Laying down a forking path: Tensions between enaction and the free energy principle

Abstract

Several authors have made claims about the compatibility between the Free Energy Principle (FEP) and theories of autopoiesis and enaction. Many see these theories as natural partners or as making similar statements about the nature of biological and cognitive systems. We critically examine these claims and identify a series of misreadings and misinterpretations of key enactive concepts. In particular, we notice a tendency to disregard the operational definition of autopoiesis and the distinction between a system’s structure and its organization. Other misreadings concern the conflation of processes of self-distinction in operationally closed systems and Markov blankets. Deeper theoretical tensions underlie some of these misinterpretations. FEP assumes systems that reach a non-equilibrium steady state and are enveloped by a Markov blanket. We argue that these assumptions contradict the historicity of sense-making that is explicit in the enactive approach. Enactive concepts such as adaptivity and agency are defined in terms of the modulation of parameters and constraints of the agent-environment coupling, which entail the possibility of changes in variable and parameter sets, constraints, and in the dynamical laws affecting the system. This allows enaction to address the path-dependent diversity of human bodies and minds. We argue that these ideas are incompatible with the time invariance of non-equilibrium steady states assumed by the FEP. In addition, the enactive perspective foregrounds the enabling and constitutive roles played by the world in sense-making, agency, development. We argue that this view of transactional and constitutive relations between organisms and environments is a challenge to the FEP. Once we move beyond superficial similarities, identify misreadings, and examine the theoretical commitments of the two approaches, we reach the conclusion that far from being easily integrated, the FEP, as it stands formulated today, is in tension with the theories of autopoiesis and enaction.

On Bayesian Mechanics: A Physics of and by Beliefs

“…Additional assumptions can be made about the about sparse coupling and conditional independence of a particular system. When they are, they are helpful in that they make some of the mathematical derivations simpler and also, importantly, in that they allow us to say more informative things about the 15 It has been claimed that the FEP requires assumptions of stationarity and/or steady-state, or related assumptions such as ergodicity; see, e.g., [67]. Based on this claim, some authors have suggested that the FEP cannot be used to model path-dependent dynamics.…”

The Problem of Meaning: The Free Energy Principle and Artificial Agency

“…This idea has been taken by critics to be based on the assumption that living systems literally are ergodic. 12 It has recently been argued that the enactive concept of adaptivity is fundamentally at odds with the ergodicity assumption (Di Paolo et al, 2022; also see Colombo and Wright, 2018;Kauffman, 2019 for a critique of ergodicity as applied to living systems). Adaptivity, they have argued, involves changes in the phase space of the dynamical system the organism forms with the environment to avert the potential loss of viability that would ensue, were the agent to remain in a steadystate regime.…”

“…First, it has recently been argued that biological systems are not well described as state-determined systems that over time are attracted toward non-equilibrium steady-states (Froese and Taguchi, 2019 ; Aguilera et al, 2021 ; Di Paolo et al, 2022 ). These authors have argued that organisms (perhaps in contrast to FEP-based models of agency) have a natural history that is characterized by open-ended, unpredictable transitions to qualitatively new regimes of order.…”

“…These authors have argued that organisms (perhaps in contrast to FEP-based models of agency) have a natural history that is characterized by open-ended, unpredictable transitions to qualitatively new regimes of order. Di Paolo et al ( 2022 , p. 21) give as examples “embryogenesis, life-cycle patterns, epigenetic variability, metamorphosis, and symbiosis.” They argue furthermore that qualitative transformations can be observed in the structure of behavior in the learning of skills, and in the soft assembly of task-specific systems in tool use (Anderson et al, 2012 ; Di Paolo et al, 2017 ). These critics have argued that processes of historical change are essential to adaptivity but such history-dependent processes cannot be captured in the terms of the FEP.…”

An Enactive–Ecological Model to Guide Patient-Centered Osteopathic Care

“…This commentary paper builds upon our ongoing research and recently published work to provide a synopsis of critical concepts from the literature on enactivism, predictive processing, FEP, and active inference and a framework that can inform clinical reasoning in osteopathy. Despite the growing support for the use of these theoretical frameworks in clinical practice [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 11 ] we are acutely aware of the debate around the putative incompatibilities between enactivism and the FEP (e.g., DiPaolo et al, 2022 [ 14 ]) and the failure of predictive processing as a unified theory of cognition [ 15 ]. Although we agree that one should avoid applying these frameworks to clinical practice in an uncritical manner, there is growing empirical evidence that, for example, predictive processing and active inference have neurobiological correlations that are relevant to practitioners (e.g., Horing and Buchel, 2022 [ 16 ]).…”