Of Rats and Men III: A Pragmatist Reconstruction of Advanced Agency via the Active Inference

Zbigniew Słuszkiewicz

doi:10.31261/ZOOPHILOLOGICA.2025.15.15

Published: 2025-06-30

Vol. 15 No. 1 (2025)

Of Rats and Men III: A Pragmatist Reconstruction of Advanced Agency via the Active Inference

Zbigniew Słuszkiewicz

Section: ARTICLES

https://doi.org/10.31261/ZOOPHILOLOGICA.2025.15.15

Abstract

The final part of the triptych (Of Rats and Men) synthesises the entire series, which aims to (1) challenge selected foundational assumptions of traditional philosophical discourse on human and nonhuman minds, (2) demonstrate how the tools of “the pragmatic turn” can deepen our understanding of animal agency, and (3) provide a posteriori support for gradualist categories of moral agency, such as Mark Rowlands’s concept of “the moral subject.” We pursue these goals by exploring the characteristic features of an advanced form of agency. Building on the themes introduced in Of Rats and Men II, we employ the theory of active inference (AIN) to determine how the processes of counterfactual inferencing and self-evidencing foster its emergence. In this context, Jakob Hohwy’s theoretical analysis is juxtaposed with experimental results on rodents, suggesting that the capacity for experiencing self-evidencing at a psychophysical level falls within the scope of the sense of agency (SoA) and may extend beyond our species.
To investigate this phenomenon, we propose an AIN-based interpretation of Antonella Tramacere and Colin Allen’s “temporal binding” experiment. Finally, we position the concept of rats as beings capable of achieving a cognitively sophisticated level of agency within Michael Levin’s “cognitive light cones” framework to illustrate its ontological coherence.

Keywords:

active inference , self-evidencing , sense of agency , moral subject , rats

Download files

VARIA / Artykuł

Citation rules

Słuszkiewicz, Z. (2025). Of Rats and Men III: A Pragmatist Reconstruction of Advanced Agency via the Active Inference. Zoophilologica. Polish Journal of Animal Studies, 15(1), 1–43. https://doi.org/10.31261/ZOOPHILOLOGICA.2025.15.15

Cited by / Share

Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The Copyright Owners of the submitted texts grant the Reader the right to use the pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative Commons 4.0 International License: Attribution-Share-Alike (CC BY-SA). The user can copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose.

1. License

The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

2. Author’s Warranties

The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.

If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International".

ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).

3. User Rights

Under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

4. Co-Authorship

If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.

I hereby declare that in the event of withdrawal of the text from the publishing process or submitting it to another publisher without agreement from the editorial office, I agree to cover all costs incurred by the University of Silesia in connection with my application.

References

Abram, Samantha V., Yannick-André Breton, Brandy Schmidt, A. David Redish, and Angus W. MacDonald. “The Web-Surf Task: A Translational Model of Human Decision-Making.” Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, vol. 16, no. 1 (February 1, 2016): 37–50. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-015-0379-y.
Google Scholar

Abram, Samantha V., Michael Hanke, A. David Redish, and Angus W. MacDonald. “Neural Signatures Underlying Deliberation in Human Foraging Decisions.” Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, vol. 19, no. 6 (December 1, 2019): 1492–1508. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-019-00733-z.
Google Scholar

Allen, Colin. “Umwelt or Umwelten? How Should Shared Representation Be Understood Given Such Diversity?” Semiotica 2014, no. 198 (February 1, 2014): 137–158. https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2013-0105.
Google Scholar

Ball, Gregory F., and Jacques Balthazart. “Evolutionary Neuroscience: Are the Brains of Birds and Mammals Really so Different?” Current Biology, vol. 31, no. 13 (2021): R840–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.05.004.
Google Scholar

Ball, Philip. The Book of Minds: Understanding Ourselves and Other Beings, from Animals to Aliens. London: Picador, 2023.
Google Scholar

Ball, Philip. How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology. London: Picador, 2024.
Google Scholar

Barrett, Lisa Feldman. “The Theory of Constructed Emotion: An Active Inference Account of Interoception and Categorization.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, vol. 12, no. 1 (January 1, 2017): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsw154.
Google Scholar

