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The Emperor Is Naked: Replies to commentaries on the target article
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 September 2022
Abstract
The 35 commentaries cover a wide range of topics and take many different stances on the issues explored by the target article. We have organised our response to the commentaries around three central questions: Are Friston blankets just Pearl blankets? What ontological and metaphysical commitments are implied by the use of Friston blankets? What kind of explanatory work are Friston blankets capable of? We conclude our reply with a short critical reflection on the indiscriminate use of both Markov blankets and the free energy principle.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press
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Target article
The Emperor's New Markov Blankets
Related commentaries (35)
A continuity of Markov blanket interpretations under the free-energy principle
Against free energy, for direct perception
Bayesian realism and structural representation
Blankets, heat, and why free energy has not illuminated the workings of the brain
Boundaries and borders gone! But life goes on
Causal surgery under a Markov blanket
Does the metaphysical dog wag its formal tail? The free-energy principle and philosophical debates about life, mind, and matter
Embracing sensorimotor history: Time-synchronous and time-unrolled Markov blankets in the free-energy principle
Enough blanket metaphysics, time for data-driven heuristics
Free-energy pragmatics: Markov blankets don't prescribe objective ontology, and that's okay
Good theoretical debate, but insufficient proof of concept
Life, mind, agency: Why Markov blankets fail the test of evolution
Making life and mind as clear as possible, but not clearer
Making reification concrete: A response to Bruineberg et al.
Maps and territories, smoke, and mirrors
Markov blankets and Bayesian territories
Markov blankets and the preformationist assumption
Markov blankets as boundary conditions: Sweeping dirt under the rug still cleans the house
Markov blankets do not demarcate the boundaries of the mind
Markov blankets: Realism and our ontological commitments
Nothing but a useful tool? (F)utility and the free-energy principle
Practical implications from distinguishing between Pearl blankets and Friston blankets
Recurrent, nonequilibrium systems and the Markov blanket assumption
Redressing the emperor in causal clothing
Return of the math: Markov blankets, dynamical systems theory, and the bounds of mind
Scientific realism about Friston blankets without literalism
Spatiotemporal constraints of causality: Blanket closure emerges from localized interactions between temporally separable subsystems
The emperor has no blanket!
The empire strikes back: Some responses to Bruineberg and colleagues
The map, the territory, and the cartographer: Linking the “pure” formal models to the “murky” material world
The seductive allure of cargo cult computationalism
There is no “inference within a model”
What realism about agents requires
What's special about space?
Who tailors the blanket?
Author response
The Emperor Is Naked: Replies to commentaries on the target article