Tracing the Roots of Cognition in Predictive Processing

“In this article, I will focus on active inference (under the Free Energy principle, (Friston 2010)), which starts from a predictive coding scheme but extends it to cover the domain of action control.”

“In this domain, predictive coding (Rao and Ballard 1999) emphasized the importance of a hierarchical (Bayesian) scheme, in which higher levels convey predictions to lower levels, and lower levels convey prediction errors to higher levels, with this process being iterated until prediction error is…”

“In active inference, one can describe adaptive control loops by starting from cybernetic error-correction mechanisms (Butz 2016; Pezzulo et al. 2015; Seth 2013).”

“…is “externalized” or off-loaded to the environment, as in the case of using a computer (or even an abacus) to do maths, or rotating Tetris pieces to aid in deciding where to place them (the latter was indeed an early example of “epistemic action” in the literature, cf. Kirsh and Maglio 1994).”

“…Piaget’s proposals on the construction of intelligence from sensorimotor experience (Piaget and Cook 1952); but also in many more recent variants (Clark and Grush 1999; Cotterill 1998; Hesslow 2002; Grush 2004) and especially under the theoretical umbrella of action-oriented representation (AOR).”

“Finally, in AOR, the relations between action (sensorimotor) control and the adaptive processes of homeostatic regulation (and associated sensorimotor loops) have rarely been investigated, but they may be important for linking actions and motivations and for constructing notions of cognitive goals that go beyond the e…”

“…control) as well as other domains including interoception, awareness and consciousness (Clark 2015; Clark 2016; Donnarumma et al. 2017; Hohwy 2013; Friston et al. 2013; Friston and Frith 2015a; Friston and Frith 2015b; Friston et al. 2016a; Pezzulo and Rigoli 2011, Seth 2013; Stoianov et al. 2016).”

“Hence the agent’s model must be able to entertain ‘counterfactually rich’ representations; i.e., beliefs about several alternative potential actions and the states of affairs that these actions would bring about (Friston et al., 2014, 2017c; Seth, 2014; Pezzulo, 2017; cf. Powers, 1973/2005).”

“Selection of optimal action policies involves having counterfactually rich expectations of the states of affairs that would be brought about contingent on actions (Seth 2014; Pezzulo 2017; Friston et al. 2017a).”