# Predictive Processing **Domain:** Cognitive Science / Neuroscience / Perception **Function:** Describes cognition as continual inference in which a system uses prior expectations and incoming signals to update a model of the world and itself. Predictive-processing accounts treat perception as active model revision rather than passive reception. A system generates expectations, compares them with sensory evidence, and updates either its model or its actions in response to prediction error. Different theories disagree about the scope and neural implementation of this framework, so it should be used as a family of models rather than as a settled explanation of all cognition. The concept clarifies [[wiki/Developmental Priors|Developmental Priors]]: earlier experience shapes what a system expects before new evidence arrives. It also helps distinguish inference from authority. A model may predict a person's response accurately without acquiring jurisdiction over the person. In [[wiki/Westworld S3E6 — The Model Beneath the Model|Westworld S3E6]], the therapeutic environment tries to infer William from staged memories and personified priors. Its epistemic ambition becomes political when the inferred model is used to define what William is and what should be done to him. ## Related [[wiki/World Modeling|World Modeling]] · [[wiki/Computational Psychiatry|Computational Psychiatry]] · [[wiki/Predictive Psychiatry|Predictive Psychiatry]] · [[wiki/Model-Subject Boundary|Model-Subject Boundary]] · [[wiki/Prediction Is Not Jurisdiction|Prediction Is Not Jurisdiction]]