Active inference and agency

Friston, Karl J.

doi:10.1080/17588928.2014.905517

Cited by 14 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Relevant to the role of motivation-in the epistemic process-is the recent theoretical debate about the affective reactions to cognitive consistency and inconsistency [36][37][38]. The notion that people universally prefer cognitive consistency to inconsistency, and that they react to inconsistency with negative affect has been a mainstay in the field of social cognition and the staple of the cognitive dissonance theory [39], one of the most impactful and highly cited frameworks in all of psychology [40].…”

Section: Motivational Substrate Of Epistemic Behavior: Some General Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

All Thinking is ‘Wishful’ Thinking

Kruglanski

Jaśko

Friston

2020

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

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Whether one looks at ethology, social neuroscience, behavioral psychology, machine learning, or the societal implications of 'fake news', questions about epistemic motivation keep emerging. While people often seek new information and eagerly update their beliefs, at other times they avoid information or resist revising their knowledge. So, what are the principles behind our truth-seeking? We argue, from psychological and optimality principles, there is no 'truth': optimal belief updating has a mixed motivation base, where epistemic affordances contextualize prior beliefs. This perspective offers a nuanced picture of knowledge-seeking and updating -that can be underwritten by formal (active inference) accounts.

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Section: Motivational Substrate Of Epistemic Behavior: Some General Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

All Thinking is ‘Wishful’ Thinking

Kruglanski

Jaśko

Friston

2020

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

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“…Although initially proposed to account for the influence of action on perception 121 , recent formulations have proffered valuable extensions toward explanation of diverse phenomena of direct relevance to neuropsychiatry, including action selection 122 , alterations of consciousness 123 , 124 , and psychosis 125 . These models have been extended to provide a compelling formal account of agency and cognitive control 126 – 128 . Application of mechanisms accounting for agency toward those components involved in basic perceptual inference would likely produce specific hypotheses regarding the development and mechanisms underlying control over hallucinations.…”

Section: Potential Cognitive Computational and Neural Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Voluntary control of auditory hallucinations: phenomenology to therapeutic implications

Swyer

Powers

2020

npj Schizophr

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Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) have traditionally been thought to be outside the influence of conscious control. However, recent work with voice hearers makes clear that both treatment-seeking and non-treatment-seeking voice hearers may exert varying degrees of control over their voices. Evidence suggests that this ability may be a key factor in determining health status, but little systematic examination of control in AVH has been carried out. This review provides an overview of the research examining control over AVH in both treatment-seeking and non-treatment-seeking populations. We first examine the relationship between control over AVH and health status as well as the psychosocial factors that may influence control and functioning. We then link control to various cognitive constructs that appear to be important for voice hearing. Finally, we reconcile the possibility of control with the field's current understanding of the proposed cognitive, computational, and neural underpinnings of hallucinations and perception more broadly. Established relationships between control, health status, and functioning suggest that the development of control over AVH could increase functioning and reduce distress. A more detailed understanding of the discrete types of control, their development, and their neural underpinnings is essential for translating this knowledge into new therapeutic approaches.

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“…For adaptive behavior to succeed, that is, for the organism to survive and thrive, it must have inborn and/or acquired familiarity with itself and its niche. In other words, the agent must be able to act on control information concerning its self/ niche relationship (Friston, 2014). This control information can be understood as embodied system-boundary-internal adaptive behavioral guidance information, with the sole requirement that it is good enough for facilitating the agent's ability to survive and thrive, akin to satisficing (Simon, 1957).…”

Section: Ecological Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Active Inference Approach to Ecological Perception: General Information Dynamics for Natural and Artificial Embodied Cognition

et al. 2018

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The emerging neurocomputational vision of humans as embodied, ecologically embedded, social agents-who shape and are shaped by their environment-offers a golden opportunity to revisit and revise ideas about the physical and information-theoretic underpinnings of life, mind, and consciousness itself. In particular, the active inference framework (AIF) makes it possible to bridge connections from computational neuroscience and robotics/AI to ecological psychology and phenomenology, revealing common underpinnings and overcoming key limitations. AIF opposes the mechanistic to the reductive, while staying fully grounded in a naturalistic and information-theoretic foundation, using the principle of free energy minimization. The latter provides a theoretical basis for a unified treatment of particles, organisms, and interactive machines, spanning from the inorganic to organic, non-life to life, and natural to artificial agents. We provide a brief introduction to AIF, then explore its implications for evolutionary theory, ecological psychology, embodied phenomenology, and robotics/AI research. We conclude the paper by considering implications for machine consciousness.

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Active inference and agency

Cited by 14 publications

References 6 publications

All Thinking is ‘Wishful’ Thinking

All Thinking is ‘Wishful’ Thinking

Voluntary control of auditory hallucinations: phenomenology to therapeutic implications

The Active Inference Approach to Ecological Perception: General Information Dynamics for Natural and Artificial Embodied Cognition

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