No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Boundaries and borders gone! But life goes on
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 September 2022
Abstract
Unlike machines, living systems are distinguished by the continual destruction and regeneration of their boundaries and other components. Stable Markov blankets may be a real feature of the world, or they may be merely a construction of particular models, but they are neither a feature of organisms nor of any model that can capture the necessary conditions of their existence.
- Type
- Open Peer Commentary
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
Aguado-Velasco, C., & Bretscher, M. S. (1999). Circulation of the plasma membrane in Dictyostelium. Molecular Biology of the Cell, 10(12), 4419–4427.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Allen, M., & Friston, K. J. (2018). From cognitivism to autopoiesis: Towards a computational framework for the embodied mind. Synthese, 195(6), 2459–2482.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Friston, K. (2013). Life as we know it. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 10(86), 20130475.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friston, K. (2019). Beyond the desert landscape. In Colombo, M., Irvine, E., & Stapleton, M. (Eds.), Andy Clark and his critics (pp. 174–190). Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Montévil, M., & Mossio, M. (2015). Biological organisation as closure of constraints. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 372, 179–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicholson, D. J. (2018). Reconceptualizing the organism: From complex machine to flowing stream. In Nicholson, D. J. & Dupré, J (Eds.), Everything flows: Towards a processual philosophy of biology (pp. 139–166). Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Papineau, D. (1992). Can we reduce causal direction to probabilities? In Woody, A. (Ed.), PSA: Proceedings of the biennial meeting of the philosophy of science association (Vol. 1992, No. 2, pp. 238–252). Philosophy of Science Association.Google Scholar
Toyama, B. H., & Hetzer, M. W. (2013). Protein homeostasis: Live long, won't prosper. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, 14(1), 55–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weslake, B. (2006). Common causes and the direction of causation. Minds and Machines, 16(3), 239–257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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