Works by Mark Miller
33 found
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| Mark Miller [29] | Mark T. Miller [2] | Mark D. Johnston Glenn Miller [1] | Mark Daniel Miller [1] |
| Mark S. Miller [1] | Mark J. Miller [1] |
- The feeling of grip: novelty, error dynamics, and the predictive brain.Julian Kiverstein,Mark Miller &Erik Rietveld -2019 -Synthese 196 (7):2847-2869.According to the free energy principle biological agents resist a tendency to disorder in their interactions with a dynamically changing environment by keeping themselves in sensory and physiological states that are expected given their embodiment and the niche they inhabit :127–138, 2010. doi: 10.1038/nrn2787). Why would a biological agent that aims at minimising uncertainty in its encounters with the world ever be motivated to seek out novelty? Novelty for such an agent would arrive in the form of sensory and physiological (...) states that are unexpected. Such an agent ought therefore to avoid novel and surprising interactions with the world one might think. Yet humans and many other animals find play and other forms of novelty-seeking and exploration hugely rewarding. How can this be understood in frameworks for studying the mind that emphasise prediction error minimisation? This problem has been taken up in recent research concerned with epistemic action—actions an agent engages in to reduce uncertainty. However that work leaves two questions unanswered, which it is the aim of our paper to address. First, no account has been given yet of why it should feel good to the agent to engage the world playfully and with curiosity. Second an appeal is made to precision-estimation to explain epistemic action, yet it remains unclear how precision-weighting works in action more generally, or active inference. We argue that an answer to both questions may lie in the bodily states of an agent that track the rate at which free energy is being reduced. The recent literature on the predictive brain has connected the valence of emotional experiences to the rate of change in the reduction of prediction error :e1003094, 2013. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003094; Van de Cruys, in Metzinger and Wiese Philosophy and predictive processing, vol 24, MIND Group, Frankfurt am Main, 2017. doi: 10.15502/9783958573253). In this literature valenced emotional experiences are hypothesised to be identical with changes in the rate at which prediction error is reduced. Experiences are negatively valenced when overall prediction error increases and are positively valenced when the sum of prediction errors decrease. We offer an ecological-enactive interpretation of the concept of valence and its connection to rate of change of prediction error. We show how rate of change should be understood in terms of embodied states of affordance-related action readiness. We then go on to apply this ecological-enactive account of error dynamics to provide an answer to the first question we have raised: It may explain why it should feel good to an agent to be curious and playful. Our ecological-enactive account also allows us to show how error dynamics may provide an answer to the second question we have raised regarding how precision-weighting works in active inference. An agent that is sensitive to rates of error reduction can tune precision on the fly. We show how this ability to tune precision on the go can allow agents to develop skills for adapting better and better to the unexpected, and search out opportunities for resolving uncertainty and progressing in its learning. (shrink)No categories
- Predictive processing and relevance realization: exploring convergent solutions to the frame problem.Brett P. Andersen,Mark Miller &John Vervaeke -forthcoming -Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences:1-22.The frame problem refers to the fact that organisms must be able to zero in on relevant aspects of the world and intelligently ignore the vast majority of the world that is irrelevant to their goals. In this paper we aim to point out the connection between two leading frameworks for thinking about how organisms achieve this. Predictive processing is a rapidly growing framework within cognitive science which suggests that organisms assign a high ‘weight’ to relevant aspects of the world, (...) effectively treating relevant aspects of the world as if they are more precise. This assignment of weight is called precision-weighting and is the predictive processing account of how organisms allocate their attention. Relevance Realization is a framework that conceptualizes an organism’s ability to realize relevance as resulting from a dynamical system in which a cognitive agent makes use of opponent processing relationships to zero in on relevant aspects of the world. In this paper we use recent work on the diametric model of autism and psychosis to demonstrate that the tradeoffs inherent to precision-weighting are also inherent to relevance realization. This connection will demonstrate that although these frameworks have a different intellectual background and use a different set of concepts and vocabulary, they are both pointing to the same underlying process. The fact that these different frameworks have converged on such a similar solution to the problem of how organisms realize relevance serves to demonstrate the plausibility of that solution. (shrink)
- Happily entangled: prediction, emotion, and the embodied mind.Mark Miller &Andy Clark -2018 -Synthese 195 (6):2559-2575.Recent work in cognitive and computational neuroscience depicts the human cortex as a multi-level prediction engine. This ‘predictive processing’ framework shows great promise as a means of both understanding and integrating the core information processing strategies underlying perception, reasoning, and action. But how, if at all, do emotions and sub-cortical contributions fit into this emerging picture? The fit, we shall argue, is both profound and potentially transformative. In the picture we develop, online cognitive function cannot be assigned to either the (...) cortical or the sub-cortical component, but instead emerges from their tight co-ordination. This tight co-ordination involves processes of continuous reciprocal causation that weave together bodily information and ‘top-down’ predictions, generating a unified sense of what’s out there and why it matters. The upshot is a more truly ‘embodied’ vision of the predictive brain in action. (shrink)No categories
- The embodied brain: towards a radical embodied cognitive neuroscience.Julian Kiverstein &Mark Miller -2015 -Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 9.
- Play in predictive minds: A cognitive theory of play.Marc Malmdorf Andersen,Julian Kiverstein,Mark Miller &Andreas Roepstorff -2023 -Psychological Review 130 (2):462-479.
- Losing Ourselves: Active Inference, Depersonalization, and Meditation.George Deane,Mark Miller &Sam Wilkinson -2020 -Frontiers in Psychology 11.
- (1 other version)The Predictive Dynamics of Happiness and Well-Being.Mark Miller,Erik Rietveld &Julian Kiverstein -2021 -Sage Publications: Emotion Review 14 (1):15-30.Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 1, Page 15-30, January 2022. We offer an account of mental health and well-being using the predictive processing framework. According to this framework, the difference between mental health and psychopathology can be located in the goodness of the predictive model as a regulator of action. What is crucial for avoiding the rigid patterns of thinking, feeling and acting associated with psychopathology is the regulation of action based on the valence of affective states. In PPF, valence (...) is modelled as error dynamics—the change in prediction errors over time. Our aim in this paper is to show how error dynamics can account for both momentary happiness and longer term well-being. What will emerge is a new neurocomputational framework for making sense of human flourishing. (shrink)
- Ambient smart environments: affordances, allostasis, and wellbeing.Ben White &Mark Miller -2024 -Synthese 204 (2):1-24.In this paper we assess the functionality and therapeutic potential of ambient smart environments. We argue that the language of affordances alone fails to do justice to the peculiar functionality of this ambient technology, and draw from theoretical approaches based on the free energy principle and active inference. We argue that ambient smart environments should be understood as playing an'upstream' role, shaping an agent's field of affordances in real time, in an adaptive way that supports an optimal grip on a (...) field of affordances. We characterise this optimal grip using precision weighting, and in terms of allostatic control, drawing an analogy with the role of precision weighting in metacognitive processes. One key insight we present is that ambient smart environments may support allostatic control not only by simplifying an agent's problem space, but by increasing uncertainty, in order to destabilise calcified, sub-optimal, psychological and behavioural patterns. In short, we lay an empirically-grounded theoretical foundation for understanding ambient smart environments, and for answering related philosophical questions around agency, trust, and subjective wellbeing. (shrink)No categories
- Expecting some action: Predictive Processing and the construction of conscious experience.Kathryn Nave,George Deane,Mark Miller &Andy Clark -2022 -Review of Philosophy and Psychology 13 (4):1019-1037.Predictive processing has begun to offer new insights into the nature of conscious experience—but the link is not straightforward. A wide variety of systems may be described as predictive machines, raising the question: what differentiates those for which it makes sense to talk about conscious experience? One possible answer lies in the involvement of a higher-order form of prediction error, termed expected free energy. In this paper we explore under what conditions the minimization of this new quantity might underpin conscious (...) experience. Our suggestion is that the minimisation of Expected Free Energy is not in itself sufficient for the occurrence of conscious experience. Instead, it is relevant only insofar as it helps deliver what Ward et al. ( 2011 ) have previously described as a _sense of our own poise over an action space_. Perceptual experience, we will argue, is nothing other than the process that puts current actions in contact with goals and intentions, enabling some creatures to know the space of options that their current situation makes available. This proposal fits with recent work suggesting a deep link between conscious contents and contents computed at an ‘intermediate’ level of processing, apt for controlling action. (shrink)
- The value of uncertainty.Mark Miller,Kate Nave,George Deane &Andy Clark -unknownNo categories
- Editorial: Predictive Processing and Consciousness.Mark Miller,Andy Clark &Tobias Schlicht -2022 -Review of Philosophy and Psychology 13 (4):797-808.
- Mastering uncertainty: A predictive processing account of enjoying uncertain success in video game play.Sebastian Deterding,Marc Malmdorf Andersen,Julian Kiverstein &Mark Miller -2022 -Frontiers in Psychology 13:924953.Why do we seek out and enjoy uncertain success in playing games? Game designers and researchers suggest that games whose challenges match player skills afford engaging experiences of achievement, competence, or effectance—ofdoing well. Yet, current models struggle to explain why such balanced challenges best afford these experiences and do not straightforwardly account for the appeal of high- and low-challenge game genres like Idle and Soulslike games. In this article, we show that Predictive Processing (PP) provides a coherent formal cognitive framework (...) which can explain the fun in tackling game challenges with uncertain success as the dynamic process of reducing uncertainty surprisingly efficiently. In gameplay as elsewhere, people enjoydoing better than expected, which can track learning progress. In different forms, balanced, Idle, and Soulslike games alike afford regular accelerations of uncertainty reduction. We argue that this model also aligns with a popular practitioner model, Raph Koster’sTheory of Fun for Game Design, and can unify currently differentially modelled gameplay motives around competence and curiosity. (shrink)
- Predictive processing and relevance realization: exploring convergent solutions to the frame problem.Brett P. Andersen,Mark Miller &John Vervaeke -2025 -Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 24 (2):359-380.The frame problem refers to the fact that organisms must be able to zero in on relevant aspects of the world and intelligently ignore the vast majority of the world that is irrelevant to their goals. In this paper we aim to point out the connection between two leading frameworks for thinking about how organisms achieve this. Predictive processing is a rapidly growing framework within cognitive science which suggests that organisms assign a high ‘weight’ to relevant aspects of the world, (...) effectively treating relevant aspects of the world as if they are more precise (in a Bayesian sense). This assignment of weight is called precision-weighting and is the predictive processing account of how organisms allocate their attention. Relevance Realization is a framework that conceptualizes an organism’s ability to realize relevance as resulting from a dynamical system in which a cognitive agent makes use of opponent processing relationships to zero in on relevant aspects of the world. In this paper we use recent work on the diametric model of autism and psychosis to demonstrate that the tradeoffs inherent to precision-weighting are also inherent to relevance realization. This connection will demonstrate that although these frameworks have a different intellectual background and use a different set of concepts and vocabulary, they are both pointing to the same underlying process. The fact that these different frameworks have converged on such a similar solution to the problem of how organisms realize relevance serves to demonstrate the plausibility of that solution. (shrink)
- Desire and Motivation in Predictive Processing: An Ecological-Enactive Perspective.Julian Kiverstein,Mark Miller &Erik Rietveld -forthcoming -Review of Philosophy and Psychology:1-21.The predictive processing theory refers to a family of theories that take the brain and body of an organism to implement a hierarchically organized predictive model of its environment that works in the service of prediction-error minimization. Several philosophers have wondered how belief-like states of prediction account for the conative role desire plays in motivating a person to act. A compelling response to this challenge has begun to take shape that starts from the idea that certain predictions are prioritized in (...) the predictive processing hierarchy. We use the term “first priors” to refer to such predictions. We will argue that agents use first priors to engage in affective sense-making. What has been missing in the literature that seeks to understand desire in terms of predictive processing is a recognition of the role of affective sense-making in motivating action. We go on to describe how affective sense-making can play a role in the context-sensitive shifting assignments of precision to predictions. Precision expectations refer to estimates of the reliability of predictions of the sensory states that are the consequences of acting. Given the role of affect in modulating precision-estimation, we argue that agents will tend to experience their environment through the lens of their desires as a field of inviting affordances. We will show how PP provides a neurocomputational framework that can bridge between first-person phenomenological descriptions of what it is to be a desiring creature, and a third-person, ecological-enactive analysis of desire. (shrink)
- Literary Societies of Republican China.Xiaomei Chen,Susan Daruvala,Yi-tsi Mei Feuerwerker,Charles A. Laughlin,Mark Miller,Xiaobing Tang,Lawrence Wang-chi Wong,Shengqing Wu &Xueqing Xu (eds.) -2008 - Lexington Books.Denton and Hockx present thirteen essays treating a variety of literary organizations from China's Republican era . Interdisciplinary in approach, the essays are primarily concerned with describing and analyzing the social and cultural complexity of literary groupings and the role of these social formations in literary production of the period.
- The cognitive-emotional brain is an embodied and social brain.Julian Kiverstein &Mark Miller -2015 -Behavioral and Brain Sciences 38.No categories
- Artificial Intelligence Scheduling for NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.Mark D. Johnston Glenn Miller -forthcoming -Annual Ai Systems in Government Conference: Proceedings.Export citation
Bookmark - Bush, Jesus, and the Executioner.Mark Miller -2001 -Free Inquiry 21.No categoriesExport citation Bookmark
- Conversion as Life, Death, and Resurrection.Mark T. Miller -2011 -Lonergan Workshop 25:211-235.No categories
- Censorship Inc.Mark Miller -2000 -Free Inquiry 20.No categoriesExport citation Bookmark
- Correction to: Happily entangled: prediction, emotion, and the embodied mind.Mark Miller &Andy Clark -2020 -Synthese 197 (8):3645-3645.In the original publication, funding information was missing: Andy Clark was supported by ERC Advanced Grant 692739.No categories
- Displaced Souls, Idle Talk, Spectacular Scenes: Handlyng Synne and the Perspective of Agency.Mark Miller -1996 -Speculum 71 (3):606-632.One of the richest sources available to critics and historians interested in the history of subjectivity in late-medieval Europe is the large body of works surrounding the sacrament of penance. These texts are of interest not simply because of their number and evident popularity, but because of the central role they played in the relationship between the church's spiritual, ethical, and juridical authority and the everyday conduct and experience of medieval people. As penance gained increasing theological and institutional importance during (...) the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the church became increasingly concerned with the need to cultivate a penitential perspective on the territory of human action in everyone, layfolk as well as religious; and as confession in particular became an increasingly central feature of late-medieval ethical practice, the need was seen as well to develop the skills of ethical reflection and psychological analysis necessary for productive work in the confessional. (shrink)
- Imitating Christ's Cross: Lonergan and Girard on How and Why.Mark T. Miller -2013 -Heythrop Journal 54 (2):859-879.The article begins with the gospels’ admonition to take up one's cross and asks how Christians might understand Christ's work on the cross so that we might better imitate or participate in it. Using tools from recent advances in literary analysis and systematic theology, the article attempts to provide some answer to this question. It considers contemporary feminist and liberation theologians’ criticism of the common but problematic interpretation of Christ's cross, what is often called ‘substitutionary penal atonement.’ It compares this (...) with Anselm's atonement theory of satisfaction and Bernard Lonergan's and René Girard's analysis of the cross as a communication of love that invites others into loving relationship. With these interpretations of Christ's work, it concludes with some thoughts on how Christians might take up their own daily crosses. (shrink)
- Neonatal care for premature infants.Mark Miller -2005 -Hastings Center Report 35 (1):4-4.
- Philosophical Chaucer: Love, Sex, and Agency in the Canterbury Tales.Mark Miller -2005 - Cambridge University Press.Mark Miller's innovative study argues that Chaucer's Canterbury Tales represent an extended mediation on agency, autonomy and practical reason. This philosophical aspect of Chaucer's interests can help us understand what is both sophisticated and disturbing about his explorations of love, sex and gender. Partly through fresh readings of the Consolation of Philosophy and the Romance of the Rose, Miller charts Chaucer's position in relation to the association in the Christian West between problems of autonomy and problems of sexuality and reconstructs (...) how medieval philosophers and literary writers approached psychological phenomena often thought of as distinctively modern. The literary experiments of the Canterbury Tales represent a distinctive philosophical achievement that remains vital to our own attempts to understand agency, desire and their histories. (shrink)No categories
- Stealth Fighters.Mark Miller -2000 -Free Inquiry 20.Export citation Bookmark
- The Open Society and Its Media.Mark S. Miller,with E. Dean Tribble,Ravi Pandya &Marc Stiegler -2013 - In Max More & Natasha Vita-More,The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 268–277.Electronic media present tremendous opportunities for improving the nature of society. I will address how discourse affects society, and how changes in media may improve societal discourse.No categories
- When Good Books Vanish.Mark Miller -2000 -Free Inquiry 20.No categoriesExport citation Bookmark
- Alcohol, Addiction and Christian Ethics. [REVIEW]Mark Miller -2011 -Journal of Ethics in Mental Health 6:1-5.Export citation Bookmark
- Andrew Cole. The Birth of Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. 235 pp. [REVIEW]Mark Miller -2016 -Critical Inquiry 42 (4):992-993.
- An Underappreciated Dimension of Human Trafficking: Battered and Trafficked Women and Public Policy. [REVIEW]Mark J. Miller &Gabriela Wasileski -2011 -Human Rights Review 12 (3):301-314.Both domestic violence and trafficking in humans pose serious problems worldwide. However, there are differences in the ways in which battered immigrant women and trafficked immigrant women are responded to by governmental agencies in Greece and in the USA. Trafficking in humans has been securitized, that is, framed as an issue linked to international security risk. As such, countries that do not take legal action to stop human trafficking could face US sanctions such as loss of United States military and (...) economic assistance. Under significant international pressure, Greece, since 2002, passed a law that criminalized trafficking in humans and took necessary steps for providing protection and assistance to trafficked victims. Nevertheless, domestic violence and battered women remain silent in Greek society, and the availability of services to victims of domestic violence has eroded. We argue that, due to different issue framing of victims of trafficking and battered women, the connection of trafficking in humans to national security fosters different legal protection outcomes. The comparison of battered immigrant women and trafficked victims between Greece and the USA reveals significant differences in protection of battered immigrant women in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) area. This article elucidates why there are public policy differences within OECD states that all grant a priority to prevention of human trafficking. (shrink)
- J. Allan Mitchell, Ethics and Exemplary Narrative in Chaucer and Gower. (Chaucer Studies, 33.) Woodbridge, Eng., and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell and Brewer, 2004. Pp. viii, 157. $70. [REVIEW]Mark Miller -2006 -Speculum 81 (2):562-564.
- Philosophical Chaucer: Love, Sex, and Agency in the “Canterbury Tales.”. [REVIEW]Mark Miller -2007 -Speculum 82 (1):216-217.
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David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Area Editors:
David Bourget
Gwen Bradford
Berit Brogaard
Margaret Cameron
David Chalmers
James Chase
Rafael De Clercq
Ezio Di Nucci
Esa Diaz-Leon
Barry Hallen
Hans Halvorson
Jonathan Ichikawa
Monte Johnson
Michelle Kosch
Øystein Linnebo
Paul Livingston
Brandon Look
Manolo Martínez
Matthew McGrath
Michiru Nagatsu
Susana Nuccetelli
Giuseppe Primiero
Jack Alan Reynolds
Darrell P. Rowbottom
Aleksandra Samonek
Constantine Sandis
Howard Sankey
Jonathan Schaffer
Thomas Senor
Daniel Star
Jussi Suikkanen
Aness Kim Webster
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