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Is the brain an organ for free energy minimisation?

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Abstract

jats:titleAbstract</jats:title>jats:pTwo striking claims are advanced on behalf of the free energy principle (FEP) in cognitive science and philosophy: (i) that it identifies a condition of the possibility of existence for self-organising systems; and (ii) that it has important implications for our understanding of how the brain works, defining a set of process theories—roughly, theories of the structure and functions of neural mechanisms—consistent with the free energy minimising imperative that it derives as a necessary feature of all self-organising systems. I argue that the conjunction of claims (i) and (ii) rests on a fallacy of equivocation. The FEP can be interpreted in two ways: as a claim about how it is possible to redescribe the existence of self-organising systems (the jats:italicDescriptive FEP</jats:italic>), and as a claim about how such systems maintain their existence (the jats:italicExplanatory FEP</jats:italic>). Although the Descriptive FEP plausibly does identify a condition of the possibility of existence for self-organising systems, it has no important implications for our understanding of how the brain works. Although the Explanatory FEP would have such implications if it were true, it does not identify a condition of the possibility of existence for self-organising systems. I consider various ways of responding to this conclusion, and I explore its implications for the role and importance of the FEP in cognitive science and philosophy.</jats:p>

Description

Funder: Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000591

Keywords

Free energy principle, Predictive processing, Predictive coding, Active inference, Process theories, Mechanism

Journal Title

Philosophical Studies

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0031-8116
1573-0883

Volume Title

179

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC