The Active Inference Approach to Ecological Perception: General Information Dynamics for Natural and Artificial Embodied Cognition
A. Linson, A. Clark, S. Ramamoorthy, Karl J. Friston
Frontiers in Robotics and AI March 8, 2018 DOI: 10.3389/frobt.2018.00021 via Semantic Scholar
Summary
The active inference framework (AIF) offers a unified, naturalistic account of life, mind, and consciousness by grounding them in the principle of free energy minimization. It bridges computational neuroscience, robotics, ecological psychology, and phenomenology, treating particles, organisms, and artificial agents under a common information-theoretic foundation. The paper introduces AIF, then examines its implications for evolutionary theory, ecological psychology, embodied phenomenology, and robotics, concluding with considerations for machine consciousness.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Medicine Psychology Computer science Philosophy Environmental science |
| Citations | 94 |
| Key finding | The active inference framework provides a unified, naturalistic foundation for understanding life, mind, and consciousness across natural and artificial agents. |
Abstract
The emerging neurocomputational vision of humans as embodied, ecologically embedded, social agents—who shape and are shaped by their environment—offers a golden opportunity to revisit and revise ideas about the physical and information-theoretic underpinnings of life, mind, and consciousness itself. In particular, the active inference framework (AIF) makes it possible to bridge connections from computational neuroscience and robotics/AI to ecological psychology and phenomenology, revealing common underpinnings and overcoming key limitations. AIF opposes the mechanistic to the reductive, while staying fully grounded in a naturalistic and information-theoretic foundation, using the principle of free energy minimization. The latter provides a theoretical basis for a unified treatment of particles, organisms, and interactive machines, spanning from the inorganic to organic, non-life to life, and natural to artificial agents. We provide a brief introduction to AIF, then explore its implications for evolutionary theory, ecological psychology, embodied phenomenology, and robotics/AI research. We conclude the paper by considering implications for machine consciousness.