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- Title
Keeping it Real: Research Program Physicalism and the Free Energy Principle.
- Authors
Elpidorou, Andreas; Dove, Guy
- Abstract
The Free Energy Principle (FEP) states that all biological self-organizing systems must minimize variational free energy. The acceptance of this principle has given rise to a popular and far-reaching theoretical and empirical approach to the study of the brain and living organisms. Despite the popularity of the FEP approach, little discussion has ensued about its ontological status and implications. By understanding physicalism as an interdisciplinary research program that aims to offer compositional explanations of mental phenomena, this paper articulates what it would mean for the FEP approach to be part of research program physicalism and to corroborate a physicalist outlook. In doing so, this paper contributes both to philosophical discussions regarding the FEP approach and to the literature on physicalism. It does the former by explicating the metaphysical standing of the FEP approach. It does the latter by showing how cutting-edge research in the empirical sciences of the mind can inform our attitudes regarding physicalism.
- Subjects
MATERIALISM; SELF-organizing systems; BIOLOGICAL systems; PHILOSOPHICAL literature; INTERDISCIPLINARY research
- Publication
Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy, 2023, Vol 42, Issue 3, p733
- ISSN
0167-7411
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s11245-022-09852-8