Active Inference Insights

Ronald Sladky ~ Active Inference Insights 012 ~ Amygdala, Priors, fMRI

Amygdala lovers unite: this one is for you. This week, Darius and neuroscientist Ronald Sladky explore the wonderful and wacky world of subcortical structures, with a special focus on the mysterious, infamous amygdala. This conversation also details developments in brain imaging, and attempts to bring clarity to that age-old active inference question: what are priors?

Julian Kiverstein ~ Active Inference Insights 011 ~ Affordances, Enaction, Phenomenology

This week’s Active Inference Insights is a rollercoaster of all things cognitive, brought to you by Darius and philosopher / neurophenomenologist Julian Kiverstein. Over three hours you can expect to learn about non-representational cognition, affordances, the irreducibility of phenomena, self-modelling, the extended mind, consciousness and so much more.

Lance Da Costa ~ Active Inference Insights 010 ~ Mathematics, Time, Selfhood

In this episode of Active Inference Insights, we welcome our first mathematician onto the show: Lance Da Costa. If you’re into Langevins, Fokker-Plancks, solenoidals and Fisher information metric tensors, this one is for you. However, if all that terrifies you to high heaven, don’t fret; Lance and Darius also explore eco-niche modelling, temporality, metacognition and far more in this deep dive into cutting-edge Active Inference theory.

Chris Frith ~ Active Inference Insights 009 ~ Mentalizing, Schizophrenia, Consciousness

This week, Darius is joined by a truly legendary figure in the world of neuropsychology: Chris Frith. In this conversation, Chris takes us through his seminal oeuvre , expounding the key insights he has made in the fields of social cognition, schizophrenia, consciousness, agency and selfhood.

Alexander Ororbia ~ Active Inference Insights 008 ~ Mortal Computation, Cybernetics, AI

With all the current excitement around the prospect of artificial general intelligence, it is easy to forget that there already exist exemplars of problem-solving and creativity all around us - namely, ourselves. With this in mind, join Darius and computer scientist Alexander Ororbia for a discussion of biomimicry and mortal computation, which centres on the viability of building artificial systems modelled on the evolved, intelligent life forms on this planet.

Vicente Raja & Jeff Beck ~ Active Inference Insights 007 ~ The Markov Blanket Trick Debate

In 2021, Raja et al. published ‘The Markov Blanket Trick’, which argued that “the FEP [Free Energy Principle] is not the general principle it is claimed to be, and that active inference is not the all-encompassing process theory it is purported to be either.” This led to a flurry of responses from within the active inference community, with commentaries published by Friston, Ramstead and Albarracin & Pitliya, amongst others. In this episode of Active Inference Insights, we unpick this controversial paper with the help of its primary author, Vicente Raja, and Jeff Beck, a computational neuroscientist studying probabilistic reasoning in humans and animals.

Adam Safron ~ Active Inference Insights 006 ~ Psychedelics, Emotions, The Body

Whether you’re into machine elves or body maps, this is the conversation for you. In this sixth episode of Active Inference Insights, Darius & Adam Safron roam the mysterious wonderlands of psychedelics, evolution, extended minds and much, much more.

Marilyn Stendera ~ Active Inference Insights 005 ~ Autopoiesis, Heidegger, Futurity

For its fifth episode, Active Inference Insights brings to you this conversation between Darius and philosopher of phenomenology, Marilyn Stendera. Expect to learn about the precariousness of existence, the critical importance of an ongoing futurity and the possibility of a mutually enriching dialogue between Heideggerian phenomenology and enactivism.

Inês Hipólito ~ Active Inference Insights 004 ~ Markov Blankets, Modularity, Enactivism

In this fourth episode of Active Inference Insights, Darius and Inês Hipólito delve into the murky waters of Markov blankets, exploring whether they are real or just an instrumental tool, how they impact on The Modularity of Mind theory, as well as the true meanings of “active” and “sensory” states. In addition to this, Inês presents a thorough account of the historical transition from computational to enactivist theories of cognition, before she and Darius try and shed light on the role of consciousness and representations in a mind that is putatively embodied, embedded, enactive and extended beyond the brain.

John Vervaeke ~ Active Inference Insights 003 ~ Relevance Realisation, Predictive Processing, Flow

The Active Inference Institute is absolutely thrilled to bring you this third episode of Active Inference Insights with our host, Darius Parvizi-Wayne, and his esteemed guest, John Vervaeke. John is a cognitive scientist at the University of Toronto and is a leading intellectual in the fields of intelligence, rationality and meaning in life. He is also the host of the extremely popular lecture series, Awakening From The Meaning Crisis, as well as After Socrates. In this episode, John and Darius work through the convergence points of relevance realisation and predictive processing, before moving onto the function of consciousness, flow states, the implications of radical enactivism, and much, much more.