Double book symposium

05/12/2026

12 May 2026

10 am (CEST) 

How Can I Join? By subscribing here

Join the Double Book symposium on "A Drive to Survive - The Free Energy Principle and the Meaning of Life" by Kate Nave (University of Edinburgh"The Self-Evidencing Agent - Mind, Existence and Predictive Processing" by Jakob Hohwy (Monash Centre for Consciousness & Contemplative Studies, M3CS).

Can the Free Energy Principle/Predictive Processing illuminate the sort of being we are? This symposium explores two important - and importantly different - ways to answer the question. Kate Nave's book offers a negative answer, grounded in the enactivist tradition. Hohwy's book offers a positive, internist and representationalist answer.

By placing Nave's and Hohwy's opposite account in critical conversation, this double book symposium explores the Free Energy Principle and the various, opposite ways in which it can be interpreted. It also sheds light on a number of foundational topics in cognitive science, including the nature of representation, the relevance of embodiment, the complex, tangly relation between our pragmatic and epistemic grip on the world, and the normativity - biological or epistemic - governing that grip. 

Share