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  1. 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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  • Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention.Maxwell J. D. Ramstead, Samuel P. L. Veissière & Laurence J. Kirmayer - 2016 - Frontiers in Psychology 7.
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  • The Literalist Fallacy and the Free Energy Principle: Model-Building, Scientific Realism, and Instrumentalism.Michael David Kirchhoff, Julian Kiverstein & Ian Robertson - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
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  • Predictive processing, perceiving and imagining: Is to perceive to imagine, or something close to it?Michael D. Kirchhoff - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (3):751-767.
    This paper examines the relationship between perceiving and imagining on the basis of predictive processing models in neuroscience. Contrary to the received view in philosophy of mind, which holds that perceiving and imagining are essentially distinct, these models depict perceiving and imagining as deeply unified and overlapping. It is argued that there are two mutually exclusive implications of taking perception and imagination to be fundamentally unified. The view defended is what I dub the ecological–enactive view given that it does not (...)
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  • Predictive brains and embodied, enactive cognition: an introduction to the special issue.Michael Kirchhoff - 2018 - Synthese 195 (6):2355-2366.
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  • Attuning to the World: The Diachronic Constitution of the Extended Conscious Mind.Michael D. Kirchhoff & Julian Kiverstein - 2020 - Frontiers in Psychology 11.
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  • Active inference, enactivism and the hermeneutics of social cognition.Shaun Gallagher & Micah Allen - 2018 - Synthese 195 (6):2627-2648.
    We distinguish between three philosophical views on the neuroscience of predictive models: predictive coding, predictive processing and predictive engagement. We examine the concept of active inference under each model and then ask how this concept informs discussions of social cognition. In this context we consider Frith and Friston’s proposal for a neural hermeneutics, and we explore the alternative model of enactivist hermeneutics.
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  • Markov blankets and the preformationist assumption.Mads Dengsø, Ian Robertson & Axel Constant - 2022 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 45:e192.
    Bruineberg and colleagues argue that a realist interpretation of Markov blankets inadvertently relies upon unfounded assumptions. However, insofar as their diagnosis is accurate, their prescribed instrumentalism may ultimately prove insufficient as a complete remedy. Drawing upon a process-based perspective on living systems, we suggest a potential way to avoid some of the assumptions behind problems described by Bruineberg and colleagues.
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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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  • A Multi-scale View of the Emergent Complexity of Life: A Free-energy Proposal.Casper Hesp, Maxwell Ramstead, Axel Constant, Paul Badcock, Michael David Kirchhoff & Karl Friston - forthcoming - In Michael Price & John Campbell (eds.), Evolution, Development, and Complexity: Multiscale Models in Complex Adaptive Systems.
    We review some of the main implications of the free-energy principle (FEP) for the study of the self-organization of living systems – and how the FEP can help us to understand (and model) biotic self-organization across the many temporal and spatial scales over which life exists. In order to maintain its integrity as a bounded system, any biological system - from single cells to complex organisms and societies - has to limit the disorder or dispersion (i.e., the long-run entropy) of (...)
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  • 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 (...)
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  • The Literalist Fallacy & the Free Energy Principle: Model building, Scientific Realism and Instrumentalism.Michael David Kirchhoff, Julian Kiverstein & Ian Robertson - manuscript
    Disagreement about how best to think of the relation between theories and the realities they represent has a longstanding and venerable history. We take up this debate in relation to the free energy principle (FEP) - a contemporary framework in computational neuroscience, theoretical biology and the philosophy of cognitive science. The FEP is very ambitious, extending from the brain sciences to the biology of self-organisation. In this context, some find apparent discrepancies between the map (the FEP) and the territory (target (...)
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  • 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 (...)
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  • On embodiment in predictions. A book review. [REVIEW]Przemysław Nowakowski - 2015 - Avant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies (3):155-159.
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