Related papers: The free energy principle made simpler but not too…
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…
This monograph attempts a theory of every 'thing' that can be distinguished from other things in a statistical sense. The ensuing statistical independencies, mediated by Markov blankets, speak to a recursive composition of ensembles (of…
In this paper, a simple case of Bayesian mechanics under the free energy principle is formulated in axiomatic terms. We argue that any dynamical system with constraints on its dynamics necessarily looks as though it is performing inference…
In this PhD thesis, we explore and apply methods inspired by the free energy principle to two important areas in machine learning and neuroscience. The free energy principle is a general mathematical theory of the necessary…
The Free Energy Principle (FEP) states that under suitable conditions of weak coupling, random dynamical systems with sufficient degrees of freedom will behave so as to minimize an upper bound, formalized as a variational free energy, on…
We formulate the computational processes of perception in the framework of the principle of least action by postulating the theoretical action as a time integral of the free energy in the brain sciences. The free energy principle is…
Bayesian mechanics provides a framework that addresses dynamical systems that can be conceptualised as Bayesian inference. However, elucidating the requisite generative models is essential for empirical applications to realistic…
The free energy principle (FEP) states that any dynamical system can be interpreted as performing Bayesian inference upon its surrounding environment. In this work, we examine in depth the assumptions required to derive the FEP in the…
The aim of this paper is to introduce a field of study that has emerged over the last decade called Bayesian mechanics. Bayesian mechanics is a probabilistic mechanics, comprising tools that enable us to model systems endowed with a…
The concept of free energy has its origins in 19th century thermodynamics, but has recently found its way into the behavioral and neural sciences, where it has been promoted for its wide applicability and has even been suggested as a…
This thesis focuses on three fundamental aspects of biological systems; namely, entropy production, Bayesian mechanics, and the free-energy principle. The contributions are threefold: 1) We compute the entropy production for a greater class…
Active inference, a corollary of the free energy principle, is a formal way of describing the behavior of certain kinds of random dynamical systems that have the appearance of sentience. In this chapter, we describe how active inference…
We develop a novel data-driven approach to the inverse problem of classical statistical mechanics: given experimental data on the collective motion of a classical many-body system, how does one characterise the free energy landscape of that…
The Free-Energy-Principle (FEP) is an influential and controversial theory which postulates a deep and powerful connection between the stochastic thermodynamics of self-organization and learning through variational inference. Specifically,…
The free energy principle has been proposed as a unifying account of brain function. It is closely related, and in some cases subsumes, earlier unifying ideas such as Bayesian inference, predictive coding, and active learning. This article…
Active inference is a normative framework for explaining behaviour under the free energy principle -- a theory of self-organisation originating in neuroscience. It specifies neuronal dynamics for state-estimation in terms of a descent on…
The free energy principle (FEP) in the neurosciences stipulates that all viable agents induce and minimize informational free energy in the brain to fit their environmental niche. In this study, we continue our effort to make the FEP a more…
The Free-Energy Principle (FEP) [1-3] has been adopted in a variety of ambitious proposals that aim to characterize all adaptive, sentient, and cognitive systems within a unifying framework. Judging by the amount of attention it has…
The brain is a biological system comprising nerve cells and orchestrates its embodied agent's perception, behavior, and learning in the dynamic environment. The free energy principle (FEP) advocated by Karl Friston explicates the local,…
Consider a population of organisms that harvest free energy from their environment to reproduce. This paper shows that if the organisms' reproductive rates are proportional to the amount of physical free energy that they can convert into…