Barsalou, Lawrence W. “Can Cognition Be Reduced to Action?” In The Pragmatic Turn: Toward Action-Oriented Views in Cognitive Science, edited by Andreas K. Engel, Karl J. Friston, and Danica Kragic, 81–96. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2016.
Google Scholar

Barsalou, Lawrence W. “Continuity of the Conceptual System across Species.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 9, no. 7 (2005): 309–311. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2005.05.003.
Google Scholar

Barsalou, Lawrence W. “Grounded Cognition.” Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 59 (2008): 617–645. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.59.103006.093639.
Google Scholar

Barsalou, Lawrence W. “Simulation, Situated Conceptualization, and Prediction.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 364, no. 1521 (May 12, 2009): 1281–1289. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0319.
Google Scholar

Ben-Ami Bartal, Inbal. “The Complex Affective and Cognitive Capacities of Rats.” Science, vol. 385, no. 6715 (September 20, 2024): 1298–1305. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adq6217.
Google Scholar

Beran, Michael. Self-Control in Animals and People. First edition. London: Academic Press, 2018.
Google Scholar

Blaisdell, Aaron P., Kosuke Sawa, Kenneth J. Leising, and Michael R. Waldmann. “Causal Reasoning in Rats.” Science, vol. 311, no. 5763 (February 17, 2006): 1020–1022. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1121872.
Google Scholar

Brentano, Franz. Psychologia z Empirycznego Punktu Widzenia. Translated by Włodzimierz Galewicz. Warszawa: PWN, 1874.
Google Scholar

Bruineberg, Jelle. “Active Inference and the Primacy of the ‘I Can’,” edited by Thomas Metzinger and Wanja Wiese. Philosophy and Predictive Processing, vol. 5 (2017): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.155027/9783958573062.
Google Scholar

Casarrubea, Maurizio, Manfredi Palacino, Anna Brancato, Gianluca Lavanco, Carla Cannizzaro, and Giuseppe Crescimanno. “Detection of a Temporal Structure in the Rat Behavioural Response to an Aversive Stimulation in the Emotional Object Recognition (EOR) Task.” Physiology & Behavior, vol. 238 (September 2021): 113481. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2021.113481.
Google Scholar

Chaudhry, Tuba Shahid, Sidhartha Gautam Senapati, Srikanth Gadam, Hari Priya Sri Sai Mannam, Hima Varsha Voruganti, Zainab Abbasi, Tushar Abhinav, et al. “The Impact of Microbiota on the Gut–Brain Axis: Examining the Complex Interplay and Implications.” Journal of Clinical Medicine, vol. 12, no. 16 (2023): 5231. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm12165231.
Google Scholar

Churchland, Patricia S. Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition. First edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019.
Google Scholar

Clark, Andy. The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality. New York: Pantheon, 2023.
Google Scholar

Cole, Nicholas, Matthew Harvey, Dylan Myers-Joseph, Aditya Gilra, and Adil G. Khan. “Prediction-Error Signals in Anterior Cingulate Cortex Drive Task-Switching.” Nature Communications, vol. 15, no. 1 (August 17, 2024): 7088. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-51368-9.
Google Scholar

Corcoran, Andrew W, and Jakob Hohwy. “Allostasis, Interoception, and the Free Energy Principle: Feeling Our Way Forward.” In The Interoceptive Mind: From Homeostasis to Awareness, edited by Manos Tsakiris and Helena De Preester, 272–292. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Google Scholar

Corcoran, Andrew W., Giovanni Pezzulo, and Jakob Hohwy. “From Allostatic Agents to Counterfactual Cognisers: Active Inference, Biological Regulation, and the Origins of Cognition.” Biology & Philosophy, vol. 35, no. 3 (2020): 32. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-020-09746-2.
Google Scholar

Courellis, Hristos S., Juri Minxha, Araceli R. Cardenas, Daniel L. Kimmel, Chrystal M. Reed, Taufik A. Valiante, C. Daniel Salzman, Adam N. Mamelak, Stefano Fusi, and Ueli Rutishauser. “Abstract Representations Emerge in Human Hippocampal Neurons during Inference.” Nature, vol. 632 (2024): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07799-x.
Google Scholar

