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Free-energy and the brain

Synthese 159 (3):417-458 (2007)

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  1. Bayesian inferences about the self : A review.Michael Moutoussis, Pasco Fearon, Wael El-Deredy, Raymond J. Dolan & Karl J. Friston - 2014 - Consciousness and Cognition 25:67-76.
    Viewing the brain as an organ of approximate Bayesian inference can help us understand how it represents the self. We suggest that inferred representations of the self have a normative function: to predict and optimise the likely outcomes of social interactions. Technically, we cast this predict-and-optimise as maximising the chance of favourable outcomes through active inference. Here the utility of outcomes can be conceptualised as prior beliefs about final states. Actions based on interpersonal representations can therefore be understood as minimising (...)
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  • Are we predictive engines? Perils, prospects, and the puzzle of the porous perceiver.Andy Clark - 2013 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36 (3):233-253.
    The target article sketched and explored a mechanism (action-oriented predictive processing) most plausibly associated with core forms of cortical processing. In assessing the attractions and pitfalls of the proposal we should keep that element distinct from larger, though interlocking, issues concerning the nature of adaptive organization in general.
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  • Movement under uncertainty: The effects of the rubber-hand illusion vary along the nonclinical autism spectrum.Colin Palmer, Bryan Paton, Jakob Hohwy & Peter Enticott - forthcoming - Neuropsychologia.
    Recent research has begun to investigate sensory processing in relation to nonclinical variation in traits associated with the autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We propose that existing accounts of autistic perception can be augmented by considering a role for individual differences in top-down expectations for the precision of sensory input, related to the processing of state-dependent levels of uncertainty. We therefore examined ASD-like traits in relation to the rubber-hand illusion: an experimental paradigm that typically elicits crossmodal integration of visual, tactile, and (...)
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  • Delusions, Illusions and Inference under Uncertainty.Jakob Hohwy - 2013 - Mind and Language 28 (1):57-71.
    Three challenges to a unified understanding of delusions emerge from Radden's On Delusion (2011). Here, I propose that in order to respond to these challenges, and to work towards a unifying framework for delusions, we should see delusions as arising in inference under uncertainty. This proposal is based on the observation that delusions in key respects are surprisingly like perceptual illusions, and it is developed further by focusing particularly on individual differences in uncertainty expectations.
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  • Explaining social norm compliance. A plea for neural representations.Matteo Colombo - 2014 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 13 (2):217-238.
    How should we understand the claim that people comply with social norms because they possess the right kinds of beliefs and preferences? I answer this question by considering two approaches to what it is to believe (and prefer), namely: representationalism and dispositionalism. I argue for a variety of representationalism, viz. neural representationalism. Neural representationalism is the conjunction of two claims. First, what it is essential to have beliefs and preferences is to have certain neural representations. Second, neural representations are often (...)
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  • Bayes in the Brain—On Bayesian Modelling in Neuroscience.Matteo Colombo & Peggy Seriès - 2012 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63 (3):697-723.
    According to a growing trend in theoretical neuroscience, the human perceptual system is akin to a Bayesian machine. The aim of this article is to clearly articulate the claims that perception can be considered Bayesian inference and that the brain can be considered a Bayesian machine, some of the epistemological challenges to these claims; and some of the implications of these claims. We address two questions: (i) How are Bayesian models used in theoretical neuroscience? (ii) From the use of Bayesian (...)
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  • Distinguishing Top-Down From Bottom-Up Effects.Nicholas Shea - 2014 - In Dustin Stokes, Mohan Matthen & Stephen Biggs (eds.), Perception and Its Modalities. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 73-91.
    The distinction between top-down and bottom-up effects is widely relied on in experimental psychology. However, there is an important problem with the way it is normally defined. Top-down effects are effects of previously-stored information on processing the current input. But on the face of it that includes the information that is implicit in the operation of any psychological process – in its dispositions to transition from some types of representational state to others. This paper suggests a way to distinguish information (...)
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  • Predictive coding explains binocular rivalry: an epistemological review.Jakob Hohwy, Andreas Roepstorff & Karl Friston - 2008 - Cognition 108 (3):687-701.
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  • The Epistemology of Geometry I: the Problem of Exactness.Anne Newstead & Franklin James - 2010 - Proceedings of the Australasian Society for Cognitive Science 2009.
    We show how an epistemology informed by cognitive science promises to shed light on an ancient problem in the philosophy of mathematics: the problem of exactness. The problem of exactness arises because geometrical knowledge is thought to concern perfect geometrical forms, whereas the embodiment of such forms in the natural world may be imperfect. There thus arises an apparent mismatch between mathematical concepts and physical reality. We propose that the problem can be solved by emphasizing the ways in which the (...)
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  • The hypothesis testing brain: Some philosophical applications.Jakob Hohwy - 2010 - Proceedings of the Australian Society for Cognitive Science Conference.
    According to one theory, the brain is a sophisticated hypothesis tester: perception is Bayesian unconscious inference where the brain actively uses predictions to test, and then refine, models about what the causes of its sensory input might be. The brain’s task is simply continually to minimise prediction error. This theory, which is getting increasingly popular, holds great explanatory promise for a number of central areas of research at the intersection of philosophy and cognitive neuroscience. I show how the theory can (...)
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  • Fictionalism of Anticipation.Raimundas Vidunas - 2021 - Biosemiotics 14 (1):181-197.
    A promising recent approach for understanding complex phenomena is recognition of anticipatory behavior of living organisms and social organizations. The anticipatory, predictive action permits learning, novelty seeking, rich experiential existence. I argue that the established frameworks of anticipation, adaptation or learning imply overly passive roles of anticipatory agents, and that a fictionalist standpoint reflects the core of anticipatory behavior better than representational or future references. Cognizing beings enact not just their models of the world, but own make-believe existential agendas as (...)
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  • Attuning the world: Ambient smart environments for autistic persons.Janko Nešić - forthcoming - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
    Autism spectrum disorder is usually understood through deficits in social interaction and communication, repetitive patterns of behavior, and hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input. Affordance-based Skilled Intentionality that combines ecological-enactive views of cognition with Free Energy and Predictive Processing was proposed as the framework from which to view autism integrally. Skilled Intentionality distinguishes between a landscape of affordances and a field of affordances. Under the integrative Skilled Intentionality Framework, it can be shown that autistic differences in the field of affordances (...)
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  • (1 other version)Extended Predictive Minds: do Markov Blankets Matter?Marco Facchin - 2023 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 14 (3):909-938.
    The extended mind thesis claims that a subject’s mind sometimes encompasses the environmental props the subject interacts with while solving cognitive tasks. Recently, the debate over the extended mind has been focused on Markov Blankets: the statistical boundaries separating biological systems from the environment. Here, I argue such a focus is mistaken, because Markov Blankets neither adjudicate, nor help us adjudicate, whether the extended mind thesis is true. To do so, I briefly introduce Markov Blankets and the free energy principle (...)
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  • Reinvigorating the Nineteenth Century Scientific Method: A Peirce-pective on Science.Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen & Majid D. Beni - 2023 - Perspectives on Science 31 (5):684-715.
    This paper proposes to recover the topic of the philosophy of scientific method from its late nineteenth-century roots. The subject matter of scientific method sprouted from key inferential ingredients identified by Charles Peirce. In this paper, the historical path is traversed from the viewpoint of contemporary Cognitive Structural Realism (CSR). Peirce’s semiotic theory of methods and practices of scientific inquiry prefigured CSR’s reliance on embodied informational structures and experimentation upon forms of relations that model generic scientific domains. Three results are (...)
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  • Millikan’s consistency testers and the cultural evolution of concepts.Nicholas Shea - 2023 - Evolutionary Linguistic Theory 5 (1):79-101.
    Ruth Millikan has hypothesised that human cognition contains ‘consistency testers’. Consistency testers check whether different judgements a thinker makes about the same subject matter agree or conflict. Millikan’s suggestion is that, where the same concept has been applied to the world via two routes, and the two judgements that result are found to be inconsistent, that makes the thinker less inclined to apply those concepts in those ways in the future. If human cognition does indeed include such a capacity, its (...)
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  • Ecological-enactive account of autism spectrum disorder.Janko Nešić - 2023 - Synthese 201 (2):1-22.
    Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a psychopathological condition characterized by persistent deficits in social interaction and communication, and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. To build an ecological-enactive account of autism, I propose we should endorse the affordance-based approach of the skilled intentionality framework (SIF). In SIF, embodied cognition is understood as skilled engagement with affordances in the sociomaterial environment of the ecological niche by which an individual tends toward the optimal grip. The human econiche offers a whole landscape (...)
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  • Examining participatory sense-making frames: how autonomous patterns of being together emerge in recurrent social interaction.Mark M. James - 2021 - Dissertation, University College Dublin
    This thesis investigates how recurrent face-to-face social interactions engender relatively invariant patterns of being together that cause those who instantiate them to act in ways that support their reproduction. Existing accounts within both cognitive science and sociology offer important insights into the consideration of patterns of being together. However, given their explanatory strategies, they struggle to integrate both ‘social’ and ‘individual’ levels of explanation. Herein a compatibilist account is developed, intended as a ‘third way’ that obviates the limitations of existing (...)
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  • Freedom in Uncertainty.Filippos Stamatiou - 2022 - Dissertation, University of Copenhagen
    This work develops a philosophically credible and psychologically realisable account of control that is necessary for moral responsibility. We live, think, and act in an environment of subjective uncertainty and limited information. As a result, our decisions and actions are influenced by factors beyond our control. Our ability to act freely is restricted by uncertainty, ignorance, and luck. Through three articles, I develop a naturalistic theory of control for action as a process of error minimisation that extends over time. Thus (...)
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  • The problem of representation between extended and enactive approaches to cognition.Marta Caravà - 2018 - Dissertation, University of Bologna
    4Es approaches to cognition draw an unconventional picture of cognitive processes and of the mind. Instead of conceiving of cognition as a process that always takes place within the boundaries of the skull and the skin, these approaches hold that cognition is a situated process that often extends beyond human agents’ physical boundaries. In particular, supporters of the extended mind theory and of the enactive approach claim that embodied action in a perceptually complex environment is constitutive of cognitive processes, and (...)
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  • Spór o ciągłość życia i umysłu. Argumenty na rzecz kognitywizmu.Michał Piekarski - 2021 - Argument: Biannual Philosophical Journal 11 (1).
    The dispute over the continuity of life and mind. Arguments for cognitivism: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the position of non-cognitivism on the issue of the so-called dispute over the continuity / discontinuity of life and mind. In discussing the views of Michael Kirchhoff and Tom Froese, I will point out some difficulties related to their position. Next, I will formulate three arguments in favor of the cognitive alternative, emphasizing the need to resort to semantic information in (...)
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  • Can the predictive processing model of the mind ameliorate the value-alignment problem?William Ratoff - 2021 - Ethics and Information Technology 23 (4):739-750.
    How do we ensure that future generally intelligent AI share our values? This is the value-alignment problem. It is a weighty matter. After all, if AI are neutral with respect to our wellbeing, or worse, actively hostile toward us, then they pose an existential threat to humanity. Some philosophers have argued that one important way in which we can mitigate this threat is to develop only AI that shares our values or that has values that ‘align with’ ours. However, there (...)
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  • Free energy: a user’s guide.Stephen Francis Mann, Ross Pain & Michael D. Kirchhoff - 2022 - Biology and Philosophy 37 (4):1-35.
    Over the last fifteen years, an ambitious explanatory framework has been proposed to unify explanations across biology and cognitive science. Active inference, whose most famous tenet is the free energy principle, has inspired excitement and confusion in equal measure. Here, we lay the ground for proper critical analysis of active inference, in three ways. First, we give simplified versions of its core mathematical models. Second, we outline the historical development of active inference and its relationship to other theoretical approaches. Third, (...)
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  • (1 other version)Extended Predictive Minds: do Markov Blankets Matter?Marco Facchin - 2021 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology (3):1-30.
    The extended mind thesis claims that a subject’s mind sometimes encompasses the environmental props the subject interacts with while solving cognitive tasks. Recently, the debate over the extended mind has been focused on Markov Blankets: the statistical boundaries separating biological systems from the environment. Here, I argue such a focus is mistaken, because Markov Blankets neither adjudicate, nor help us adjudicate, whether the extended mind thesis is true. To do so, I briefly introduce Markov Blankets and the free energy principle (...)
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  • The math is not the territory: navigating the free energy principle.Mel Andrews - 2021 - Biology and Philosophy 36 (3):1-19.
    Much has been written about the free energy principle (FEP), and much misunderstood. The principle has traditionally been put forth as a theory of brain function or biological self-organisation. Critiques of the framework have focused on its lack of empirical support and a failure to generate concrete, falsifiable predictions. I take both positive and negative evaluations of the FEP thus far to have been largely in error, and appeal to a robust literature on scientific modelling to rectify the situation. A (...)
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  • Whatever Next and Close to My Self—The Transparent Senses and the “Second Skin”: Implications for the Case of Depersonalization.Anna Ciaunica, Andreas Roepstorff, Aikaterini Katerina Fotopoulou & Bruna Petreca - 2021 - Frontiers in Psychology 12:613587.
    In his paper “Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science,” Andy Clark seminally proposed that the brain's job is to predict whatever information is coming “next” on the basis of prior inputs and experiences. Perception fundamentally subserves survival and self-preservation in biological agents, such as humans. Survival however crucially depends on rapid and accurate information processing of what is happening in the here and now. Hence, the term “next” in Clark's seminal formulation must include not (...)
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  • The free energy principle: it’s not about what it takes, it’s about what took you there.Axel Constant - 2021 - Biology and Philosophy 36 (2):1-17.
    Philosophical writings on the free energy principle in the life sciences often give the impression that minimising free energy is sufficient for life. But minimising free energy is not a sufficient condition for life. In fact, one can perfectly well conceive of a system that actively minimises its free energy, and for this very reason moves inexorably towards death. So, where does the assumption of this entailment relation come from? There is indeed an entailment relation, but it goes the other (...)
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  • Toward an Embodied, Embedded Predictive Processing Account.Elmarie Venter - 2021 - Frontiers in Psychology 12:543076.
    In this paper, I argue for an embodied, embedded approach to predictive processing and thus align the framework with situated cognition. The recent popularity of theories conceiving of the brain as a predictive organ has given rise to two broad camps in the literature that I callfree energy enactivismandcognitivist predictive processing. The two approaches vary in scope and methodology. The scope ofcognitivist predictive processingis narrow and restricts cognition to brain processes and structures; it does not consider the body-beyond-brain and the (...)
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  • Shannon + Friston = Content: Intentionality in predictive signaling systems.Carrie Figdor - 2021 - Synthese 199 (1-2):2793-2816.
    What is the content of a mental state? This question poses the problem of intentionality: to explain how mental states can be about other things, where being about them is understood as representing them. A framework that integrates predictive coding and signaling systems theories of cognitive processing offers a new perspective on intentionality. On this view, at least some mental states are evaluations, which differ in function, operation, and normativity from representations. A complete naturalistic theory of intentionality must account for (...)
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  • Is mental time travel real time travel?Michael Barkasi & Melanie G. Rosen - 2020 - Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 1 (1):1-27.
    Episodic memory (memories of the personal past) and prospecting the future (anticipating events) are often described as mental time travel (MTT). While most use this description metaphorically, we argue that episodic memory may allow for MTT in at least some robust sense. While episodic memory experiences may not allow us to literally travel through time, they do afford genuine awareness of past-perceived events. This is in contrast to an alternative view on which episodic memory experiences present past-perceived events as mere (...)
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  • What Simulations Teach Us About Ordinary Objects.Arthur C. Https://Orcidorg Schwaninger - 2019 - Open Philosophy 2 (1):614-628.
    Under the label of scientific metaphysics, many naturalist metaphysicians are moving away from a priori conceptual analysis and instead seek scientific explanations that will help bring forward a unified understanding of the world. This paper first reviews how our classical assumptions about ordinary objects fail to be true in light of quantum mechanics. The paper then explores how our experiences of ordinary objects arise by reflecting on how our neural system operates algorithmically. Contemporary models and simulations in computational neuroscience are (...)
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  • Multiscale integration: beyond internalism and externalism.Maxwell J. D. Ramstead, Michael D. Kirchhoff, Axel Constant & Karl J. Friston - 2019 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 1):41-70.
    We present a multiscale integrationist interpretation of the boundaries of cognitive systems, using the Markov blanket formalism of the variational free energy principle. This interpretation is intended as a corrective for the philosophical debate over internalist and externalist interpretations of cognitive boundaries; we stake out a compromise position. We first survey key principles of new radical views of cognition. We then describe an internalist interpretation premised on the Markov blanket formalism. Having reviewed these accounts, we develop our positive multiscale account. (...)
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  • A Theory of Predictive Dissonance: Predictive Processing Presents a New Take on Cognitive Dissonance.Roope Oskari Kaaronen - 2018 - Frontiers in Psychology 9.
    This article is a comparative study between predictive processing (PP, or predictive coding) and cognitive dissonance (CD) theory. The theory of CD, one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology, is shown to be highly compatible with recent developments in PP. This is particularly evident in the notion that both theories deal with strategies to reduce perceived error signals. However, reasons exist to update the theory of CD to one of “predictive dissonance.” First, the hierarchical PP (...)
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  • What? Now. Predictive Coding and Enculturation.Richard Menary - 2015 - In Thomas Metzinger & Jennifer Windt (eds.), Open MIND. MIND group.
    Regina Fabry has proposed an intriguing marriage of enculturated cognition and predictive processing. I raise some questions for whether this marriage will work and warn against expecting too much from the predictive processing framework. Furthermore I argue that the predictive processes at a sub-personal level cannot be driving the innovations at a social level that lead to enculturated cognitive systems, like those explored in my target paper.
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  • First principles in the life sciences: the free-energy principle, organicism, and mechanism.Matteo Colombo & Cory Wright - 2021 - Synthese 198 (14):3463–3488.
    The free-energy principle states that all systems that minimize their free energy resist a tendency to physical disintegration. Originally proposed to account for perception, learning, and action, the free-energy principle has been applied to the evolution, development, morphology, anatomy and function of the brain, and has been called a postulate, an unfalsifiable principle, a natural law, and an imperative. While it might afford a theoretical foundation for understanding the relationship between environment, life, and mind, its epistemic status is unclear. Also (...)
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  • Autopoiesis, free energy, and the life–mind continuity thesis.Michael D. Kirchhoff - 2018 - Synthese 195 (6):2519-2540.
    The life–mind continuity thesis is difficult to study, especially because the relation between life and mind is not yet fully understood, and given that there is still no consensus view neither on what qualifies as life nor on what defines mind. Rather than taking up the much more difficult task of addressing the many different ways of explaining how life relates to mind, and vice versa, this paper considers two influential accounts addressing how best to understand the life–mind continuity thesis: (...)
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  • a variational approach to niche construction.Axel Constant, Maxwell Ramstead, Samuel Veissière, John Campbell & Karl Friston - 2018 - Journals of the Royal Society Interface 15:1-14.
    In evolutionary biology, niche construction is sometimes described as a genuine evolutionary process whereby organisms, through their activities and regulatory mechanisms, modify their environment such as to steer their own evolutionary trajectory, and that of other species. There is ongoing debate, however, on the extent to which niche construction ought to be considered a bona fide evolutionary force, on a par with natural selection. Recent formulations of the variational free-energy principle as applied to the life sciences describe the properties of (...)
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  • Just How Conservative is Conservative Predictive Processing?Paweł Gładziejewski - 2017 - Hybris. Internetowy Magazyn Filozoficzny 38:98-122.
    Predictive Processing (PP) framework construes perception and action (and perhaps other cognitive phenomena) as a matter of minimizing prediction error, i.e. the mismatch between the sensory input and sensory predictions generated by a hierarchically organized statistical model. There is a question of how PP fits into the debate between traditional, neurocentric and representation-heavy approaches in cognitive science and those approaches that see cognition as embodied, environmentally embedded, extended and (largely) representation-free. In the present paper, I aim to investigate and clarify (...)
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  • Superintelligence as superethical.Steve Petersen - 2017 - In Patrick Lin, Keith Abney & Ryan Jenkins (eds.), Robot Ethics 2. 0: New Challenges in Philosophy, Law, and Society. Oxford University Press. pp. 322-337.
    Nick Bostrom's book *Superintelligence* outlines a frightening but realistic scenario for human extinction: true artificial intelligence is likely to bootstrap itself into superintelligence, and thereby become ideally effective at achieving its goals. Human-friendly goals seem too abstract to be pre-programmed with any confidence, and if those goals are *not* explicitly favorable toward humans, the superintelligence will extinguish us---not through any malice, but simply because it will want our resources for its own purposes. In response I argue that things might not (...)
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  • Composition as pattern.Steve Petersen - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (5):1119-1139.
    I argue for patternism, a new answer to the question of when some objects compose a whole. None of the standard principles of composition comfortably capture our natural judgments, such as that my cat exists and my table exists, but there is nothing wholly composed of them. Patternism holds, very roughly, that some things compose a whole whenever together they form a “real pattern”. Plausibly we are inclined to acknowledge the existence of my cat and my table but not of (...)
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  • Experiences of Duration and Cognitive Penetrability.Carrie Figdor - 2020 - In Dimitria Gatzia & Berit Brogaard (eds.), The Epistemology of Non-visual Perception. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. pp. 188-212.
    This paper considers the cognitive penetrability of our experiences of the durations of everyday events. I defend an account of subjective duration based in contemporary psychological and neurobiological research. I show its philosophical adequacy by demonstrating its utility in explain-ing the phenomenology of duration experiences. I then consider whether cognitive penetrability is a problem for these experiences. I argue that, to the contrary, the problem presupposes a relationship between perception and belief that duration perceptions and beliefs do not exhibit. In-stead, (...)
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  • The feeling of grip: novelty, error dynamics, and the predictive brain.Julian Kiverstein, Mark Miller & Erik Rietveld - 2019 - Synthese 196 (7):2847-2869.
    According to the free energy principle biological agents resist a tendency to disorder in their interactions with a dynamically changing environment by keeping themselves in sensory and physiological states that are expected given their embodiment and the niche they inhabit :127–138, 2010. doi: 10.1038/nrn2787). Why would a biological agent that aims at minimising uncertainty in its encounters with the world ever be motivated to seek out novelty? Novelty for such an agent would arrive in the form of sensory and physiological (...)
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  • Breaking explanatory boundaries: flexible borders and plastic minds.Michael David Kirchhoff & Russell Meyer - 2019 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 18 (1):185-204.
    In this paper, we offer reasons to justify the explanatory credentials of dynamical modeling in the context of the metaplasticity thesis, located within a larger grouping of views known as 4E Cognition. Our focus is on showing that dynamicism is consistent with interventionism, and therefore with a difference-making account at the scale of system topologies that makes sui generis explanatory differences to the overall behavior of a cognitive system. In so doing, we provide a general overview of the interventionist approach. (...)
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  • Active Inference and the Primacy of the ‘I Can’.Jelle Bruineberg - 2017 - Philosophy and Predictive Processing.
    This paper deals with the question of agency and intentionality in the context of the free-energy principle. The free-energy principle is a system-theoretic framework for understanding living self-organizing systems and how they relate to their environments. I will first sketch the main philosophical positions in the literature: a rationalist Helmholtzian interpretation (Hohwy 2013; Clark 2013), a cybernetic interpretation (Seth 2015b) and the enactive affordance-based interpretation (Bruineberg and Rietveld 2014; Bruineberg et al. 2016) and will then show how agency and intentionality (...)
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  • How to Knit Your Own Markov Blanket.Andy Clark - 2017 - Philosophy and Predictive Processing.
    Hohwy (Hohwy 2016, Hohwy 2017) argues there is a tension between the free energy principle and leading depictions of mind as embodied, enactive, and extended (so-called ‘EEE1 cognition’). The tension is traced to the importance, in free energy formulations, of a conception of mind and agency that depends upon the presence of a ‘Markov blanket’ demarcating the agent from the surrounding world. In what follows I show that the Markov blanket considerations do not, in fact, lead to the kinds of (...)
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  • How to entrain your evil demon.Jakob Hohwy - 2017 - Philosophy and Predictive Processing.
    The notion that the brain is a prediction error minimizer entails, via the notion of Markov blankets and self-evidencing, a form of global scepticism — an inability to rule out evil demon scenarios. This type of scepticism is viewed by some as a sign of a fatally flawed conception of mind and cognition. Here I discuss whether this scepticism is ameliorated by acknowledging the role of action in the most ambitious approach to prediction error minimization, namely under the free energy (...)
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  • Vanilla PP for Philosophers: A Primer on Predictive Processing.Wanja Wiese & Thomas Metzinger - 2017 - Philosophy and Predictive Processing.
    The goal of this short chapter, aimed at philosophers, is to provide an overview and brief explanation of some central concepts involved in predictive processing (PP). Even those who consider themselves experts on the topic may find it helpful to see how the central terms are used in this collection. To keep things simple, we will first informally define a set of features important to predictive processing, supplemented by some short explanations and an alphabetic glossary. -/- The features described here (...)
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  • Modularity and the predictive mind.Zoe Drayson - 2017 - T. Metzinger and W. Weise, (Eds), Philosophy and Predictive Processing.
    Modular approaches to the architecture of the mind claim that some mental mechanisms, such as sensory input processes, operate in special-purpose subsystems that are functionally independent from the rest of the mind. This assumption of modularity seems to be in tension with recent claims that the mind has a predictive architecture. Predictive approaches propose that both sensory processing and higher-level processing are part of the same Bayesian information-processing hierarchy, with no clear boundary between perception and cognition. Furthermore, it is not (...)
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  • Getting into predictive processing’s great guessing game: Bootstrap heaven or hell?Daniel D. Hutto - 2018 - Synthese 195 (6):2445-2458.
    Predictive Processing accounts of Cognition, PPC, promise to forge productive alliances that will unite approaches that are otherwise at odds. Can it? This paper argues that it can’t—or at least not so long as it sticks with the cognitivist rendering that Clark and others favor. In making this case the argument of this paper unfolds as follows: Sect. 1 describes the basics of PPC—its attachment to the idea that we perceive the world by guessing the world. It then details the (...)
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  • The anticipating brain is not a scientist: the free-energy principle from an ecological-enactive perspective.Jelle Bruineberg, Julian Kiverstein & Erik Rietveld - 2018 - Synthese 195 (6).
    In this paper, we argue for a theoretical separation of the free-energy principle from Helmholtzian accounts of the predictive brain. The free-energy principle is a theoretical framework capturing the imperative for biological self-organization in information-theoretic terms. The free-energy principle has typically been connected with a Bayesian theory of predictive coding, and the latter is often taken to support a Helmholtzian theory of perception as unconscious inference. If our interpretation is right, however, a Helmholtzian view of perception is incompatible with Bayesian (...)
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  • The Self‐Evidencing Brain.Jakob Hohwy - 2016 - Noûs 50 (2):259-285.
    An exciting theory in neuroscience is that the brain is an organ for prediction error minimization. This theory is rapidly gaining influence and is set to dominate the science of mind and brain in the years to come. PEM has extreme explanatory ambition, and profound philosophical implications. Here, I assume the theory, briefly explain it, and then I argue that PEM implies that the brain is essentially self-evidencing. This means it is imperative to identify an evidentiary boundary between the brain (...)
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