Minimal phenomenal selfhood (MPS) is the basic, pre-reflective experience of being a self, emerging from self-modeling mechanisms rooted in bodily processes. The free energy principle (FEP) describes how self-organizing systems optimize hierarchical generative models of sensory causes by minimizing free energy. Predictive coding and active inference within the FEP highlight the role of embodiment for predictive self-modeling. This review maps MPS onto a hierarchical generative model under the FEP, explaining key constituents like multisensory integration, interoception, agency, perspective, and mineness. The authors conclude that this framework may underlie higher-level cognitive self-referral and understanding other minds.
Flow is a state of optimal performance experienced across domains like art, athletics, gaming, and writing. Its puzzling features include a reported loss of self-awareness despite skilled agency, and effortlessness despite task complexity. Using the active inference framework—where action and perception minimize variational free energy—the authors propose that flow arises from high precision weighting on expected sensory consequences of action and beliefs about sequential action. This draws the embodied system to exploit pragmatic affordances while restricting counterfactual planning, leading to inhibition of the sense of self as a temporally extended object and higher-order self-conceptualization. However, self-awareness is not entirely lost; it remains pre-reflective and bodily.