Integrated World Modeling Theory (IWMT) Implemented: Towards Reverse Engineering Consciousness with the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference

Safron, Adam

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-64919-7_15

Cited by 4 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 115 publications

(124 reference statements)

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“…Unless otherwise specified, these discussions can be considered to refer to both senses of consciousness. For a more thorough discussion of the physical and computational substrates of phenomenal consciousness, please see Integrated World Modeling Theory [ 73 , 74 ].]…”

Section: The Emergence Of Conscious Teleological Agentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Imagined sensorimotor contingencies would generate prediction errors where they fail to align with actual sensory observations, which would influence conscious experiences if they reach hierarchically higher levels of cortex with rich-club connectivity [ 104 , 170 ]. These subnetworks are notable in having both high centrality and high reciprocal (or re-entrant) connectivity, which have been suggested to support “dynamic cores” of mutually-sustaining activation patterns [ 6 , 171 ], so implementing “global workspaces” [ 172 ] capable of both integrating and differentiating [ 173 ] multiple aspects of phenomena with sufficient spatiotemporal and causal organization for coherent conscious modeling [ 15 , 73 , 74 ].…”

Section: The Emergence Of Conscious Teleological Agentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to radical enactivist interpretations of active inference, subjective experience is the entailment of an implicit model represented by the entire system of hierarchical relations within an organism’s brain, body, and environment. However, I have suggested that processes only contribute to consciousness to the degree they couple with dynamic cores of neural activity on timescales at which information is integrated into particular large-scale meta-stable states [ 73 , 74 ], with coherence enhanced by mechanisms for stabilizing and coordinating synchronous activity [ 175 , 176 ]. While minds are certainly extended [ 177 , 178 ], consciousness may be a more spatiotemporally limited phenomenon.…”

Section: The Emergence Of Conscious Teleological Agentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given sufficient experience, imagined actions from 1st-person reference frames will be accompanied by auto-associative linkages to perceptions of similar actions from other points of view. These various viewpoints become ‘encoded’ by ventral visual stream neuronal ensembles, which can become consciously accessible via posterior medial cortices [ 73 , 74 ]. Conscious 3rd-person self-representations afford additional forms of modeling/control and navigation of complex contingencies, such as imagining multistep plans, potentially accompanied by visualizations of moving through spatialized time.…”

Section: The Emergence Of Conscious Teleological Agentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Algorithmically, certainty-based biasing of prediction errors realizes Bayesian inference as a precision-weighted sum of probabilities, so providing a functional basis for attentional selection. Mechanistically (and potentially phenomenologically), this attentional selection involves modulation of excitation for particular neuronal populations, so making entailed precision-weighted prediction errors more or less likely to percolate into deeper portions of cortical hierarchies where this information may shape larger-scale (potentially conscious) dynamics [ 73 , 74 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

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%

Section: The Emergence Of Conscious Teleological Agentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Emergence Of Conscious Teleological Agentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

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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Feeling our place in the world: an active inference account of self-esteem

Albarracin,

Bouchard-Joly,

Sheikhbahaee

et al. 2024

Neuroscience of Consciousness

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Self-esteem, the evaluation of one’s own worth or value, is a critical aspect of psychological well-being and mental health. In this paper, we propose an active inference account of self-esteem, casting it as a sociometer or an inferential capacity to interpret one’s standing within a social group. This approach allows us to explore the interaction between an individual’s self-perception and the expectations of their social environment.When there is a mismatch between these perceptions and expectations, the individual needs to adjust their actions or update their self-perception to better align with their current experiences. We also consider this hypothesis in relation with recent research on affective inference, suggesting that self-esteem enables the individual to track and respond to this discrepancy through affective states such as anxiety or positive affect. By acting as an inferential sociometer, self-esteem allows individuals to navigate and adapt to their social environment, ultimately impacting their psychological well-being and mental health.

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Making and breaking symmetries in mind and life

et al. 2023

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Symmetry is a motif featuring in almost all areas of science. Symmetries appear throughout the natural world, making them particularly important in our quest to understand the structure of the world around us. Symmetries and invariances are often first principles pointing to some lawful description of an observation, with explanations being understood as both ‘satisfying’ and potentially useful in their regularity. The sense of aesthetic beauty accompanying such explanations is reminiscent of our understanding of intelligence in terms of the ability to efficiently predict (or compress) data; indeed, identifying and building on symmetry can offer a particularly elegant description of a physical situation. The study of symmetries is so fundamental to mathematics and physics that one might ask where else it proves useful. This theme issue poses the question: what does the study of symmetry, and symmetry breaking, have to offer for the study of life and the mind?

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Integrated World Modeling Theory (IWMT) Implemented: Towards Reverse Engineering Consciousness with the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference

Cited by 4 publications

References 115 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

Feeling our place in the world: an active inference account of self-esteem

Making and breaking symmetries in mind and life

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