The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality

“This thoroughly readable book will convince you that the brain & the world are partners in constructing our understanding.” —Sean Carroll, New York Times bestselling author of The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, & Motion

For as long as we’ve studied human cognition, we’ve believed that our senses give us direct access to the world. What we see is what’s really there—or so the thinking goes. But new discoveries in neuroscience & psychology have turned this assumption on its head. What if rather than perceiving reality passively, your mind actively predicts it?

Widely acclaimed philosopher & cognitive scientist Andy Clark unpacks this provocative new theory that the brain is a powerful, dynamic prediction engine, mediating our experience of both body & world. From the most mundane experiences to the most sublime, reality as we know it is the complex synthesis of sensory information & expectation. Exploring its fascinating mechanics & remarkable implications for our lives, mental health, & society, Clark nimbly illustrates how the predictive brain sculpts all human experience. 

Chronic pain & mental illness are shown to involve subtle malfunctions of our unconscious predictions, pointing the way towards more effective, targeted treatments. Under renewed scrutiny, the very boundary between ourselves & the outside world dissolves, showing that we are as entangled with our environments as we are with our onboard memories, thoughts, & feelings. And perception itself is revealed to be something of a controlled hallucination.

Unveiling the extraordinary explanatory power of the predictive brain, The Experience Machine is a mesmerizing window onto one of the most significant developments in our understanding of the mind.