From the free energy principle to a confederation of Bayesian mechanics. Reply to comments on "How particular is the physics of the free energy principle?"
Abstract
During the last couple of decades, the free energy principle (FEP) has emerged as an ambitious programme to develop a Bayesian account of the dynamics of self-organising systems. Within its broader goals, several technical theories have emerged-increasingly referred to as the study of Bayesian mechanics-aiming to describe a mathematical framework for systems that look like, or can be modelled as if, they are encoding probabilistic beliefs about their embedding environment. Our recent article [1] addressed one of these theories, in particular the Bayesian mechanics presented in [2,3], referred to as the approximate Bayesian inference lemma. We provided a technical deconstruction as well as a modelling exercise examining the assumption and mathematical steps of the theory. We believe the main contribution of our manuscript, besides its technical review, was to show the utility of grounding critical views in specific models and the necessity of modelling approaches for the future development of the FEP.
- Publication:
-
Physics of Life Reviews
- Pub Date:
- March 2023
- DOI:
- 10.1016/j.plrev.2023.01.018
- Bibcode:
- 2023PhLRv..44..270A