From Denys deCatanzaro, Professor emeritus of psychology, neuroscience and behaviour, McMaster University, Canada
Neuroscience progresses through rigorous empirical measures of neural anatomy, circuitry and chemistry; studies of relationships to behaviour; and comparisons among species. Where is there added value from nebulous and simplistic abstractions such as Markov blankets and the free-energy principle(19 October, p 32)?
These ideas came primarily from philosophy rather than hard science. Their main proponent, Karl Friston, is quoted saying that “…all you can do with the free-energy principle is apply it. You… can’t falsify it, you can’t critique it”. So, essentially it isn’t testable.
