scholarly journals “Through others we become ourselves”: The dialectics of predictive coding and active inference

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitris Bolis ◽  
Leonhard Schilbach

Abstract Thinking through other minds creatively situates the free-energy principle within real-life cultural processes, thereby enriching both sociocultural theories and Bayesian accounts of cognition. Here, shifting the attention from thinking-through to becoming-with, we suggest complementing such an account by focusing on the empirical, computational, and conceptual investigation of the multiscale dynamics of social interaction.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitris Bolis ◽  
Leonhard Schilbach

Thinking Through Other Minds (TTOM) creatively situates the free energy principle within real-life cultural processes, thereby enriching both sociocultural theories and Bayesian accounts of cognition. Here, shifting the attention from thinking to becoming, we suggest complementing such an account by focusing on the empirical, computational and conceptual investigation of the multiscale dynamics of social interaction.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beren Millidge

This paper combines the active inference formulation of action (Friston, 2009) with hierarchical predictive coding models (Friston, 2003) to provide a proof-of-concept implementation of an active inference agent able to solve a common reinforcement learning baseline -- the cart-pole environment in OpenAI gym. It demonstrates empirically that predictive coding and active inference approaches can be successfully scaled up to tasks more challenging than the mountain car (Friston 2009, 2012). We show that hierarchical predictive coding models can be learned from scratch during the task, and can successfully drive action selection via active inference. To our knowledge, it is the first implemented active inference agent to combine active inference with a hierarchical predictive coding perceptual model. We also provide a tutorial walk-through of the free-energy principle, hierarchical predictive coding, and active inference, including an in-depth derivation of our agent.


Author(s):  
El Hassan Bezzazi

The free energy principle and its corollary, active inference, were introduced by Karl Friston as an explanation embodied perception and action in neuroscience, and since, it has been used to address many other issues in different fields mainly related to cognitive science like learning, optimal decision, or interpersonal inference. Negotiation is a process where each negotiator has conflicting motivation is aiming to maximize his utility and where agreement is reached when the opposing interests are balanced. The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate how the free energy principle might be used through active inference in modeling a negotiation process based on an example of real life. The work is an attempt to bring together a dynamic logic framework with appropriate operators to consider motivation among agents on one hand and the active inference framework on the other hand.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elliot Murphy ◽  
Emma Holmes ◽  
Karl Friston

Natural language syntax yields an unbounded array of hierarchically structured expressions. We claim that these are used in the service of active inference in accord with the free-energy principle (FEP). While conceptual advances alongside modelling and simulation work have attempted to connect speech segmentation and linguistic communication with the FEP, we extend this program to the underlying computations responsible for generating elementary syntactic objects. We argue that recently proposed principles of economy in language design—such as “minimal search” and “least effort” criteria from theoretical syntax—adhere to the FEP. This permits a greater degree of explanatory power to the FEP—with respect to higher language functions—and presents linguists with a grounding in first principles of notions pertaining to computability. More generally, we explore the possibility of migrating certain topics in linguistics over to the domain of fields that investigate the FEP, such as complex polysemy. We aim to align concerns of linguists with the normative model for organic self-organisation associated with the FEP, marshalling evidence from theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics to ground core principles of efficient syntactic computation within active inference.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Safron

Integrated World Modeling Theory (IWMT) is a synthetic model that attempts to unify theories of consciousness within the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference framework, with particular emphasis on Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT). IWMT further suggests predictive processing in sensory hierarchies may be well-modeled as (folded, sparse, partially disentangled) variational autoencoders, with beliefs discretely-updated via the formation of synchronous complexes—as self-organizing harmonic modes (SOHMs)—potentially entailing maximal a posteriori (MAP) estimation via turbo coding. In this account, alpha-synchronized SOHMs across posterior cortices may constitute the kinds of maximal complexes described by IIT, as well as samples (or MAP estimates) from multimodal shared latent space, organized according to egocentric reference frames, entailing phenomenal consciousness as mid-level perceptual inference. When these posterior SOHMs couple with frontal complexes, this may enable various forms of conscious access as a kind of mental act(ive inference), affording higher order cognition/control, including the kinds of attentional/intentional processing and reportability described by GNWT. Across this autoencoding heterarchy, intermediate-level beliefs may be organized into spatiotemporal trajectories by the entorhinal/hippocampal system, so affording episodic memory, counterfactual imaginings, and planning.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Safron

