Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T19:24:23.177Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Markov blankets and the preformationist assumption

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2022

Mads Dengsø Open the ORCID record for Mads Dengsø [Opens in a new window] ,
Ian Robertson Open the ORCID record for Ian Robertson [Opens in a new window]  and
Axel Constant
Mads Dengsø
Affiliation:
Faculty of the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia [email protected] [email protected]
Ian Robertson
Affiliation:
Faculty of the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia [email protected] [email protected]
Axel Constant
Affiliation:
Charles Perkins Centre, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Bruineberg and colleagues argue that a realist interpretation of Markov blankets inadvertently relies upon unfounded assumptions. However, insofar as their diagnosis is accurate, their prescribed instrumentalism may ultimately prove insufficient as a complete remedy. Drawing upon a process-based perspective on living systems, we suggest a potential way to avoid some of the assumptions behind problems described by Bruineberg and colleagues.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 45 , 2022 , e192
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aguilera, M., Millidge, B., Tschantz, A., & Buckley, C. L. (2021). How particular is the physics of the free energy principle?. arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.11203.Google ScholarPubMed
Anderson, M. L. (2017). Of Bayes and bullets: An embodied, situated, targeting-based account of predictive processing. In Metzinger, T. & Wiese, W. (Eds.), Philosophy and predictive processing: 4. MIND Group. https://doi.org/10.15502/9783958573055Google Scholar
Andrews, M. (2021). The math is not the territory: Navigating the free energy principle. Biology & Philosophy, 36(3), 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruineberg, J., & Rietveld, E. (2019). What's inside your head once you've figured out what your head's inside of. Ecological Psychology, 31(3), 198–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, A. (2017). How to knit your own Markov blanket: Resisting the second law with metamorphic minds. In Metzinger, T. & Wiese, W. (Eds.), Philosophy and predictive processing: 3. MIND Group. https://doi.org/10.15502/9783958573031Google Scholar
Colombo, M., & Wright, C. (2021). First principles in the life sciences: The free-energy principle, organicism, and mechanism. Synthese, 198(14), 3463–3488.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallagher, S., & Allen, M. (2018). Active inference, enactivism and the hermeneutics of social cognition. Synthese, 195(6), 2627–2648.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Griffiths, P., & Stotz, K. (2018). Developmental systems theory as a process theory. In Nicholson, D. J. & Dupré, J. (Eds.), Everything flows: Towards a processual philosophy of biology (pp. 225–245). Oxford University Pres.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirchhoff, M., Kiverstein, J., & Robertson, I. (2022). The literalist fallacy & the free energy principle: Model-building, scientific realism and instrumentalism. [Preprint].Google Scholar
Kirchhoff, M., Parr, T., Palacios, E., Friston, K., & Kiverstein, J. (2018). The Markov blankets of life: Autonomy, active inference and the free energy principle. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 15(138), 20170792.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kirchhoff, M. D. (2015). Species of realization and the free energy principle. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 93(4), 706–723.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirchhoff, M. D., & Kiverstein, J. (2019). Extended consciousness and predictive processing: A third-wave view. Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirchhoff, M. D., & Kiverstein, J. (2021). How to determine the boundaries of the mind: A Markov blanket proposal. Synthese, 198(5), 4791–4810.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicholson, D. J., & Dupré, J. (2018). A manifesto for a processual philosophy of biology. In Nicholson, D. J. & Dupré, J. (Eds.), Everything flows: Towards a processual philosophy of biology (pp. 4–45). Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oyama, S. (2000). The ontogeny of information. Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Sutton, J. (2010). Exograms and interdisciplinarity: History, the extended mind, and the civilizing process. In Menary, R. (Ed.), The extended mind (pp. 189–225). MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar