What Drives the Brain? Organizational Changes, FEP and Anti-entropy

The free-energy principle (FEP) proposes that biological systems minimize entropy to maintain organization, but the brain under psychedelics shows increased cerebral entropy, challenging this view. The authors identify limits of the FEP, particularly its reliance on concepts of information, optimization, and predefined phase space that may not fit biological organization. They distinguish two aspects of entropy: a local trend involving variation and a global trend toward homogenization and stability. Extending these ideas beyond physics and mathematics, they offer an organicist alternative where living systems balance these two trends, and a biological system's disorganization enables its "unprestatable" reorganization and open-ended evolution.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The free-energy principle (FEP) provides a computational, physical and teleological theory for understanding biological organization as cognitive agent minimizing their entropy in relation to their environment. Is minimizing entropy the first principle driving all dynamics of cognition? Is it enough to account for organizational changes in an open-ended way? After a general presentation of the literature on the FEP, we turn to the paradoxical case of the brain under the influence of psychedelics, where the FEP is challenged by an increased cerebral entropy, which induces organizational changes of the cognition. Building on this paradox, we identify some limits of the FEP, notably applying concepts of information, optimization and predefined phase space to biology that do not fit our criteria for a theory of biological organization. We also identify two aspects of entropy in physics and in the FEP: the local entropic trend that implies variations and the global entropic trend that leads to homogeneization and stability. Extending these concepts outside of their physicomathematical context, we contribute to an organicist theoretical alternative where living systems find a balance between these two trends, and, conceptually, a biological system’s disorganization enable its “unprestatable” reorganization and so its open-ended evolution.