A Multi-scale View of the Emergent Complexity of Life: A Free-Energy Proposal
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Self-organizing agents maintain their existence by creating a boundary that separates their internal states from the external states of their environment.
“Self-organizing agents maintain their existence by creating a boundary that separates their internal states from the external states of their environment [12,25,18,15].”
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Trukovich, J. J. (2025) · Biosystems · doi:10.1016/j.biosystems.2025.105549 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
GUÉNIN--CARLUT, A. (2022) · doi:10.31219/osf.io/x7yr4 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
Structural Realism About the Free Energy Principle, the Best of Both Worlds
Beni, M. D. (2024) · Journal for General Philosophy of Science · doi:10.1007/s10838-024-09673-w · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Kirchhoff, M. D., & van Es, T. (2021) · Biology & Philosophy · doi:10.1007/s10539-021-09780-8 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Self-citationFrom Life-like to Mind-like Explanation: Natural Agency and the Cognitive Sciences
Djedovic, A. (2020) · PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Thinking like a State - Embodied intelligence in the deep history of our collective mindsPreprint
GUÉNIN--CARLUT, A. (2021) · doi:10.31219/osf.io/dxnzt · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Carls‐Diamante, S., & Laciny, A. (2024) · Lógoi Revista de Filosofía · doi:10.62876/lr.vi45.6481 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Zhang, H., & Zheng, X. (2024) · Mathematical Biosciences & Engineering · doi:10.3934/mbe.2024143 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Some additional pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of innovation and technological culture
Sabbatini, G. (2023) · Physics of Life Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.plrev.2023.09.008 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Reactive Environments for Active Inference Agents with RxEnvironments.jl
Nuijten, W. W. L., & de Vries, B. (2025) · Communications in computer and information science · doi:10.1007/978-3-031-77138-5_10
“Self-organizing agents maintain their existence by creating a boundary that separates their internal states from the external states of their environment [12,25,18,15].”
The argument from Evel (Knievel): daredevils and the free energy principle
Carls‐Diamante, S. (2022) · Biology & Philosophy · doi:10.1007/s10539-022-09872-z
On religious practices as multi-scale active inference
Hipólito, I., & Hesp, C. (2023) · Bloomsbury Academic eBooks · doi:10.5040/9781350329386.0018
Self-citationBowes, S. (2023) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-031-36930-8_4
Towards a strange interpretation of the Free Energy Principle
Bakker, C. (2023) · Physics of Life Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.plrev.2023.09.011
L. S. Vygotsky: Journey to the West
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Measure for Measure: Operationalising Cognitive Realism
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R2R (Reaction to Reflection) ModelPreprint
Trukovich, J. J. (2025) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.5191721
(2025) · The MIT Press eBooks · doi:10.7551/mitpress/15860.003.0018
Scale-invariant evolution: Comment on “homo informatio” by Michael Walker
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- Authors
- Hesp, C., Ramstead, M., Constant, A., Badcock, P., Kirchhoff, M., & Friston, K.
- Affiliations
- University of Amsterdam (NL)
- McGill University (CA)
- The University of Melbourne (AU)
- University of Wollongong (AU)
- University College London (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Hesp, Casper
- Venue
- Springer Proceedings in Complexity
- Publisher
- Springer International Publishing
- Published
- 2019
- Pages
- 195-227
- ISSN
- 2213-8684 (ISSN-L)
- 2213-8692
- OpenAlex
- W2955082317
- Cited by
- 63
- References
- 77
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 4
- FWCI
- 24.13
- Type
- book chapter
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- handle.uba.uva.nl
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Springer proceedings in complexity (publishedVersion)
- UvA-DARE (University of Amsterdam) (submittedVersion)
- PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) (submittedVersion)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Embodied and Extended Cognition
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Philosophy and History of Science
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Complex Systems and Dynamics
- Keywords
- free energy principle, variational free energy, autopoiesis, Bayesian model selection, natural selection, spatial and temporal scales, biological complexity, information theory in biology, evolution of organisms
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
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