Psychophysical identity and free energy

Abstract

An approach to implementing variational Bayesian inference in biological systems is considered, under which the thermodynamic free energy of a system directly encodes its variational free energy. In the case of the brain, this assumption places constraints on the neuronal encoding of generative and recognition densities, in particular requiring a stochastic population code. The resulting relationship between thermodynamic and variational free energies is prefigured in mind-brain identity theses in philosophy and in the Gestalt hypothesis of psychophysical isomorphism.

arXiv comment22 pages; published as a research article on 8/5/2020 in Journal of the Royal Society Interface

References in corpus (4)

• Stochastic thermodynamics, fluctuation theorems, and molecular machines
• A free energy principle for a particular physics
• Semantic information, autonomous agency, and nonequilibrium statistical physics
• Universal Darwinism as a process of Bayesian inference

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