The way you’re talking here seems to suggest that FEP is making more specific predictions than that, e.g. you seem to be implying that there’s such a thing as an “Active Inference agent” that is different from an RL agent (I think?), which would mean that you are sneaking in additional hypotheses beyond FEP itself, right? If so, what are those hypotheses? Or sorry if I’m misunderstanding.
Yes, this is right. FEP != Active Inference. I deal with this at length in another comment. Two additional assumptions are: 1) the agent “holds” (in some sense, whether representationalist or enactivist is less important here) beliefs about the future, whereas in FEP, the system only holds beliefs about the present. 2) The agent selects action so as to minimise expected free energy (EFE) wrt. these beliefs about the future. (Action selection, or decision making, is entirely absent in the FEP, which is simply a dynamicist “background” for Active Inference, which simply explains what these beliefs in Active Inference are; when you start talking about action selection or decision making, you imply causal symmetry breaking)
Can you give a concrete example of a thing that has homeostasis / bodily integrity / etc. (and therefore FEP applies to it), but for which it is incorrect (not just unhelpful but actually technically incorrect) to call this thing an Active Inference agent?
(I would have guessed that “a room with a mechanical thermostat & space heater” would be an example of that, i.e. a thing for which FEP applies but which is NOT an Active Inference agent. But nope! Your other comment says that “a room with a mechanical thermostat & space heater” is in fact an Active Inference agent.)
Yes, this is right. FEP != Active Inference. I deal with this at length in another comment. Two additional assumptions are: 1) the agent “holds” (in some sense, whether representationalist or enactivist is less important here) beliefs about the future, whereas in FEP, the system only holds beliefs about the present. 2) The agent selects action so as to minimise expected free energy (EFE) wrt. these beliefs about the future. (Action selection, or decision making, is entirely absent in the FEP, which is simply a dynamicist “background” for Active Inference, which simply explains what these beliefs in Active Inference are; when you start talking about action selection or decision making, you imply causal symmetry breaking)
Can you give a concrete example of a thing that has homeostasis / bodily integrity / etc. (and therefore FEP applies to it), but for which it is incorrect (not just unhelpful but actually technically incorrect) to call this thing an Active Inference agent?
(I would have guessed that “a room with a mechanical thermostat & space heater” would be an example of that, i.e. a thing for which FEP applies but which is NOT an Active Inference agent. But nope! Your other comment says that “a room with a mechanical thermostat & space heater” is in fact an Active Inference agent.)