What Can Predictive Processing Tell Us about the Content of Perceptual Experience?

Abstract

This chapter explores the consequences that the predictive processing framework has for the debate concerning what can enter into the content of perceptual experience. Within this debate, there are those who, on the one hand, are ‘conservatives’, claiming that only ‘low-level’ properties enter into the content of perceptual experience, while there are those who, on the other hand, are more ‘liberal’ and allow ‘higher-level’ properties. One recently expressed view is that the predictive processing framework dispenses with, or dissolves, the debate altogether. This chapter argues against this in favour of the view that predictive processing in fact supports liberalism. It defends this position against four illustrative objections.