Stability Before Structure: Active Memory Engineering as a Methodological Constraint on Theories of Mind
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) March 15, 2026 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19040260 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that contemporary theories of mind, including functionalism, Predictive Processing, Integrated Information Theory, and enactivism, share a blind spot called the "Thermodynamic Insulation Fallacy": they treat a methodological convenience as an ontological assumption and fail to specify the physical conditions under which a cognitive system can persist. Proposes "Active Memory Engineering" as a meta-methodological criterion requiring theories to first explain how systems remain dynamically available through coupling with environmental memory. |
Abstract
Stability Before Structure: Active Memory Engineering as a Methodological Constraint on Theories of Mind Philip Rey, 2025 Every theory of mind begins one step too late. This paper introduces Active Memory Engineering (AME) as a meta-methodological criterion that contemporary theories of mind — from functionalism and Predictive Processing to Integrated Information Theory and enactivism — have collectively failed to satisfy. Before a theory can describe the structure of mind, it must answer a prior question: under what physical conditions can a cognitive system remain dynamically available long enough for its mental properties to exist at all? The answer is not trivial. Real cognitive systems are open, dissipative, and embedded in non-Markovian environments. Stability is not given. It is achieved — through phase-aligned coupling with structured environmental memory, active reconstruction of temporal correlations, and trajectory-level control. A system that loses its lock on environmental memory is not a system in need of a better theory. It is a system that has already ceased to exist. AME does not propose a new theory of consciousness. It proposes a physical audit of whether existing theories describe systems that can persist at all. The paper identifies what it calls the Thermodynamic Insulation Fallacy — the systematic elevation of a methodological convenience into an ontological assumption — as the shared blind spot of all major frameworks in contemporary philosophy of mind. Drawing on Barbara Vetter's recent work on approaches to metaphysical modality, the paper argues that AME plays an analogous role for cognitive theory: it specifies the manifestation conditions for the very capacities that theories of mind presuppose. If Vetter asks what can be, AME asks how what can be can endure long enough to be realized. The paper is simultaneously a philosophical argument, a physical framework, and the theoretical foundation of an empirical research programme currently in preparation. Stability comes before structure.