The Hidden Spring- Chapter 7, The Free Energy Principle

Question 1

What is the fundamental task of all self-organising systems?

How does Karl Friston believe this happens?

Answer 1

To keep existing

By minimizing our free energy

Question 2

What must the body do in order to remain within its appropriate biological bounds?

How do we become aware that we have stepped beyond our bounds?

Answer 2

It must perform work in order to keep things within healthy homeostatic ranges

A feeling is generated

Question 3

To stay within our biological bounds we have a homeostat. A homeostat (or any homeostatic system) consists of 3 components. What are they and what do they do?

Answer 3

Receptor- takes the measurement-MEASURE

Control centre- Determines how to stay within needed bounds-PLAN

Effector- performs the work to stay in bounds- ACT

Question 4

What is entropy and what is its relationship with homeostasis?

Answer 4

Intuitive definition- Entropy is the natural tendency for something to head towards chaos, or disorganization.

Homeostasis has a counter relationship with entropy, in that it resists entropy to avoid biological chaos. Humans resist entrophy through the mechanism of homeostasis

Question 5

How are entropy and energy related, and how does this affect a system’s ability to perform work?

Answer 5

As useful energy decreases (as it is lost when work is performed) within a system, it’s entropy increases.

Entropy is related to a loss of useful energy, and because energy is required to stay within biological bounds of homeostasis, a lack of it will send the system towards disorder

Question 6

What is the relationship between the number of states and level of entropy within a system?

Answer 6

The fewer the possible states within a system, the lower the entropy.

Question 7

What influence does entropy have on biological systems and how does this affect our biological system’s functions?

Answer 7

If entropy occurs, then its reflecting a biological systems inability to maintain homeostasis, which means survival has now been threatened.

This means our biological systems basic function is to avoid entropy.

Question 8

How does entropy influence predictability in a system?

Answer 8

The more entropy, the more chaos present, therefore predictability will decrease

Question 9

What is the relationship between entropy, information and probability within a system?

Answer 9

The more information required to describe the state of a system, the greater the entropy. If the probability of something is high, then its entropy will be low because there is greater certainty. However, if the probability is low, then greater entropy exists because of increased uncertainty.

Question 10

What is the relationship between entropy, arousal and information patterns in the body?

Since our biology prefers less entropy, does that mean a certain state is preferred over others? Does this make sense?

Answer 10

Low arousal patterns will yield less INFORMATION and more predictability than high arousal patterns, therefore entropy is associated with higher arousal which is less preferred for our biological systems

Since entropy is lower in lower arousal, then we’d conclude that vegetative states were better for our biology. However, this doesn’t make sense since humans need to be conscious in order to maintain their chances of survival

Question 11

How do humans experience information transmission between themselves and another entity?

Answer 11

Information is received by an observer from an information source. An example would be the nervous system of humans receiving sensory information from what we experience in the world. The sensory responses one experiences gives light to incoming information one receives from another source of information (the environment in this example)

Question 12

For a humans homeostatic system, how does our biology ask “questions” to receive the necessary information and why does it do so?

Answer 12

Our biology “asks questions” to receive information from the environment by TAKING MEASUREMENTS of our biological states in response to unfolding events. The more information we have to process, the more uncertainty, and the greater the entropy and loss of homeostasis

Question 13

How does each species vary in its information seeking from its environment?

Answer 13

Natural selection produced different homeostatic needs for all species and so what is sought will occur through the lense of one’s evolutionary niche.

Ex- a human will not stay under water because they cannot breathe there, however a shark will.

Question 14

As information is received, how does a species determine whether or not it will contribute to the goal it’s seeking?

Answer 14

The feedback from the consequences of the action will indicate whether a species has travelled outside of healthy reference ranges, and therefore indicate threat to its survival. This will either encourage or discourage similar behaviors in the future.

Question 15

What do complex dynamical systems evolve towards in order to develop healthy self-organization?

Answer 15

Towards a settling point WITHIN OTHER SURROUNDING STATES where it can occupy limited states, and reduce uncertainty aka resist entropy

Question 16

As limited states are sought and entropy is avoided, what is the effect on self-organizing capabilities, according to Friston?

Answer 16

According to Friston, the tendency to avoid entropy TRIGGERS MORE ELABORATE FORMS OF SELF ORGANIZATION

One is not simply self organized or not, there are degrees of sophistication when it comes to self organization

Question 17

Within complex systems, self organization allows for multiple states to be held without them influencing one another directly. What is the phenomenon that describes this capacity and describe how it works.

Answer 17

The phenomenon is Markov’s blanket.

Markov’s blanket allows for 2 states to exist in a system independent of one another. A self organizing system with Markov’s blanket consists of an external and internal state, where the internal state is insulated away from the external state.

Example- The state of an external milieu influences the state of the outer sublayer, which influences the state of the inner core. Although the external milieu affects the inner core, the outer sublayer (Markov’s blanket) prevents the inner core from reciprocally affecting the environmental milieu.

Likewise, the state of the inner core will influence the inner sublayer, which influences the state of the environmental milieu. Although the inner core affects the environmental milieu, the environmental milieu cannot affect the inner core directly.

Question 18

In humans, if Markov’s blanket allows the internal and external states to remain separate from one another, then how do each know what is going on with the other?

Answer 18

The state of the blanket allows the internal states to sense the state of the external. Therefore the inner core can remain informed without actually interaction with the external.

Question 19

Markov’s blanket allows for 4 types of states to exist within a self organized system. What are they and what kind of relationship exists between them?

What cycle does this reflect in human organisms?

Answer 19

Internal, active, external, sensory

These 4 types of states establish a CIRCULAR CAUSALITY between them where the external states influence the internal ones through the sensory state of the blanket, while the internal states couple back to the external through their activity in response to the sensory changes

In other words, the sensory states communicate the external states, as they respond to the internal activity.

This reflects the perception action cycle that occurs in humans

Question 20

How does the notion of Markov’s blanket apply to the human organism?

Answer 20

Markov’s blankets are everywhere in the body, given it allows more sophisticated levels of self organization across multiple systems. The constant environmental feedback in response to the inner activity reflects what the author calls “homeostats” wrapped in their Markov’s blankets, and this allows the circular feedback to continue enhancing chances of survival for the organism

Question 21

How does a Markov’s blanket allow the human organism to interpret itself?

What relevance does this have to psychoanalysis?

Answer 21

By closing off actual environmental events by having a blanket, the organism registers its selfhood through its own states absent of external inputs. It comes to know itself BY BLOCKING EVERYTHING ELSE OUT, AND IT LEARNS OF EXTERNAL STATES THROUGH CHANGES IN INCOMING SENSORY INFORMATION

Solms believes that these properties of self organization are the PRECONDITIONS TO SUBJECTIVITY

Question 22

The self organization of the system allows the internal states to remain hidden from the external states and vice versa. Overtime, what kind of changes might this produce in the internal behavior of the self?

Answer 22

The internal states become organized according to what external events take place, so much so that they become predictive of what will happen in the external states in the future. This led to the understanding that the internal organization of self organizing systems ALLOWS ONE TO INFER WHAT IS GOING IN THE EXTERNAL SYSTEMS

EX- One can know which direction wind blows in and how it affects the internal dynamics of the tree by observing what direction the tree is leaning in. The state of the tree (it’s lean) indicates what occurred in its environment

Question 23

What did Friston find regarding internal anticipation of external events?

What was unique about this event?

Answer 23

Friston found that overtime the the internal states became PREDICTIVE of external states according to the state of the Markov’s blanket and overtime they began initiating state change even prior to external events beginning. The state of the blanket allows the internal state to model probability of whats occurring in the external events e

The unique thing about this was the internal prediction was most accurate to those things THAT WERE MOST DISTANT from the internal state