Mechanistic unity of the predictive mind

Gładziejewski, Paweł

doi:10.1177/0959354319866258

Cited by 17 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…Similarly, Hohwy claims that PEM is "meant to explain perception, and action, and everything mental in between" (Hohwy 2013, p. 1). Unsurprisingly, the lofty unificatory and explanatory ambitions of the framework have come under much scrutiny (Colombo and Hartmann 2017;Gładziejewski 2019). However, there has been relatively little focus on the fact that, in order to offer a truly exhaustive account of our mental lives, PEM must also face the problem of explaining the processes and mechanisms underlying consciousness.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fame in the predictive brain: a deflationary approach to explaining consciousness in the prediction error minimization framework

Dołęga

Dewhurst

2020

Synthese

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The proposal that probabilistic inference and unconscious hypothesis testing are central to information processing in the brain has been steadily gaining ground in cognitive neuroscience and associated fields. One popular version of this proposal is the new theoretical framework of predictive processing or prediction error minimization (PEM), which couples unconscious hypothesis testing with the idea of 'active inference' and claims to offer a unified account of perception and action. Here we will consider one outstanding issue that still looms large at the core of the PEM framework: the lack of a clear criterion for distinguishing conscious states from unconscious ones. In order to fulfill the promise of becoming a unifying framework for describing and modeling cognition, PEM needs to be able to differentiate between conscious and unconscious mental states or processes. We will argue that one currently popular view, that the contents of conscious experience are determined by the 'winning hypothesis' (i.e. the one with the highest posterior probability, which determines the behavior of the system), falls short of fully accounting for conscious experience. It ignores the possibility that some states of a system can control that system's behavior even though they are apparently not conscious (as evidenced by e.g. blindsight or subliminal priming). What follows from this is that the 'winning hypothesis' view does not provide a complete account of the difference between conscious and unconscious states in the probabilistic brain. We show how this problem (and some other related problems) for the received view can be resolved by augmenting PEM with Daniel Dennett's multiple drafts model of consciousness. This move is warranted by the similar roles that attention and internal competition play in both the PEM framework and the multiple drafts model. SyntheseKeywords Predictive processing · Active inference · Consciousness · Multiple drafts · Prediction error minimization · Generative model · Control model · Attention · Illusionism Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fame in the predictive brain: a deflationary approach to explaining consciousness in the prediction error minimization framework

Dołęga

Dewhurst

2020

Synthese

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“…The Descriptive FEP does not explain, purport to explain, or constrain explanations of how bounded systems maintain a nonequilibrium steady state with their environment. Instead, it assumes the existence of this behaviour and contends that it can be redescribed as involving the minimisation of free energy (see, e.g., Gładziejewski, 2019;Klein, 2018). 12 At least in more recent presentations of the FEP, the Descriptive FEP often seems to be the intended interpretation.…”

Section: The Descriptive Fepmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is the brain an organ for free energy minimisation?

Williams

2021

Philos Stud

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Two striking claims are advanced on behalf of the free energy principle (FEP) in cognitive science and philosophy: (i) that it identifies a condition of the possibility of existence for self-organising systems; and (ii) that it has important implications for our understanding of how the brain works, defining a set of process theories—roughly, theories of the structure and functions of neural mechanisms—consistent with the free energy minimising imperative that it derives as a necessary feature of all self-organising systems. I argue that the conjunction of claims (i) and (ii) rests on a fallacy of equivocation. The FEP can be interpreted in two ways: as a claim about how it is possible to redescribe the existence of self-organising systems (the Descriptive FEP), and as a claim about how such systems maintain their existence (the Explanatory FEP). Although the Descriptive FEP plausibly does identify a condition of the possibility of existence for self-organising systems, it has no important implications for our understanding of how the brain works. Although the Explanatory FEP would have such implications if it were true, it does not identify a condition of the possibility of existence for self-organising systems. I consider various ways of responding to this conclusion, and I explore its implications for the role and importance of the FEP in cognitive science and philosophy.

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“…It can be said that PP is a combination of two ideas (Gładziejewski, 2019;Klein, 2018): the first rests on the conviction that this framework is a set of various statements about what the brain is and how it works (cf. Clark, 2013;Hohwy, 2013Hohwy, , 2020aWiese, Metzinger, 2017); the second is that the basis of the brain or mind, or rather the whole human body, lies in the formal conception of theoretical biology called the free energy principle (cf.…”

Section: Predictive Processing and The Free Energy Principlementioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Predictive Processing. A Review

2021

Avant

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The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of the Predictive Processing framework (hereinafter PP) and to identify its basic theoretical difficulties. For this reason, it is, primarily, polemic-critical and, secondarily, historical. I discuss the main concepts, positions and research issues present within this framework ( §1-2). Next, I present the Bayesian-brain thesis ( §3) and the difficulty associated with it ( §4). In §5, I compare the conservative and radical approach to PP and discuss the internalist nature of the generative model in the context of Markov blankets. The possibility of linking PP with the free energy principle (hereinafter FEP) and the homeostatic nature of predictive mechanisms is discussed in §6. This is followed by the presentation of PP's difficulties with solving the dark room problem and the exploration-exploitation trade-off ( §7). I emphasize the need to integrate PP with other models and research frameworks within cognitive science. Thus, this review not only discusses PP, but also provides an assessment of the condition of this research framework in the light of the hopes placed on it by many researchers. The Conclusions section discuss further research challenges and the epistemological significance of PP.

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Mechanistic unity of the predictive mind

Cited by 17 publications

References 62 publications

Fame in the predictive brain: a deflationary approach to explaining consciousness in the prediction error minimization framework

Fame in the predictive brain: a deflationary approach to explaining consciousness in the prediction error minimization framework

Is the brain an organ for free energy minimisation?

Understanding Predictive Processing. A Review

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