Does the metaphysical dog wag its formal tail? The free energy principle and philosophical debates about life, mind, and matter.

According to Bruineberg and colleagues, philosophical arguments on life, mind, and matter that are based on the free energy principle (FEP) (i) essentially draw on the Markov blanket construct and (ii) tend to assume that strong metaphysical claims can be justified on the basis of metaphysically innocuous formal assumptions provided by FEP. I argue against both (i) and (ii).

Making life & mind as clear as possible, but not clearer

Neuroscience needs theory. Ideas without data are blind, and yet mechanisms without concepts are empty. Friston’s free energy principle paradigmatically illustrates the power and pitfalls of current theoretical biology. Mighty metaphors, turned into mathematical models, can become mindless metaphysics. Then, seeking to understand everything in principle, we may explain nothing in practice. Life can’t live in a map.

The Energy Homeostasis Principle: A Naturalistic Approach to Explain the Emergence of Behavior

It is still elusive to explain the emergence of behavior and understanding based on its neural mechanisms. One renowned proposal is the Free Energy Principle (FEP), which uses an information-theoretic framework derived from thermodynamic considerations to describe how behavior and understanding emerge. FEP starts from a whole-organism approach, based on mental states and phenomena, mapping them into the neuronal substrate. An alternative approach, the Energy Homeostasis Principle (EHP), initiates a similar explanatory effort but starts from single-neuron phenomena and builds up to whole-organism behavior and understanding. In this work, we further develop the EHP as a distinct but complementary vision to FEP and try to explain how behavior and understanding would emerge from the local requirements of the neurons. Based on EHP and a strict naturalist approach that sees living beings as physical and deterministic systems, we explain scenarios where learning would emerge without the need for volition or goals. Given these starting points, we state several considerations of how we see the nervous system, particularly the role of the function, purpose, and conception of goal-oriented behavior. We problematize these conceptions, giving an alternative teleology-free framework in which behavior and, ultimately, understanding would still emerge. We reinterpret neural processing by explaining basic learning scenarios up to simple anticipatory behavior. Finally, we end the article with an evolutionary perspective of how this non-goal-oriented behavior appeared. We acknowledge that our proposal, in its current form, is still far from explaining the emergence of understanding. Nonetheless, we set the ground for an alternative neuron-based framework to ultimately explain understanding.

In and Out of Sync: an Example of Gestalt Therapy

This article emphasizes the importance of synchronization in changing patients’ dysfunctional patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to functional ones. Furthermore, the concept of synchronization in psychotherapy is delineated herein, showing its feasibility through the free energy principle. Most sync-oriented publications focus on the therapist-patient relationship. In contrast, this article is focusing on the therapeutic process, especially by analyzing how dysfunctional units—both in an individual’s mind, as well as in social relationships—assemble in synchrony and how psychotherapy helps to disassemble and replace them with functional units. As an example, Gestalt psychology and Gestalt psychotherapy are demonstrated through the lenses of synchronization, supported by diverse case studies. Finally, it is concluded that synchronization is opening a gateway to understanding the change dynamics in psychotherapy and, as such, is worth further study.

In vitro neurons learn and exhibit sentience when embodied in a simulated game-world

Integrating neurons into digital systems to leverage their innate intelligence may enable performance infeasible with silicon alone, along with providing insight into the cellular origin of intelligence. We developed DishBrain, a system which exhibits natural intelligence by harnessing the inherent adaptive computation of neurons in a structured environment. In vitro neural networks from human or rodent origins, are integrated with in silico computing via high-density multielectrode array. Through electrophysiological stimulation and recording, cultures were embedded in a simulated game-world, mimicking the arcade game ‘Pong’. Applying a previously untestable theory of active inference via the Free Energy Principle, we found that learning was apparent within five minutes of real-time gameplay, not observed in control conditions. Further experiments demonstrate the importance of closed-loop structured feedback in eliciting learning over time. Cultures display the ability to self-organise in a goal-directed manner in response to sparse sensory information about the consequences of their actions.

Affect-Logic, Embodiment, Synergetics, and the Free Energy Principle: New Approaches to the Understanding and Treatment of Schizophrenia

This theoretical paper explores the affect-logic approach to schizophrenia in light of the general complexity theories of cognition: embodied cognition, Haken’s synergetics, and Friston’s free energy principle. According to affect-logic, the mental apparatus is an embodied system open to its environment, driven by bioenergetic inputs of emotions. Emotions are rooted in goal-directed embodied states selected by evolutionary pressure for coping with specific situations such as fight, flight, attachment, and others. According to synergetics, nonlinear bifurcations and the emergence of new global patterns occur in open systems when control parameters reach a critical level. Applied to the emergence of psychotic states, synergetics and the proposed energetic understanding of emotions lead to the hypothesis that critical levels of emotional tension may be responsible for the transition from normal to psychotic modes of functioning in vulnerable individuals. In addition, the free energy principle through learning suggests that psychotic symptoms correspond to alternative modes of minimizing free energy, which then entails distorted perceptions of the body, self, and reality. This synthetic formulation has implications for novel therapeutic and preventive strategies in the treatment of psychoses, among these are milieu-therapeutic approaches of the Soteria type that focus on a sustained reduction of emotional tension and phenomenologically oriented methods for improving the perception of body, self, and reality.

Vibro-Acoustic Energy Transmission Analysis of the Acoustic Cavity with Multiple Partial Partitions

The general dynamic characteristics of the acoustic cavity with multiple partial partitions are presented in this thesis. A theoretical model has been developed for predictions, and several configurations are analyzed. To describe the apertures on the interface of subcavities, the virtual air panel assumption is introduced into the improved Fourier series system. The governing equations of the coupling system are derived by using the energy principle. The results obtained with the proposed model are firstly compared with the numerical calculations based on the finite element method (FEM). Subsequently, a configuration made up from a rigid cavity partitioned by a partial steel panel has been specifically built, and the forced responses of the coupling system have been measured for comparison and model validation. The present results are excellent over most of the studied frequency range. Furthermore, the visualizations of the interior sound intensity field of the acoustic cavity with three partial partitions under different frequencies are researched to illustrate the energy transmission paths and vibro-acoustic coupling mechanism of the complicated system. The obtained results are believed to be helpful in the optimal design of the vibro-acoustic coupling system with optimal sound insulation capacity.

Accelerated discovery of superoxide-dismutase nanozymes via high-throughput computational screening

The activity of nanomaterials (NMs) in catalytically scavenging superoxide anions mimics that of superoxide dismutase (SOD). Although dozens of NMs have been demonstrated to possess such activity, the underlying principles are unclear, hindering the discovery of NMs as the novel SOD mimics. In this work, we use density functional theory calculations to study the thermodynamics and kinetics of the catalytic processes, and we develop two principles, namely, an energy level principle and an adsorption energy principle, for the activity. The first principle quantitatively describes the role of the intermediate frontier molecular orbital in transferring electrons for catalysis. The second one quantitatively describes the competition between the desired catalytic reaction and undesired side reactions. The ability of the principles to predict the SOD-like activities of metal-organic frameworks were verified by experiments. Both principles can be easily implemented in computer programs to computationally screen NMs with the intrinsic SOD-like activity.

Embodied Simulations of Forces of Nature and the Role of Energy in Physical Systems

We experience (perceive, act upon and react to, and conceptualize) dynamical processes in nature as agentive. Expressed differently, we experience events as resulting from activities and interactions of Forces of Nature (such as wind, light, heat, fluids, electricity, substances, and motion) that are conceived of as powerful agents acting and interacting in physical environments. An example would be sunlight creating heat in the Earth’s surface layers, and this heat using the atmosphere as a heat engine whose output are the winds on our planet. In the physics of dynamical systems, these forces are characterized in terms of intensive and extensive quantities (i.e., electric potential and electric charge in the case of electricity). The aspect of power is formalized with the help of a generalized energy principle and the rules relating power/energy to intensive and extensive physical quantities. Concrete processes depend upon properties of physical materials (in and through which forces are active) such as (thermal, electrical, etc.) capacity or conductivity. In this paper, we demonstrate how we can create Embodied Simulations and Forces-of-Nature Theater performances, where children act as forces such as water, heat, electricity, and motion. The embodied logic of the physical play teaches children about the logic of our explanations of physical processes.

Active strategies for multisensory conflict suppression in the virtual hand illusion

The perception of our body in space is flexible and manipulable. The predictive brain hypothesis explains this malleability as a consequence of the interplay between incoming sensory information and our body expectations. However, given the interaction between perception and action, we might also expect that actions would arise due to prediction errors, especially in conflicting situations. Here we describe a computational model, based on the free-energy principle, that forecasts involuntary movements in sensorimotor conflicts. We experimentally confirm those predictions in humans using a virtual reality rubber-hand illusion. Participants generated movements (forces) towards the virtual hand, regardless of its location with respect to the real arm, with little to no forces produced when the virtual hand overlaid their physical hand. The congruency of our model predictions and human observations indicates that the brain-body is generating actions to reduce the prediction error between the expected arm location and the new visual arm. This observed unconscious mechanism is an empirical validation of the perception–action duality in body adaptation to uncertain situations and evidence of the active component of predictive processing.