Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T05:56:06.630Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The seductive allure of cargo cult computationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2022

Micah Allen Open the ORCID record for Micah Allen [Opens in a new window]
Micah Allen*
Affiliation:
Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark micah@cfin.au.dk https://www.the-ecg.org/ Cambridge Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 8AH, UK
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Bruineberg and colleagues report a striking confusion, in which the formal Bayesian notion of a “Markov blanket” has been frequently misunderstood and misapplied to phenomena of mind and life. I argue that misappropriation of formal concepts is pervasive in the “predictive processing” literature, and echo Richard Feynman in suggesting how we might resist the allure of cargo cult computationalism.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 45 , 2022 , e185
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, M. (2018). The foundation: Mechanism, prediction, and falsification in Bayesian enactivism: Comment on “Answering Schrödinger's question: A free-energy formulation” by Maxwell James Désormeau Ramstead et al. Physics of Life Reviews, 24, 17–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2018.01.007CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, M., Levy, A., Parr, T., & Friston, K. J. (2019). In the body's eye: The computational anatomy of interoceptive inference. BioRxiv, 603928. https://doi.org/10.1101/603928Google Scholar
Allen, M., & Tsakiris, M. (2018). The body as first prior: Interoceptive predictive processing and the primacy. In Tsakiris, M., & De Preester, H. (Eds.), The interoceptive mind: From homeostasis to Awareness (p. 27). Oxford Univeristy Press.Google Scholar
Atzil, S., Gao, W., Fradkin, I., & Barrett, L. F. (2018). Growing a social brain. Nature Human Behaviour, 2(9), 624–636. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0384-6CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bruineberg, J., Rietveld, E., Parr, T., van Maanen, L., & Friston, K. J. (2018). Free-energy minimization in joint agent-environment systems: A niche construction perspective. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 455, 161–178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2018.07.002CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Calvo, P., & Friston, K. (2017). Predicting green: Really radical (plant) predictive processing. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 14(131), 20170096. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2017.0096CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Feynman, R. P. (1974). Cargo cult science. Engineering and Science, 37(7), 10–13.Google Scholar
Hesp, C., Smith, R., Parr, T., Allen, M., Friston, K. J., & Ramstead, M. J. D. (2021). Deeply felt affect: The emergence of valence in deep active inference. Neural Computation, 33(2), 398–446. https://doi.org/10.1162/neco_a_01341CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kirchhoff, M., Parr, T., Palacios, E., Friston, K., & Kiverstein, J. (2018). The Markov blankets of life: Autonomy, active inference and the free energy principle. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 15(138), 20170792. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2017.0792CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Palminteri, S., Wyart, V., & Koechlin, E. (2017). The importance of falsification in computational cognitive modeling. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21(6), 425–433. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2017.03.011CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Petzschner, F. H., Weber, L. A., Wellstein, K. V., Paolini, G., Do, C. T., & Stephan, K. E. (2019). Focus of attention modulates the heartbeat evoked potential. NeuroImage, 186, 595–606. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.11.037CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ramstead, M. J. D., Badcock, P. B., & Friston, K. J. (2018). Answering Schrödinger's question: A free-energy formulation. Physics of Life Reviews, 24, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2017.09.001CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Veissière, S. P. L., Constant, A., Ramstead, M. J. D., Friston, K. J., & Kirmayer, L. J. (2019). Thinking through other minds: A variational approach to cognition and culture. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 43, e90. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X19001213CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wilson, R. C., & Collins, A. G. (2019). Ten simple rules for the computational modeling of behavioral data. ELife, 8, e49547. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.49547CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed