Andrews, Mel
(2020)
The Math is not the Territory: Navigating the Free Energy Principle.
[Preprint]
Abstract
The free energy principle (FEP) has seen extensive philosophical engagement— both from a general philosophy of science perspective and from the perspective of philosophies of specific sciences: cognitive science, neuroscience, and biology. The literature on the FEP has attempted to draw out specific philosophical commitments and entailments of the framework. But the most fundamental questions, from the perspective of philosophy of science, remain open: To what discipline(s) does the FEP belong? Does it make falsifiable claims? What sort of scientific object is it? Is it to be taken as a representation of contingent states of affairs in nature? Does it constitute knowledge? What role is it in- tended to play in relation to empirical research? Does the FEP even properly belong to the domain of science? To the extent that it has engaged with them at all, the extant literature has begged, dodged, dismissed, and skirted around these questions, without ever addressing them head-on. These questions must, I urge, be answered satisfactorily before we can make any headway on the philosophical consequences of the FEP. I take preliminary steps towards answering these questions in this paper, first by examining closely key formal elements of the framework and the implications they hold for its utility, and second, by highlighting potential modes of interpreting the FEP in light of an abundant philosophical literature on scientific modelling.
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The Math is not the Territory: Navigating the Free Energy Principle. (deposited 26 Oct 2020 19:23)
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