Section 3 describes the FEP’s alleged relationship to process theories and broader theoretical frameworks in cognitive science. Section 2 outlines the attempt to derive the FEP from first principles. Nevertheless, once one abandons the idea that such work has a first principles justification, I argue that it becomes difficult to see what could motivate some of the most ambitious claims advanced on its behalf. Nothing in this article is intended to challenge the value of the FEP and the evolving formal apparatus surrounding it when it comes to generating or inspiring process theories in cognitive science. My second aim is to explore the implications of this conclusion. Thus, the only interpretation of the FEP on which it plausibly establishes a necessary imperative for all self-organising systems provides no reason for thinking that free energy minimisation is implemented in the brain. 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. 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. 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). My primary aim in this article is to argue that the conjunction of claims (i) and (ii) rests on a fallacy of equivocation. Specifically, proponents of the FEP allege that it defines 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 (Allen & Friston, 2018 Friston, 2019a Hohwy, 2018, 2020a, 2020b). In conjunction with each other, such claims thus present the FEP as “an attempt to explain the structure and function of the brain, starting from the very fact that we exist” (Friston, 2009, p.293, my emphasis). Much of the current interest and controversy surrounding the FEP arises from two striking claims: (i) that it identifies a condition of the possibility of existence for self-organising systems, such that self-organising “systems that do not minimise free energy cannot exist” (Friston, 2013, p.2 see also Friston, 2010, 2013, 2019a, 2019b Hohwy, 2013 2014 2020b) and (ii) that it has important implications for our understanding of how the brain works, providing “a unified brain theory” (Friston, 2010) and “grand unifying principle for cognitive science and biology” (Hohwy, 2020b, p.1). 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.Īmong recent ideas in cognitive science and philosophy, none are more simultaneously ambitious, interesting, and enigmatic than the free energy principle (FEP) developed primarily by Karl Friston ( 2010, 2013), according to which all self-organising systems-or, in more recent formulations, all physical systems that persist over time (Friston, 2019a)-obey an imperative to minimise variational free energy, an information-theoretic quantity that roughly scores the improbability of an observation conditional on a model of its causes (see Buckley et al., 2017 Colombo & Wright, 2018 Friston, 2010 Hohwy, 2020a). I argue that the conjunction of claims (i) and (ii) rests on a fallacy of equivocation. 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.
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