In the 22nd episode of Active Inference Insights, philosopher of mind and cognitive scientist Krys Dolega and Darius discuss the life and work of the late, great Daniel Dennett, before moving onto the role of attention in our mental lives and its relationship to phenomenal experience. In the final part of this podcast, Krys and Darius unpick the somewhat controversial The Emperor’s New Markov Blankets paper, focussing on the extent to which the free energy principle and active inference can provide deep insights into the nature of reality.

Professor Thomas Metzinger might be the important philosopher of mind alive today. In this episode of Active Inference Insights, he and Darius dive headfirst into the murky, muddy waters of self-models, intentionality relations, consciousness metaphysics, phenomenology, and, last but not least, the question of whether there can be such a thing as a pure awareness state. This last question is the central topic of Professor Metzinger’s new book, The Elephant and the Blind.

There is no better person to outline the fundamental philosophical implications of the Free Energy Principle than today’s guest: Kathryn Nave. Tune in to hear about Kathryn’s new book on active inference, as well as her conceptions of agency, the self, interiority, exteriority and much more. She and Darius also discuss visual phenomenology and why percepts can be ultimately described as intermediary.

It’s all well and good being able to capture the intelligence and behaviour of a single agent, but what about collectives of them? Is that even possible and, if so, what do those models tell us not only about the individuals that belong to that group, but also the dynamic that emerges over and above their respective contributions? To answer those questions and many more, Active Inference Insights welcomes Conor Heins, Senior ML Research Engineer at Verses AI Research Lab and PhD student at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour, to the show.

If you’ve ever felt stuck in your active inference journey, this is the podcast for you. Join Darius and the textbook-writing, Bayesian-educating, free-energy principle aficionado Sanjeev Namjoshi for a discussion of how active inference might best be taught, how it relates to Darwin’s theory of evolution, and how we can learn about the world in the first place.

It’s more consciousness-talk on today’s episode of Active Inference Insights, as Darius discusses affective states, dreams, interoception and much more with psychoanalyst and neuropsychologist Professor Mark Solms.

You may, at some point during this episode, find yourself self-modelling about your self-model’s ability to model itself in a self-modelled way. If so, sorry. Today’s episode is, indeed, all about selfhood, as well as other phenomenal states, such as the minimal phenomenal experience and AI awareness, as Darius is joined by philosopher and cognitive scientist, Wanja Wiese.

Today’s episode is a voyage into space. Well, morph-space. Tune in to learn about morphogenesis, cellular teleonomy and planaria from groundbreaking biologists Michael Levin and Franz Kuchling. Together with Darius, they also explore fundamental questions of selfhood and autonomy, all from a biological perspective.