Linson, A;
Clark, A;
Ramamoorthy, S;
Friston, K;
(2018)
The active inference approach to ecological perception: General information dynamics for natural and artificial embodied cognition.
Frontiers in Robotics and AI
, 5
, Article 21. 10.3389/frobt.2018.00021.
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Abstract
The emerging neurocomputational vision of humans as embodied, ecologically embedded, social agents-who shape and are shaped by their environment-offers a golden opportunity to revisit and revise ideas about the physical and information-theoretic underpinnings of life, mind, and consciousness itself. In particular, the active inference framework (AIF) makes it possible to bridge connections from computational neuroscience and robotics/AI to ecological psychology and phenomenology, revealing common underpinnings and overcoming key limitations. AIF opposes the mechanistic to the reductive, while staying fully grounded in a naturalistic and information-theoretic foundation, using the principle of free energy minimization. The latter provides a theoretical basis for a unified treatment of particles, organisms, and interactive machines, spanning from the inorganic to organic, non-life to life, and natural to artificial agents. We provide a brief introduction to AIF, then explore its implications for evolutionary theory, ecological psychology, embodied phenomenology, and robotics/AI research. We conclude the paper by considering implications for machine consciousness.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The active inference approach to ecological perception: General information dynamics for natural and artificial embodied cognition |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3389/frobt.2018.00021 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2018.00021 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright: © 2018 Linson, Clark, Ramamoorthy and Friston. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
| Keywords: | free energy, uncertainty, self-organization, embodiment, evolution, affordances, skilled expertise, frame problem |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Imaging Neuroscience |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10054069 |
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