Remi Morris

In philosophy of mind, there is an ongoing debate regarding representationalism. The majority opinion is externalism, which posits that some mental content is about external objects. Conversely, the minority opinion is internalism, where all mental content is about internal representations, not external objects. In support of internalism, Katalin Farkas argues that the mind has privileged and special access to its mental content. Farkas affirms her stance through the extended “Twin Earth” metaphor, originally introduced by externalist Hilary Putnam, contending that mental content of the subject’s mind should not be determined by facts that exist outside of the mind. Surprisingly, the theory of predictive processing in cognitive science appears to support internalism as a more plausible theory of representation. According to Andy Clark’s version of predictive processing, the mind predicts the input it will receive, recognizes the input that deviates from the predicted input (i.e. prediction error), and then corrects the original prediction model. Most importantly, the mind draws on its own unique, subjective experiences and knowledge in order to generate its prediction model for perception. If predictive processing can affirm that a subject’s perception is mostly, if not entirely, composed of internal features, then predictive processing aligns more with an internalist conception of the mind. This paper then draws on Farkas’s arguments in support of internalism, and Clark’s work on predictive processing, to argue that internalism and predictive processing share the same conclusion: the way things seem in the external world is conceived from a unique and subjective perspective. Hence, the subject’s knowledge of the external world is shaped internally by personal experiences. The subject’s past experiences are constantly shaping and influencing the subject’s ongoing perception of the external world. My paper argues that according to both internalism and predictive processing, a subject’s experiences are foundational to their perception. As a result, internalism can be understood less as the minority opinion of philosophers, but rather as a more viable conception of the mind in philosophy of perception.