Abstract: The ‘predictive’ approach to the mind, which understands perception and cognition as hypothesis-testing hierarchical models, was developed as a theory of neural coding by Karl Friston and colleagues. Recently, however, philosophers such as Andy Clark (2013) and Jakob Hohwy (2014) have argued that the this neural model has profound philosophical implications. In this paper, I focus on their claim that there is something 'indirect' about perception on the predictive approach. I assess their arguments against several different interpretations of directness, both metaphysical and epistemological, and I conclude that the predictive approach is largely neutral with respect to our standard understanding of direct and indirect realism.
Zoe Drayson is a Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Stirling and currently a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh.