Switch to: References

Citations of:

Free-energy and the brain

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

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Minimal self-models and the free energy principle.Jakub Limanowski & Felix Blankenburg - 2013 - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   68 citations  
  • The Self‐Evidencing Brain.Jakob Hohwy - 2014 - 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   174 citations  
  • Explanatory Pluralism: An Unrewarding Prediction Error for Free Energy Theorists.Matteo Colombo & Cory Wright - 2017 - Brain and Cognition 112:3–12.
    Courtesy of its free energy formulation, the hierarchical predictive processing theory of the brain (PTB) is often claimed to be a grand unifying theory. To test this claim, we examine a central case: activity of mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic (DA) systems. After reviewing the three most prominent hypotheses of DA activity—the anhedonia, incentive salience, and reward prediction error hypotheses—we conclude that the evidence currently vindicates explanatory pluralism. This vindication implies that the grand unifying claims of advocates of PTB are unwarranted. More generally, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations  
  • Toward a Model of Functional Brain Processes II: Central Nervous System Functional Macro-architecture.Mark H. Bickhard - 2015 - Axiomathes 25 (4):377-407.
    The first paper in this pair (Bickhard in Axiomathes, 2015) developed a model of the nature of representation and cognition, and argued for a model of the micro-functioning of the brain on the basis of that model. In this sequel paper, starting with part III, this model is extended to address macro-functioning in the CNS. In part IV, I offer a discussion of an approach to brain functioning that has some similarities with, as well as differences from, the model presented (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Predictive coding and representationalism.Paweł Gładziejewski - 2016 - Synthese 193 (2).
    According to the predictive coding theory of cognition , brains are predictive machines that use perception and action to minimize prediction error, i.e. the discrepancy between bottom–up, externally-generated sensory signals and top–down, internally-generated sensory predictions. Many consider PCT to have an explanatory scope that is unparalleled in contemporary cognitive science and see in it a framework that could potentially provide us with a unified account of cognition. It is also commonly assumed that PCT is a representational theory of sorts, in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   85 citations  
  • 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.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   41 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • 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.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   43 citations  
  • Phenomenal Variability and Introspective Reliability.Jakob Hohwy - 2011 - Mind and Language 26 (3):261-286.
    There is surprising evidence that introspection of our phenomenal states varies greatly between individuals and within the same individual over time. This puts pressure on the notion that introspection gives reliable access to our own phenomenology: introspective unreliability would explain the variability, while assuming that the underlying phenomenology is stable. I appeal to a body of neurocomputational, Bayesian theory and neuroimaging findings to provide an alternative explanation of the evidence: though some limited testing conditions can cause introspection to be unreliable, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • Predictive coding explains binocular rivalry: an epistemological review.Jakob Hohwy, Andreas Roepstorff & Karl Friston - 2008 - Cognition 108 (3):687-701.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   98 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  • Cognitive Penetration and Cognitive Realism.Majid D. Beni - 2024 - Episteme 21 (1):270-285.
    The paper addresses the issue of theory-ladenness of observation/experimentation. Motivated by a naturalistic reading of Thomas Kuhn's insights into the same topic, I draw on cognitive neuroscience (predictive coding under Free Energy Principle) to scrutinise theory-ladenness. I equate theory-ladenness with the cognitive penetrability of perceptual inferences and argue that strong theory-ladenness prevails only under uncertain circumstances. This understanding of theory-ladenness is in line with Thomas Kuhn's view on the same subject as well as a cognitive version of modest realism rather (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Constraining the Compression: Thermodynamic Depth and Composition.Majid D. Beni - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.
    This paper examines Bird's account of restricted compositionality in terms of compression of information. Additionally, this paper proposes an alternative perspective (to Bird's) that links compositionality to the Free Energy Principle and the minimisation of collective entropy. Emphasising functional integration, this criterion provides a more focused and relatively more objective (patternist) account of composition.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • (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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • 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, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • A continuum of intentionality: linking the biogenic and anthropogenic approaches to cognition.Matthew Sims - 2021 - Biology and Philosophy 36 (6):1-31.
    Biogenic approaches investigate cognition from the standpoint of evolutionary function, asking what cognition does for a living system and then looking for common principles and exhibitions of cognitive strategies in a vast array of living systems—non-neural to neural. One worry which arises for the biogenic approach is that it is overly permissive in terms of what it construes as cognition. In this paper I critically engage with a recent instance of this way of criticising biogenic approaches in order to clarify (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Is the brain an organ for free energy minimisation?Daniel Williams - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (5):1693-1714.
    Two striking claims are advanced on behalf of the free energy principle in cognitive science and philosophy: that it identifies a condition of the possibility of existence for self-organising systems; and that it has important implications for our understanding of how the brain works, defining a set of process theories—roughly, theories of the structure and functions of neural mechanisms—consistent with the free energy minimising imperative that it derives as a necessary feature of all self-organising systems. I argue that the conjunction (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • (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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   29 citations  
  • A free energy reconstruction of arguments for panpsychism.Majid D. Beni - 2021 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 22 (2):399-416.
    The paper draws on scientific resources formed around the notion of Free Energy Principle to reconstruct two well-known defences of panpsychism. I reconstruct the argument from continuity by expanding the mind-life continuity thesis under the rubric of the Free Energy Principle (FEP), by showing that FEP does not provide an objective criterion for demarcating the living from the inanimate. Then I will reconstruct the argument from intrinsic nature. The FEP-based account of consciousness is centred on the notion of ‘temporal depth’ (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Between pebbles and organisms: weaving autonomy into the Markov blanket.Thomas van Es & Michael D. Kirchhoff - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):6623-6644.
    The free energy principle is sometimes put forward as accounting for biological self-organization and cognition. It states that for a system to maintain non-equilibrium steady-state with its environment it can be described as minimising its free energy. It is said to be entirely scale-free, applying to anything from particles to organisms, and interactive machines, spanning from the abiotic to the biotic. Because the FEP is so general in its application, one might wonder whether this framework can capture anything specific to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • A critical analysis of Markovian monism.Majid D. Beni - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):6407-6427.
    Free Energy Principle underlies a unifying framework that integrates theories of origins of life, cognition, and action. Recently, FEP has been developed into a Markovian monist perspective. The paper expresses scepticism about the validity of arguments for Markovian monism. The critique is based on the assumption that Markovian models are scientific models, and while we may defend ontological theories about the nature of scientific models, we could not read off metaphysical theses about the nature of target systems from our theories (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • An Algorithmic Metaphysics of Self-Patterns.Majid D. Beni - 2020 - Frontiers in Psychology 11.
    The paper draws on an algorithmic criterion to demonstrate that the self is a composite, scattered, and patterned object. It also addresses the question of extendedness of the self-pattern. Based on the criteria drawn from algorithmic complexity, I argue that although the self-pattern possesses a genuinely extended aspect the self-pattern and its environment do not constitute a genuine composite object.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • From allostatic agents to counterfactual cognisers: active inference, biological regulation, and the origins of cognition.Andrew W. Corcoran, Giovanni Pezzulo & Jakob Hohwy - 2020 - Biology and Philosophy 35 (3):1-45.
    What is the function of cognition? On one influential account, cognition evolved to co-ordinate behaviour with environmental change or complexity. Liberal interpretations of this view ascribe cognition to an extraordinarily broad set of biological systems—even bacteria, which modulate their activity in response to salient external cues, would seem to qualify as cognitive agents. However, equating cognition with adaptive flexibility per se glosses over important distinctions in the way biological organisms deal with environmental complexity. Drawing on contemporary advances in theoretical biology (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   33 citations  
  • Introduction: The Relational Self: Basic Forms of Self-Awareness.Anna Ciaunica - 2020 - Topoi 39 (3):501-507.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Two Kinds of Information Processing in Cognition.Mark Sprevak - 2020 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 11 (3):591-611.
    What is the relationship between information and representation? Dating back at least to Dretske (1981), an influential answer has been that information is a rung on a ladder that gets one to representation. Representation is information, or representation is information plus some other ingredient. In this paper, I argue that this approach oversimplifies the relationship between information and representation. If one takes current probabilistic models of cognition seriously, information is connected to representation in a new way. It enters as a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Neural Synchrony and the Causal Efficacy of Consciousness.David Yates - 2020 - Topoi 39 (5):1057-1072.
    The purpose of this paper is to address a well-known dilemma for physicalism. If mental properties are type identical to physical properties, then their causal efficacy is secure, but at the cost of ruling out mentality in creatures very different to ourselves. On the other hand, if mental properties are multiply realizable, then all kinds of creatures can instantiate them, but then they seem to be causally redundant. The causal exclusion problem depends on the widely held principle that realized properties (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • 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.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   34 citations  
  • The Markov blankets of life: autonomy, active inference and the free energy principle.Michael David Kirchhoff - 2018 - Journal of the Royal Society Interface 15 (138).
    This work addresses the autonomous organization of biological systems. It does so by considering the boundaries of biological systems, from individual cells to Home sapiens, in terms of the presence of Markov blankets under the active inference scheme—a corollary of the free energy principle. A Markov blanket defines the boundaries of a system in a statistical sense. Here we consider how a collective of Markov blankets can self-assemble into a global system that itself has a Markov blanket; thereby providing an (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   54 citations  
  • Where there is life there is mind: In support of a strong life-mind continuity thesis.Michael David Kirchhoff & Tom Froese - 2017 - Entropy 19.
    This paper considers questions about continuity and discontinuity between life and mind. It begins by examining such questions from the perspective of the free energy principle (FEP). The FEP is becoming increasingly influential in neuroscience and cognitive science. It says that organisms act to maintain themselves in their expected biological and cognitive states, and that they can do so only by minimizing their free energy given that the long-term average of free energy is entropy. The paper then argues that there (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   36 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   22 citations  
  • (1 other version)Precise Worlds for Certain Minds: An Ecological Perspective on the Relational Self in Autism.Axel Constant, Jo Bervoets, Kristien Hens & Sander Van de Cruys - 2018 - Topoi:1-12.
    Autism Spectrum Condition presents a challenge to social and relational accounts of the self, precisely because it is broadly seen as a disorder impacting social relationships. Many influential theories argue that social deficits and impairments of the self are the core problems in ASC. Predictive processing approaches address these based on general purpose neurocognitive mechanisms that are expressed atypically. Here we use the High, Inflexible Precision of Prediction Errors in Autism approach in the context of cultural niche construction to explain (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • 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, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • 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. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   36 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   30 citations