Incorporating (variational) free energy models into mechanisms: the case of predictive processing under the free energy principle

right hello and welcome this is active inference live stream 63.1 it's november 7th 2023 we're here with michael pikarski and we'll be hearing a presentation followed by a discussion on incorporating variational free energy models into mechanisms the case of predictive processing under the free energy principle so looking forward to this lecture and discussion thank you for joining and off to you thank you very much daniel thank you for invitation uh this is a great honor for me and very nice uh i'm a little stressed i hope my presentation will be interesting for you and give a chance to take a new some new ideas concerning the bayesian models especially predictive processing under the free energy principle so my talk is based on my recent papers which i published after after many many months of revisions in centers and i will sketch the view which i try to develop here which i think has some interesting implication also for the discussion in the field of bayesian modeling like in the wider context of philosophy of neuroscience of philosophy of cognitive science so i will try to justify the free hypothesis one general and two more specific concerning uh charlie the predict processing and free energy principle so the first one idea which i found in a recent paper of some philosophers of mechanistic explanations is there is the idea that there are phenomena i think that there are neurocognitive phenomena which should be explained not only in the terms of the composing the mechanism which uh is related to the this phenomena but also should incorporate the the constraints from the environmental constraints and the flows of free energy i will be i will defend the view according to which if you want to explain those mechanism those phenomena we have to take an account of flows of free energy and the notion of free energy of course in the work of those mechanics uh is related to the thermodynamic dynamic free energy but i will try to show that in the free energy we can understand also in the terms of informational or variational free energy this is the first hypothesis the second uh hypothesis is this is not my idea because we found in many papers of uh jacob howey of or pavel gwarzyeski the idea that predictive processing provides a sketch of mechanism in other words predictive processing is computational framework which has mechanistic or in which can offer a mechanistic explanation of its target phenomena and i will try to to connect the two my hypothesis and shows that mechanistic predictive processing takes a informational constraint from the free energy principle in other words we can uh inc integrate uh free energy principle as normative theory normative principle with process theory predictive processing using the mechanistic uh picture mechanistic idea of explanations so let's start from the first hypothesis um i think that there is a general and uncommon agree uh in the world field in the works of some authors from cognitive uh science from philosophy of neuroscience uh the view which schematically called called new mechanical philosophy according to which the explanation of phenomena is a matter of the composing this phenomena into underlying mechanism so when we want to explain phenomena for example this is a view to defend the the car craver or william bechtel and the others when we want to explain phenomena not only cognitive but also biological social phenomena we have to decompose the mechanism which is responsible for the realization of this phenomenon and this mechanism can be treated as a uh mechanism which casual product the phenomena or a mechanism which is responsible in the terms of constitutive responsibility for the realization of the phenomena and uh those authors who and those start these traditions which uh craver in his book explaining the brain calls the system traditions claims that explanation is a matter of the system that explanation is a matter of finding the systems the mechanism which should be…