[CTN] Talk of potential interest - Maxwell Ramstead (McGill) - Monday 12-1 CPH 4335

[Bryan Tripp]

Hi everyone,

I've been asked to pass on the following talk announcement.

Regards,
Bryan

The speaker is Dr. Maxwell Ramstead from McGill University. His talk will
be on 21st of October 12pm-1pm in the department of Management Sciences
Room Number: CPH 4335

Abstract: Active inference across scales: From the brain to the body and
culture

The active inference framework explains a deeply puzzling characteristic of
living systems, that they resist the natural tendency towards dissipation;
namely, the entropic decay that is dictated by the second law of
thermodynamics. Living systems manage to maintain themselves in a limited
number of states, i.e., their phenotypical states. How do organisms
accomplish this incredible feat? What does it mean to be alive? How are
they integrated across the scales at which the exist – from subcellular
processes and neural networks, to embodied action and culture? In the
active inference framework, the actions and bodies of organisms encode
expectations (or Bayesian beliefs) about the world, and act to make those
expectations come true. In this presentation, we will examine the central
mathematical construct behind active inference: the Markov blanket. The
Markov blanket formalism answers questions usually left to philosophers:
namely, What counts as a system? and What does it mean to exist at all? The
answer provided by Markov blankets is surprisingly simple, but has profound
implications. A Markov blanket is a set of states that separates a given
system from the outside world, in a statistical sense. Markov blankets can
themselves be made of Markov blankets, producing a recursively nested
structure of “blankets of blankets,” all the way up, and all the way down –
and providing an integrative model of cognition and interaction across
scales. Our multiscale formulation of active inference allows us to study
the adaptive behaviour of dynamical systems of systems, from neural
mechanics to cultural niche construction.

Maxwell's biography:
I passed my oral doctoral defense at McGill University (Montreal, Canada)
on June 18th 2019. I am affiliated with the Jewish General Hospital in
Montreal (as the Douglas Utting Postdoctoral Fellow, starting officially in
the Fall 2019), the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at
McGill, and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging of University
College London. I have completed my B.A. in Philosophy at Université de
Montréal, my M.A. in Philosophy (specialized in Cognitive Science) at
Université du Québec à Montréal, and my Ph.D. in Philosophy at McGill. My
research explores social-cultural and computational approaches to
depression, as well active inference and multiscale explanation in
psychiatry, cognitive sciences, and computational neurosciences. I am
grateful that my Ph.D. research project, entitled Have We Lost Our Minds?,
was supported by the Healthy Brains for Healthy Lives initiative at McGill
and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Postdoctoral mentors: Laurence Kirmayer (McGill University) and Karl
Friston (University College London)
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