Related papers: Is the free-energy principle a formal theory of se…

Mounting evidence in neuroscience suggests the possibility of neuronal representations that individual neurons serve as the substrates of different mental representations in a point-to-point way. Combined with associationism, it can…

Organisms are nonequilibrium, stationary systems self-organized via spontaneous symmetry breaking and undergoing metabolic cycles with broken detailed balance in the environment. The thermodynamic free-energy principle describes an…

The Bayesian brain hypothesis, predictive processing and variational free energy minimisation are typically used to describe perceptual processes based on accurate generative models of the world. However, generative models need not be…

We propose a non-representationalist framework for deep learning relying on a novel method: computational phenomenology, a dialogue between the first-person perspective (relying on phenomenology) and the mechanisms of computational models.…

This work combines the free energy principle from cognitive neuroscience and the ensuing active inference dynamics with recent advances in variational inference in deep generative models, and evolution strategies to introduce the "deep…

The 'free energy principle' (FEP) has been suggested to provide a unified theory of the brain, integrating data and theory relating to action, perception, and learning. The theory and implementation of the FEP combines insights from…

Systems with many interacting stochastic constituents are fully characterized by their free energy. Computing this quantity is therefore the objective of various approaches, notably perturbative expansions, which are applied in problems…

Does the brain construct an efficient representation of the sensory world? We review progress on this question, focusing on a series of experiments in the last decade which use fly vision as a model system in which theory and experiment can…

We formulate five basic tenets of enactivist cognitive science that we have carefully identified in the relevant literature as the main underlying principles of that philosophy. We then develop a mathematical framework to talk about…

The semantic knowledge stored in our brains can be accessed from different stimulus modalities. For example, a picture of a cat and the word "cat" both engage similar conceptual representations. While existing research has found evidence…

Active inference introduces a theory describing action-perception loops via the minimisation of variational (and expected) free energy or, under simplifying assumptions, (weighted) prediction error. Recently, active inference has been…

The aim of this article is to represent the general description of an entity by means of its states, contexts and properties. The entity that we want to describe does not necessarily have to be a physical entity, but can also be an entity…

We extend our earlier work on the compositional structure of cybernetic systems in order to account for the embodiment of such systems. All their interactions proceed through their bodies' boundaries: sensations impinge on their surfaces,…

Active inference is a leading theory of perception, learning and decision making, which can be applied to neuroscience, robotics, psychology, and machine learning. Active inference is based on the expected free energy, which is mostly…

Disentangling the encodings of neural models is a fundamental aspect for improving interpretability, semantic control and downstream task performance in Natural Language Processing. Currently, most disentanglement methods are unsupervised…

Active inference is a normative principle underwriting perception, action, planning, decision-making and learning in biological or artificial agents. From its inception, its associated process theory has grown to incorporate complex…

The free energy principle (FEP) from neuroscience provides a framework called active inference for the joint estimation and control of state space systems, subjected to colored noise. However, the active inference community has been…

Computational functionalism about consciousness is often criticized for relying on observer-relative interpretations of physical systems. This paper proposes a mathematical refinement of functionalism that avoids this problem. The central…

Attractor dynamics are a hallmark of many complex systems, including the brain. Understanding how such self-organizing dynamics emerge from first principles is crucial for advancing our understanding of neuronal computations and the design…

We seek to clarify the concept of active inference by disentangling it from the Free Energy Principle. We show how the optimizations that need to be carried out in order to implement active inference in discrete state spaces can be…