The Free Energy Principle:  
Science, Tech & Philosophy 
​Conference 

17th February 2022
(online)

The Free Energy Principle has been influential in many areas with special emphasis on neurobiology, computational neuroscience and philosophy of mind. 

In philosophy of mind, philosophers - ranging from strong representationalism (Sims and Pezzulo, 2021; Hohwy, 2020; Hohwy and Seth, 2020), to embodied and enactive cognitive science (Bruineberg, Kiverstein and Rietveld, 2018; Kirchhoff et al. 2018; Kiverstein and Sims, 2021; Gallagher and Allen, 2018; Linson et al. 2018) - devote their thinking to the FEP.

While some philosophers are confident of claiming that the FEP has the potential to solve old debates in philosophy of mind, such as the representational wars, computationalism vs dynamicism (Constant, Clark and Friston, 2021) as well as the externalism vs internalism debates (Allen and Friston, 2018); others question its genuine value for philosophy of mind (Di Paolo, Thompson and Beer, 2021; Raja et al., 2021; Williams, 2021; Hutto, 2020), philosophy of science (Colombo and Wright, 2021; Colombo and Palacios, 2021) or even to explain complex systems (Aguilera et al. 2021). It has also been argued that while the FEP is good science, it implies questionable philosophy (Sánchez-Cañizares, 2021). 
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In neuroscience, the FEP is defended as a unified brain theory (Friston, 2010; Friston, Da Costa and Parr, 2021; Parr, Pezzulo and Friston, 2022). Computational models using active inference formalism to explain neurocognitive activity (Friston and Frith, 2015; Barrett, 2017; Friston, Parr and de Vries, 2017; Sajid et al. 2020; Parr et al. 2020; Friston et al. 2021; Hipólito et al. 2021) neuroimaging studies (Limongi et al. 2020; Zarghami and Friston, 2020; Whyte and Smith, 2021) and inform programming adaptive artificial agents (Lanillos and van Gerven, 2021; Oliver, Lanillos and Cheng, 2021; Linson et al. 2018).
 
FEP and its corollary, active inference, break up with modular accounts of neural activity (Friston et al., 2021; Hipólito et al., 2021; Hipólito and Kirchhoff, 2019; Razi and Friston, 2016) consistent with evidence for the dynamic interaction between distinct brain areas (Haynes, 2012). It claims to explain, under the same formalism, cognitive activity from perception and action (Hipólito et al. 2021; Buckley et al. 2017), learning (Friston et al. 2021; Ofner and Stober, 2020; Tschantz et al. 2020), to emotion and affection (Hesp et al. 2021; Smith et al. 2019; Barrett, 2017; Joffily and Coricelli, 2013).

This conference aims to bring philosophers and scientists together in a round table to critically engage and fruitfully discuss the most recent advances of the Free Energy Principle, both its contribution to neuroscience and philosophy of mind.