ReviewPhysics of life reviews2019
Variational ecology and the physics of sentient systems.
Review in Physics of life reviews, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 37 papers.
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Who cites it
37 citing papers in PubMed.
- Heuristically Adaptive Diffusion-Model Evolutionary Strategy.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Mind Everywhere: A Framework for Conceptualizing Goal-Directedness in Biology and Other Domains-Part One.Biological theory · 2026Article
- Life, its origin, and its distribution: a perspective from the Conway-Kochen Theorem and the Free Energy Principle.Communicative & integrative biology · 2025Review
- Flow and intuition: a systems neuroscience comparison.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2025Article
- A computational approach to selective attention in embodied approaches to cognitive archaeology.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Review
- Active Inference in Psychology and Psychiatry: Progress to Date?Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Forced Friends: Why the Free Energy Principle Is Not the New Hamilton's Principle.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Feasibility of a Personal Neuromorphic Emulation.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Making the Thermodynamic Cost of Active Inference Explicit.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Self-Improvising Memory: A Perspective on Memories as Agential, Dynamically Reinterpreting Cognitive Glue.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Collective intelligence: A unifying concept for integrating biology across scales and substrates.Communications biology · 2024Review
- Future medicine: from molecular pathways to the collective intelligence of the body.Trends in molecular medicine · 2023Review
- On Bayesian mechanics: a physics of and by beliefs.Interface focus · 2023Article
- Darwin's agential materials: evolutionary implications of multiscale competency in developmental biology.Cellular and molecular life sciences : CMLS · 2023Review
- A self-sustaining serpentinization mega-engine feeds the fougerite nanoengines implicated in the emergence of guided metabolism.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- The osteopath-parent-child triad in osteopathic care in the first 2 years of life: a qualitative study.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Competency in Navigating Arbitrary Spaces as an Invariant for Analyzing Cognition in Diverse Embodiments.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- An Enactive-Ecological Model to Guide Patient-Centered Osteopathic Care.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Extended active inference: Constructing predictive cognition beyond skulls.Mind & language · 2022Article
- Osteopathic Care as (En)active Inference: A Theoretical Framework for Developing an Integrative Hypothesis in Osteopathy.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
This paper addresses the challenges faced by multiscale formulations of the variational (free energy) approach to dynamics that obtain for large-scale ensembles. We review a framework for modelling complex adaptive control systems for multiscale free energy bounding organism-niche dynamics, thereby integrating the modelling strategies and heuristics of variational neuroethology with a broader perspective on the ecological nestedness of biotic systems. We extend the multiscale variational formulation beyond the action-perception loops of individual organisms by appealing to the variational approach to niche construction to explain the dynamics of coupled systems constituted by organisms and their ecological niche. We suggest that the statistical robustness of living systems is inherited, in part, from their eco-niches, as niches help coordinate dynamical patterns across larger spatiotemporal scales. We call this approach variational ecology. We argue that, when applied to cultural animals such as humans, variational ecology enables us to formulate not just a physics of individual minds, but also a physics of interacting minds across spatial and temporal scales - a physics of sentient systems that range from cells to societies.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.