Where There Is Life There Is Mind… And Free Energy Minimisation?

• Autores: Juan Diego Bogotá
• Localización: Life and Mind: Theoretical and Applied Issues in Contemporary Philosophy of Biology and Cognitive Sciences / coord. por Mariano Martín Villuendas, Juan Gefaell Borrás, Ana Cuevas Badallo, 2024, ISBN 978-3-031-70849-7, págs. 171-200
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • This chapter explores the possibility of integrating the enactive and the Free Energy Principle’s (FEP) approaches to life and mind. Both frameworks have been linked to the life-mind continuity thesis, but recent debates challenge their potential integration. Critics argue that the enactive approach, rooted in autopoiesis theory, has an internalist view of life and a contentful view of cognition, making it challenging to account for adaptive behavior and minimal cognition. Similarly, some find the FEP’s stationary view of life biologically implausible. Here, I address recent challenges in integrating the FEP and enactivism, thereby focusing on the life-mind continuity thesis. I suggest that the FEP, without explicitly defining life and mind, can be used to model the autopoietic dynamics of organisms. Additionally, I argue that the enactive conception of cognition as sense-making overcomes issues associated with contentful views of cognition. Furthermore, I refute the misinterpretation of the FEP’s assertion of stationary organisms, allowing for the modeling of enactive adaptive behavior through free energy minimization. Ultimately, I offer a constructive and interactionist approach to life and mind, transcending internalist and externalist perspectives.