How to Knit Your Own Markov Blanket:

Abstract

Howhy (Hohwy 2016, Hohwy 2017) argues there is a tension between the free energy principle and leading depictions of mind as embodied, enactive, and extended (so-called ‘EEE cognition’). The tension is traced to the importance, in free energy formulations, of a conception of mind and agency that depends upon the presence of a ‘Markov blanket’ Andrey Markov demarcating the agent from the surrounding world. In what follows I show that the Markov blanket considerations do not, in fact, lead to the kinds of tension that Howhy depicts. On the contrary, they actively favour the EEE story. This is because the Markov property, as exemplified in biological agents, picks out neither a unique nor a stationary boundary. It is this multiplicity and mutability– rather than the absence of agent-environment boundaries as such - that EEE cognition celebrates.