Blankets, heat, and why free energy has not illuminated the workings of the brain

Abstract

What can we hope to learn about brains from the free energy principle? In adopting the "primordial soup" physical model, Bruineberg et al. perpetuate the unsupported notion that the free-energy principle has a meaningful physical - and neuronal - interpretation. We examine how minimization of free energy arises in physical contexts, and what this can and cannot tell us about brains.