A variational approach to scripts

Albarracin, Mahault; Constant, Axel; Friston, Karl J.; Ramstead, Maxwell J. D.

doi:10.31219/osf.io/x45ha

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Selves provide spatial and temporal structure for complex sequences at multiple levels of abstraction, including symbolically. Such abstract integrative structures are referred to as “narratives” [ 184 , 269 , 270 ], for which it is no coincidence that such modes of organization facilitate learning, and where the act of telling and listening to stories is a human universal [ 271 , 272 ]. In terms of control systems, narratives allow for coherent stabilization of evolving conceptual structures in ways that provide multilevel syntax, so affording planning on multiple temporal and spatial scales.…”

Section: The Emergence Of Conscious Teleological Agentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Inter-temporally coherent belief-desire coalitions more consistently achieve higher value [ 275 , 276 ], and so tend to be reinforced, and so tend to dominate persona evolution [ 60 ]. Shared narratives co-evolving with these pattern coalitions [ 271 , 277 , 278 ] are shaped by repeated games both within [ 279 , 280 , 281 ] and between individuals [ 121 , 269 , 282 ]. Although self-processes may become extremely complex (and abstract) in these ways, in all cases such generative models both originate from and must continually deal with the constraints and affordances of their radically embodied nature.…”

Section: The Emergence Of Conscious Teleological Agentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Radically Embodied Conscious Cybernetic Bayesian Brain: From Free Energy to Free Will and Back Again

Safron

2021

Entropy

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Drawing from both enactivist and cognitivist perspectives on mind, I propose that explaining teleological phenomena may require reappraising both “Cartesian theaters” and mental homunculi in terms of embodied self-models (ESMs), understood as body maps with agentic properties, functioning as predictive-memory systems and cybernetic controllers. Quasi-homuncular ESMs are suggested to constitute a major organizing principle for neural architectures due to their initial and ongoing significance for solutions to inference problems in cognitive (and affective) development. Embodied experiences provide foundational lessons in learning curriculums in which agents explore increasingly challenging problem spaces, so answering an unresolved question in Bayesian cognitive science: what are biologically plausible mechanisms for equipping learners with sufficiently powerful inductive biases to adequately constrain inference spaces? Drawing on models from neurophysiology, psychology, and developmental robotics, I describe how embodiment provides fundamental sources of empirical priors (as reliably learnable posterior expectations). If ESMs play this kind of foundational role in cognitive development, then bidirectional linkages will be found between all sensory modalities and frontal-parietal control hierarchies, so infusing all senses with somatic-motoric properties, thereby structuring all perception by relevant affordances, so solving frame problems for embodied agents. Drawing upon the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference framework, I describe a particular mechanism for intentional action selection via consciously imagined (and explicitly represented) goal realization, where contrasts between desired and present states influence ongoing policy selection via predictive coding mechanisms and backward-chained imaginings (as self-realizing predictions). This embodied developmental legacy suggests a mechanism by which imaginings can be intentionally shaped by (internalized) partially-expressed motor acts, so providing means of agentic control for attention, working memory, imagination, and behavior. I further describe the nature(s) of mental causation and self-control, and also provide an account of readiness potentials in Libet paradigms wherein conscious intentions shape causal streams leading to enaction. Finally, I provide neurophenomenological handlings of prototypical qualia including pleasure, pain, and desire in terms of self-annihilating free energy gradients via quasi-synesthetic interoceptive active inference. In brief, this manuscript is intended to illustrate how radically embodied minds may create foundations for intelligence (as capacity for learning and inference), consciousness (as somatically-grounded self-world modeling), and will (as deployment of predictive models for enacting valued goals).

