Abstract
The Free Energy Principle (FEP) is currently one of the most promising frameworks with which to address a unified explanation of life-related phenomena. With powerful formalism that embeds a small set of assumptions, it purports to deal with complex adaptive dynamics ranging from barely unicellular organisms to complex cultural manifestations. The FEP has received increased attention in disciplines that study life, including some critique regarding its overall explanatory power and its true potential as a grand unifying theory (GUT). Recently, FEP theorists presented a contribution with the main tenets of their framework, together with possible philosophical interpretations, which lean towards so-called Markovian Monism (MM). The present paper assumes some of the abovementioned critiques, rejects the arguments advanced to invalidate the FEP’s potential to be a GUT, and overcomes criticism thereof by reviewing FEP theorists’ newly minted metaphysical commitment, namely MM. Specifically, it shows that this philosophical interpretation of the FEP argues circularly and only delivers what it initially assumes, i.e., a dual information geometry that allegedly explains epistemic access to the world based on prior dual assumptions. The origin of this circularity can be traced back to a physical description contingent on relative system-environment separation. However, the FEP itself is not committed to MM, and as a scientific theory it delivers more than what it assumes, serving as a heuristic unification principle that provides epistemic advancement for the life sciences.
Highlights
The Free Energy Principle (FEP) inspires one of the most comprehensive frameworks for the study of complex adaptive systems
Even though physical and computational properties are not identical, “the extrinsic information geometry is reducible to the intrinsic information geometry, in the sense that there is a necessary link between them”. (As a consequence, this ultimate reduction can only mean embracing a compatibilist view on the problem of free will.) One is permitted to express system dynamics “in terms of forces supplied by the extrinsic, belief-based information geometry”, because “[t]he forces that engender our physical dynamics can either be expressed as thermodynamic forces or as self-evidencing; in virtue of the extrinsic information geometry supplied by variational free energy”
FEP theorists acknowledge that FEP formalism could be deemed compatible with dualism but—were that the case—the latter could not explain the existence of minds and consciousness by leveraging properties entailed by the existence of a Markov blanket, even if such properties are identified with protophenomenal properties [13]
Summary
The Free Energy Principle (FEP) inspires one of the most comprehensive frameworks for the study of complex adaptive systems. The FEP may withstand criticism inasmuch as it is not committed to MM for two main reasons: First, as the FEP’s philosophical interpretation, MM obtains what it assumes, i.e., a dual information geometry that allegedly explains epistemic duality because of its prior, initial dual assumptions. Such circular reasoning stems from the FEP’s implicit reliance on a non-fundamental, relative system-environment separation. That is why MM is a questionable philosophical backdrop for the FEP
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