perspective than I was.
I was commenting from the perspective of an analogy from personal experience of my own conscious.