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Section: The Emergence Of Conscious Teleological Agentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Emergence Of Conscious Teleological Agentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Radically Embodied Conscious Cybernetic Bayesian Brain: From Free Energy to Free Will and Back Again

Safron

2021

Entropy

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“…Much of what we take to be central to intelligence-perception, attention, emotion, learning, and language-can be understood within a framework of prediction, action, error correction, and uncertainty reduction [61,67]. Not surprisingly, narrative too, and communication more generally, can be cast in an action-cognition framework [68][69][70]. The relevance of active inference to social psychology and social institutions has only started to become clear.…”

Section: Active Inferencementioning

confidence: 99%

Science-Driven Societal Transformation, Part III: Design

Boik

2021

Sustainability

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Climate change, biodiversity loss, and other major social and environmental problems pose severe risks. Progress has been inadequate and scientists, global policy experts, and the general public increasingly conclude that transformational change is needed across all sectors of society in order to improve and maintain social and ecological wellbeing. At least two paths to transformation are conceivable: (1) reform of and innovation within existing societal systems (e.g., economic, legal, and governance systems); and (2) the de novo development of and migration to new and improved societal systems. This paper is the final in a three-part series of concept papers that together outline a novel science-driven research and development program aimed at the second path. It summarizes literature to build a narrative on the topic of de novo design of societal systems. The purpose is to raise issues, suggest design possibilities, and highlight directions and questions that could be explored in the context of this or any R&D program aimed at new system design. This paper does not present original research, but rather provides a synthesis of selected ideas from the literature. Following other papers in the series, a society is viewed as a superorganism and its societal systems as a cognitive architecture. Accordingly, a central goal of design is to improve the collective cognitive capacity of a society, rendering it more capable of achieving and sustainably maintaining vitality. Topics of attention, communication, self-identity, power, and influence are discussed in relation to societal cognition and system design. A prototypical societal system is described, and some design considerations are highlighted.

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“…Derogating from a role is risking to be socially unintelligible, and thus, unpredictable, This is a provisional file, not the final typeset article affording "the wrong" actions gender wise. This lack of predictability can be bothersome for other agents for a host of reasons, including the generation of prediction errors, the breakdown of cultural sensorimotor loops, and the social threat to hierarchy and functioning (Albarracin et al, 2020;Krane, 2018). Certain individuals or groups have more to gain from the social roles being maintained.…”

Section: Gender Is a Scriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender fluidity as affordance negotiation

Albarracin¹,

Poirier²

2020

Preprint

Self Cite

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Gender is often viewed as static binary state for people to embody, based on the sex they were assigned at birth. However, cultural studies increasingly understand gender as neither binary nor static, a view supported both in psychology and sociology. On this view, gender is negotiated between individuals, and highly dependent on context. Specifically, individuals are thought to be offered culturally gendered social scripts that allow them and their interlocutors the ability to predict future actions, and to understand the scene being set, establishing roles and expectations. We propose to understand scripts in the framework of enactive-ecological predictivism, which integrates aspects of ecological enactivism, notably the importance of dynamical sensorimotor interaction with an environment conceived as a field of affordances, and predictive processing, which views the brain as a predictive engine that builds its probabilistic models in an effort to reduce prediction error. Under this view, script-based negotiation can be linked to the enactive neuroscience concept of a cultural niche, as a landscape of cultural affordances. Affordances are possibilities for action that constrain what actions are pre-reflectively felt possible based on biological, experiential and cultural multisensorial cues. With the shifting landscapes of cultural affordances brought about by a number of recent social, technological and epistemic developments, the gender scripts offered to individuals are less culturally rigid, which translates in an increase in the variety of affordance fields each individual can negotiate. This entails that any individual has an increased possibility for gender fluidity, as shown by the increasing number of people currently identifying outside the binary.

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A variational approach to scripts

Cited by 3 publications

References 52 publications

The Radically Embodied Conscious Cybernetic Bayesian Brain: From Free Energy to Free Will and Back Again

The Radically Embodied Conscious Cybernetic Bayesian Brain: From Free Energy to Free Will and Back Again

Science-Driven Societal Transformation, Part III: Design

Gender fluidity as affordance negotiation

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