In introducing a model of “relaxed beliefs under psychedelics” (REBUS), Carhart-Harris and Friston (2019) have presented a compelling account of the effects of psychedelics on brain and mind. This model is contextualized within the Free Energy Principle (Friston et al., 2006; Friston, 2010), which may represent the first unified paradigm in the mind and life sciences. By this view, mental systems adaptively regulate their actions and interactions with the world via predictive models, whose dynamics are governed by a singular objective of minimizing prediction-error, or “free energy.” According to REBUS, psychedelics flatten the depth of free energy landscapes, or the differential attracting forces associated with various (Bayesian) beliefs, so promoting flexibility in inference and learning. Here, I would like to propose an alternative account of the effects of psychedelics that is in many ways compatible with REBUS, albeit with some important differences. Based on considerations of the distributions of 5-HT2a receptors within cortical laminae and canonical microcircuits for predictive coding, I propose that 5-HT2a agonism may also involve a strengthening of beliefs, particularly at intermediate levels of abstraction associated with conscious experience (Safron, 2020).


Entropy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 889 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxwell J. D. Ramstead ◽  
Karl J. Friston ◽  
Inês Hipólito

The aim of this paper is twofold: (1) to assess whether the construct of neural representations plays an explanatory role under the variational free-energy principle and its corollary process theory, active inference; and (2) if so, to assess which philosophical stance—in relation to the ontological and epistemological status of representations—is most appropriate. We focus on non-realist (deflationary and fictionalist-instrumentalist) approaches. We consider a deflationary account of mental representation, according to which the explanatorily relevant contents of neural representations are mathematical, rather than cognitive, and a fictionalist or instrumentalist account, according to which representations are scientifically useful fictions that serve explanatory (and other) aims. After reviewing the free-energy principle and active inference, we argue that the model of adaptive phenotypes under the free-energy principle can be used to furnish a formal semantics, enabling us to assign semantic content to specific phenotypic states (the internal states of a Markovian system that exists far from equilibrium). We propose a modified fictionalist account—an organism-centered fictionalism or instrumentalism. We argue that, under the free-energy principle, pursuing even a deflationary account of the content of neural representations licenses the appeal to the kind of semantic content involved in the ‘aboutness’ or intentionality of cognitive systems; our position is thus coherent with, but rests on distinct assumptions from, the realist position. We argue that the free-energy principle thereby explains the aboutness or intentionality in living systems and hence their capacity to parse their sensory stream using an ontology or set of semantic factors.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 225-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxwell JD Ramstead ◽  
Michael D Kirchhoff ◽  
Karl J Friston

The aim of this article is to clarify how best to interpret some of the central constructs that underwrite the free-energy principle (FEP) – and its corollary, active inference – in theoretical neuroscience and biology: namely, the role that generative models and variational densities play in this theory. We argue that these constructs have been systematically misrepresented in the literature, because of the conflation between the FEP and active inference, on the one hand, and distinct (albeit closely related) Bayesian formulations, centred on the brain – variously known as predictive processing, predictive coding or the prediction error minimisation framework. More specifically, we examine two contrasting interpretations of these models: a structural representationalist interpretation and an enactive interpretation. We argue that the structural representationalist interpretation of generative and recognition models does not do justice to the role that these constructs play in active inference under the FEP. We propose an enactive interpretation of active inference – what might be called enactive inference. In active inference under the FEP, the generative and recognition models are best cast as realising inference and control – the self-organising, belief-guided selection of action policies – and do not have the properties ascribed by structural representationalists.


Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 783
Author(s):  
Adam Safron

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).


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Smith ◽  
maxwell ramstead ◽  
Alex Kiefer

Active inference offers a unified theory of perception, learning, and decision-making at computational and neural levels of description. In this article, we address the worry that active inference may be in tension with folk psychology because it does not include terms for desires (or other conative constructs) at the mathematical level of description. To resolve this concern, we first provide a brief review of the historical progression from predictive coding to active inference, enabling us to distinguish between active inference formulations of motor control (which need not have desires under folk psychology) and active inference formulations of decision processes (which do have desires within folk psychology). We then show that, despite a superficial tension when viewed at the mathematical level, the active inference formalism contains terms that are readily identifiable as encoding both the objects of desire and the strength of desire at the psychological level. We demonstrate this with simple simulations of an active inference agent motivated to leave a dark room for different reasons. Despite their consistency, we further show how active inference may increase the granularity of folk-psychological descriptions by highlighting distinctions between drives to seek information vs. reward – and how it may also offer more precise, quantitative folk-psychological predictions. Finally, we consider how the implicitly conative components of active inference may have partial analogues (i.e., “as if” desires) in other systems describable by the broader free energy principle to which it conforms.


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