Debbie Foster

two possibilities. One calls for actual neural projections from the “affect complex” to the “posterior sensory set” and vice versa. The other possibility calls for approximate simultaneity of activations in the two sets, resulting in the production of a time-based ensemble. In either option, the ultimate realization of a conscious mind depends on b

We're drawn to artwork that subtly deviates from our predictions of the world-"Too much prediction error is unpleasant or even disturbing; none or too little is boring"-and new art movements may emerge as our predictions adjust to (and get bored with) the new images around us. (We initially reject cutting-edge art because it's too far afi

Bottom-up attention automatically keeps you in touch with what’s going on in the world, but this great benefit comes with a drawback, particularly for postindustrial folk who live in metropolitan areas and work at desks rather than on the savannah: lots of fruitless, unwelcome distractions.

I'd come to think our brains needed help transforming from trash compactors into microscopes, and that's where art comes in: a way to fight our instincts to truncate and elide, and, in so doing, to notice more, appreciate more, empathize more. Which is all to say, to experience more. If our lives are the set of experiences that we collect, then art

Rather than imagine hard-to-define consciousness or invisible morphic fields driving the emergence of life, a simpler answer is liable to come from retrocausation, the ability of future states of systems to influence prior states.

In short, it is not that there is a right way and wrong way to learn. It’s that there are different strategies, each uniquely suited to capturing a particular type of information. A good hunter tailors the trap to the prey.

Between intrinsic and extrinsic existence passes the most fundamental of all divides: the Great Divide of Being. This is the unbridgeable chasm between what exists in an absolute sense, in and of itself—namely conscious, intrinsic entities—and what exists only in a lesser sense, for others.

Once this Great Divide of Being, between existence for itse

In essence, Friston's principle explains how living systems defy (at least temporarily) the second law of thermodynamics and achieve homeostatic stability. Broadly speaking, the free energy principle is consistent with Freud's principle of constancy, which asserts that the nervous system conserves energy and tends towards stability.

'you could say stories are an especially useful storage format, a type of compression, and consciousness is the program that unpacks it.'