ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the connection between anticipation and creativity by exploring picture perception. Specifically, the chapter explores how the perceptual inference that facilitates picture perception can be understood in terms of Bayesian predictive processing. The chapter argues such a predictive processing system can be considered as an anticipatory system. A key feature of predictive processing accounts is how the difference between sensory input caused by the environment, and a model that generates hypotheses about such causes, can be used to improve models. This difference is referred to as prediction-error. As cognitive models make more accurate predictions about causes of sensations, it results in more veridical perceptions. The chapter examines prediction-error through the role of novelty in the philosophies of Henri Bergson (1859–1941) and William James (1842–1910). The chapter concludes by arguing the novelty of prediction-error is a creative process that conditions the models that enable picture perception and also claims artworks attempt to express this novelty.
