David Rudrauf

CIAMS, Université Paris-Saclay, Orsay & Université d'Orléans, Orléans, France.

2 papers in the library · 279 citations · publishing 2003-2018

Papers

From autopoiesis to neurophenomenology: Francisco Varela's exploration of the biophysics of being.

Biological research January 1, 2003 David Rudrauf, Antoine Lutz, Diego Cosmelli et al. 194 citations

Francisco Varela's work on subjectivity and consciousness is reviewed, presenting a view of subjectivity as deeply intertwined with biological and physical roots. His theory of concrete, embodied dynamics, grounded in autonomous systems, posits that biological autonomy defines life and identity as emergent, circular self-producing processes. Embodiment explains how a cognitive self arises from an organism's internal regulation and sensorimotor coupling, with global subjective properties emerging from component interactions and constraining local processes through recursive morphodynamics. Neurophenomenology uses first-person methods to examine experience, creating mutual constraints between biophysical data and subjective accounts, aiming to ground disciplined insight in biophysical emergence. Varela's contribution is framed as a "biophysics of being."

DOI: 10.4067/s0716-97602003000100005 Full text

The Projective Consciousness Model and Phenomenal Selfhood.

Frontiers in psychology January 1, 2018 Kenneth Williford, Daniel Bennequin, Karl Friston et al. 85 citations

The Projective Consciousness Model (PCM) combines a projective geometric model of the perspectival structure of conscious experience with a variational free-energy minimization model of active inference, explaining how consciousness serves a cybernetic function: modulating cognitive and affective dynamics to control embodied agents. Projective transformations link geometry and inference, integrating perception, emotion, memory, reasoning, and perspectival imagination to optimize behavior, resilience, and preference satisfaction. The PCM makes empirical predictions, fits a neurocomputational framework, and accounts for pre-reflective self-consciousness, the first-person perspective, the sense of ownership, and social self-consciousness. The authors argue it offers the most complete theory to date of phenomenal selfhood.

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02571 Full text Free energy principle Active inference Consciousness Cybernetics +4