Aligning the free-energy principle with Peirce’s logic of science and economy of research

Beni, Majid Davoody; Pietarinen, Ahti‐Veikko

doi:10.1007/s13194-021-00408-y

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 54 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…On the one hand, seeing active inference in light of abduction leads to a nice logical reconstruction of Friston's account of mechanisms of demarcating effective strategies or policies. On the other hand, it allows for grounding the classical notion of abduction in nature (see also Beni & Pietarinen, 2021). Other studies aim to support Lipton's notion of IBE based on advancements in Bayesian cognitive science.…”

Section: Active Inference and Explanatory Inferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The organism's inferential abilities bring about evolutionary success. Explicit forms of IBE that scientists form during their working hours are just finessed forms of the natural ability to generate explanatory inferences that maximise one's survival (see also Beni & Pietarinen, 2021). The result is a scientifically plausible account of privilege which does not invoke pre‐adaptation.…”

Section: Reconstructing the Privileged Stancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recently, the scientific theory of predictive processing under FEP has been used to develop a scientifically informed account of abduction/IBE (Beni & Pietarinen, 2021; Pietarinen & Beni, 2021; Seddon, 2022). Without taking the absolute plausibility of such attempts for granted, the present study appreciates their main point; that the account of active inference under FEP, which has been developed by Karl Friston and colleagues (Friston, 2019; Friston et al, 2010; Parr & Friston, 2019) can be used to develop a naturalist account of IBE.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Casting inference to the best explanation's lot with active inference

Beni

2023

Theoria

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper draws on the resources of computational neuroscience (an account of active inference under the free energy principle) to address Bas van Fraassen's bad lot objection to the inference to the best explanation (IBE). The general assumption of this paper is that IBE is a finessed form of active inferences that self-organising systems perform to maximise the chance of their survival. Under this assumption, the paper aims to establish the following points: first, the capacity to learn to perform explanatory inferences comes with evolutionary privileges; second, adaptive actions guide beliefs and beliefs are action-oriented; and third, IBE is not inconsistent with (approximate) Bayesianism but plays a heuristic role to it. K E Y W O R D Sbad lot objection, free energy principle, inference to the best explanation | INTRODUCTIONThis paper canvasses a reply to the notorious bad lot objection to the inference to the best explanation (IBE). The bad lot objection challenges the grounds for assuming that the best (or the true) hypothesis is indeed among the ranked candidates (van Fraassen, 1989, p. 142 ff). The topic is still at the centre of scholarly attention (Dellsén, 2017a(Dellsén, , 2021 Prasetya, Forthcoming;Schupbach, 2013;Tesic et al., 2017). The time seems ripe to reap the philosophical fruits of the cognitive sciences and use them to cook a concrete answer to the bad lot objection. Motivated in this fashion, the paper argues that the natural (abductive) process of ranking the available hypotheses would, by the same act (i.e., active inferential processes), pick up a lovely/likely enough hypothesis. 1 To achieve its goal, the paper draws on the scientific notion of 'active inference' under the free energy principle (FEP) to reinforce three reactions to the bad lot objection. These reactions-dubbed respectively 'privilege', 'force majeure' and 'retrenchment'-have been anticipated (and then ruled out) by Bas van Fraassen (van 1 We do not elaborate on the distinction between loveliness and likelihood in this paper. Suffice to say that, aside from likeliness of theories, Lipton's account of IBE also considers inferential virtues of loveliness-for example, precision, mechanism, unifying power, scope, simplicity, fertility or fruitfulness (Lipton, 2004, p. 122). For an explanation to be the best one, it should be picked up by both criteria of likelihood and loveliness.

show abstract

Section: Active Inference and Explanatory Inferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Reconstructing the Privileged Stancementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Casting inference to the best explanation's lot with active inference

Beni

2023

Theoria

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…On the other hand, some of the contributions presented in this Research Topic advance preceding research by aligning it with breakthroughs in computational embodied/extended neuroscience. Among them are the theory and application of the free energy principle (Friston, 2011 ; Clark, 2016 ), which have previously resulted in some fairly sophisticated accounts of social cognition (Friston and Frith, 2015 ), with implications for the social aspects of science (Nersessian and Chandrasekharan, 2009 ; Beni, 2021 ) and scientific methodology (Beni and Pietarinen, 2021 ; Pietarinen and Beni, 2021 ). The present Research Topic signposts some recent developments in distributed cognition across the multiplicity of scientific contexts.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%