A Drive to Survive: the free energy principle and the meaning of life (draft)

Abstract

[Draft manuscript of a forthcoming MIT Press monograph.] The Free Energy Principle proposes to reduce the goal-directed behaviour of a living agent to the preservation of homeostasis and then to analyse cognition as the process of pursuing this goal. I argue that this stability-based account fails to capture the two features that distinguish the intentional actions of biological agents from the mere movements of inanimate machines: namely 1) the precarious dependence of their bodily structure upon the very metabolic processes that it supports and 2) their potential for developmental changes in this structure. It is only by rejecting the presumption of a machine-style separation between structure and processes that we can capture this uniquely precarious status of living systems, in virtue of which they may be described as autonomous agents, acting towards the goal of their own continued survival.

The Human Affectome

“…We will caution that selecting a modeling framework introduces assumptions as well. For example, some frameworks that invoke the concept of reward tend to assume relevance and action to be separate ( reinforcement learning ) ( Kaelbling et al, 1996 ; Wiering and Van Otterlo, 2012 ; Sequeira et al, 2011 ; Moerland et al, 2018 ; Grahek et al, 2020 ; Levine, 2018 ; Sutton and Barto, 2018 ), while others view relevance as probabilistic ( Bayesian inference ), going as far as building relevance from action ( active inference ) ( Friston et al, 2017 ; Attias, 2003 ; Botvinick and Toussaint, 2012 ; Knill and Pouget, 2004 ; Friston and Kiebel, 2009 ; Allen and Friston, 2018 ; Friston et al, 2013 ; Ramstead et al, 2020 ; Sajid et al, 2021 ; Clark, 2013 , 2015 , 1997 ; Parr et al, 2022 ; Kiverstein et al, 2022 ; Smith et al, 2019 , 2022 ; Millidge et al, 2020 ; Miłkowski and Litwin, 2022 ; Di Paolo et al, 2022 ; Nave, 2023 ). Notwithstanding accounts that mix these methods, none to our knowledge have successfully built algorithms of affective phenomena up from the earliest principle of an organism, although the groundwork is being laid ( Prokopenko et al, 2009 ; Fernández et al, 2014 ; Ringstrom, 2022 ; Heylighen and Busseniers, 2023 ; Hodson et al, 2023 ; Broekens et al, 2013 ; Cunningham et al, 2013 ; Scherer et al, 2010 ; Marsella and Gratch, 2009 ; Marsella et al, 2010 , 2016 ; Calvo et al, 2015 ; Poria et al, 2017 ; Emanuel and Eldar, 2023 ).…”

When the interoceptive and conceptual clash: the case of oppositional phenomenal self-modelling in Tourette Syndrome

“…One must be prudent when using the active inference framework to not conflate the mathematical level of description (Bayesian beliefs) with the psycho-philo-phenomenological one (propositional beliefs). Further work should unpick exactly how the two types map onto one another with respect to the development of conscious cognitive organisms (Nave, 2023). 7 Although it is worth noting that, in many cases, those with TS advocate for wider acceptance within society, and make a deliberate choice not to manage their tics through medication.…”