Active ignorance (or: the negintelligible): avoiding epistemic pitfalls in the image of Active Inference

Description

This presentation will be a conversation between Mahault Albarracin’s paper “Bridging Cognitive Processing and Social Dynamics: A New Perspective on Power through Active Inference” and Sonia de Jager’s “Active ignorance (or: the negintelligible: avoiding epistemic pitfalls in the image of Active Inference”. Albarracin will explore the concept of power dynamics within the framework of active inference, proposing that the acquisition and maintenance of power is intertwined with both social interactions and cognitive processing capacity, proposing that individuals wield power not only by associating with others possessing desirable policies, but also by enhancing their ability to intake and compute information effectively. De Jager will relate these notions to the concept of “active ignorance” (de Jager, Clavel & Wilkins 2023), a proposal for updating the Kantian image of mind in ActInf on the basis of post-Kantian philosophies. The implications of this will be further explored through the concept of the negintelligible (de Jager 2021): the ways in which the mind can be interpreted as working ‘against’ itself, particularly as it deals with incompleteness and intractability. The format of the presentation will be that of a conversation between the authors.

Period	13 Nov 2024
Event title	Active Inference 2024 Symposium
Event type	Conference
Degree of Recognition	International