Predictive mind, cognition, and chess

According to the ambitious Predictive Theory of the Mind the brain generates models that it tests against experience and corrects to makes them evermore probably accurate of encountered experience. It neatly explains why we cannot tickle ourselves. The convincingness of that example is compromised by its essentially non-cognitive nature whereby an explanation not involving predictive models might do just as well. More telling confirmation of the theory is the essentially cognitive phenomenon of our inability to play chess against ourselves. This may stand as a paradigm of the power of the theory in explaining the central mental phenomenon of abstract cognition. © 2014 The Author.