I don’t think predictive processing should try to explain all about humans. In one direction, animals are running on predictive processing as well, but are missing some crucial ingredient. In the opposite direction, simpler organisms had older control systems (eg hormones),we have them as well, and p.p. must be in some sense be stacked on top of that.
For what it’s worth, I actually do expect that something like predictive processing is also going on with other systems built out of stuff that is not neurons, such as control systems that use steroids (which include hormones in animals) or RNA or other things for signaling and yet other things for determining set points and error distances. As I have mentioned, I think of living things as being in the same category as steam engine governors and thermostats, all united by the operation of control systems that locally decrease entropy and produce information. Obviously there are distinctions that are interesting and important for in various ways, but also important ways in which these distinctions are distractions from the common mechanism powering everything we care about.
We can’t literally call this predictive coding since that theory is about neurons and brains, so a better name with appropriate historical precedence might be something like a “cybernetic” theory of life, although unfortunately cybernetics has been cheapened over the years in ways that make that ring of hokum, so maybe there is some other way to name this idea that avoids that issue.
For what it’s worth, I actually do expect that something like predictive processing is also going on with other systems built out of stuff that is not neurons, such as control systems that use steroids (which include hormones in animals) or RNA or other things for signaling and yet other things for determining set points and error distances. As I have mentioned, I think of living things as being in the same category as steam engine governors and thermostats, all united by the operation of control systems that locally decrease entropy and produce information. Obviously there are distinctions that are interesting and important for in various ways, but also important ways in which these distinctions are distractions from the common mechanism powering everything we care about.
We can’t literally call this predictive coding since that theory is about neurons and brains, so a better name with appropriate historical precedence might be something like a “cybernetic” theory of life, although unfortunately cybernetics has been cheapened over the years in ways that make that ring of hokum, so maybe there is some other way to name this idea that avoids that issue.