Life, mind, agency: Why Markov blankets fail the test of evolution

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Behavioral and Brain Sciences 45:e214 (2022)
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Abstract

There has been much criticism of the idea that Friston's free-energy principle can unite the life and mind sciences. Here, we argue that perhaps the greatest problem for the totalizing ambitions of its proponents is a failure to recognize the importance of evolutionary dynamics and to provide a convincing adaptive story relating free-energy minimization to organismal fitness.

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10.1017/s0140525x22000115

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Author Profiles

Walter Veit
University of Reading
Heather Browning
University of Southampton

Citations of this work

Complexity and the Evolution of Consciousness.Walter Veit - 2023 - Biological Theory 18 (3):175-190.
Revisiting the Intentionality All-Stars.Walter Veit - 2022 - Review of Analytic Philosophy 2 (1):31-54.

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References found in this work

The extended mind.Andy Clark & David J. Chalmers - 1998 - Analysis 58 (1):7-19.
The Predictive Mind.Jakob Hohwy - 2013 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind.Evan Thompson - 2007 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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