Crawford, Elizabeth, Laura E. Knouse, Molly Kent, Dylan Vavra, Olivia Harding, Danielle LeServe, Nathan Fox, et al. “Enriched Environment Exposure Accelerates Rodent Driving Skills.” Behavioural Brain Research, vol. 378 (January 27, 2020): 112309. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2019.112309.
Google Scholar

Crippen, Matthew, and Jay Schulkin. Mind Ecologies: Body, Brain, and World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020.
Google Scholar

Dennett, Daniel C. “Real Patterns.” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 88, no. 1 (1991): 27–51. https://ruccs.rutgers.edu/images/personal-zenon-pylyshyn/class-info/FP2012/FP2012_readings/Dennett_RealPatterns.pdf.
Google Scholar

Dusek Jeffery A., and Howard Eichenbaum. “The Hippocampus and Memory for Orderly Stimulus Relations.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 94, no. 13 (1997): 7109–7114. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.94.13.7109.
Google Scholar

Dwyer, Dominic M., Judy Starns, and Robert C. Honey. “ ‘Causal Reasoning’ in Rats: A Reappraisal.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, vol. 35, no. 4 (2009): 578–86. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015007.
Google Scholar

Dwyer, Dominic M., and Michael R. Waldmann. “Beyond the Information (Not) Given: Representations of Stimulus Absence in Rats (Rattus Norvegicus).” Journal of Comparative Psychology, vol. 130, no. 3 (2016): 192–204. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0039733.
Google Scholar

Fedorenko, Evelina, Anna A. Ivanova, and Tamar I. Regev. “The Language Network as a Natural Kind Within the Broader Landscape of the Human Brain.” Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, vol. 25, no. 5 (May 2024): 289–312. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-024-00802-4.
Google Scholar

Fedorenko, Evelina, Steven T. Piantadosi, and Edward A. F. Gibson. “Language Is Primarily a Tool for Communication Rather than Thought.” Nature, vol. 630, no. 8017 (2024): 575–586. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07522-w.
Google Scholar

Fenton, André A. “Remapping Revisited: How the Hippocampus Represents Different Spaces.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience, vol. 25, no. 6 (June 2024): 428–448. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-024-00817-x.
Google Scholar

Fields, Chris, and Michael Levin. “How Do Living Systems Create Meaning?” Philosophies, vol. 5, no. 4 (2020): 1–24. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies5040036.
Google Scholar

Fisher, Elizabeth L., and Jakob Hohwy. “The Universal Optimism of the Self-Evidencing Mind.” Entropy, vol. 26, no. 6 (2024): 518. https://doi.org/10.3390/e26060518.
Google Scholar

Friston, Karl. “Am I Self-Conscious? (Or Does Self-Organization Entail Self-Consciousness?).” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 9 (2018). https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00579.
Google Scholar

Friston, Karl. “Embodied Inference: Or ‘I Think Therefore I Am, If I Am What I Think’. ” In The Implications of Embodiment: Cognition and Communication, edited by Wolfgang Tschacher and Claudia Bergomi, 89–125. Charlottesville: Imprint Academic, 2011.
Google Scholar

Friston, Karl. “I Am Therefore I Think.” In The Unconscious: A Bridge Between Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Neuroscience, edited by Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber, Simon Arnold, and Mark Solms, 113–137. Psychoanalytic Explorations. London: Routledge, 2017.
Google Scholar

Friston, Karl J., Jean Daunizeau, and Stefan J. Kiebel. “Reinforcement Learning or Active Inference?” PLOS ONE 4, no. 7 (July 2009): e6421. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0006421.
Google Scholar

Fung, Bowen J., Elissa Sutlief, and Marshall G. Hussain Shuler. “Dopamine and the Interdependency of Time Perception and Reward.” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, vol. 125 (2021): 380–391. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.02.030.
Google Scholar

Furutachi, Shohei, Alexis D. Franklin, Andreea M. Aldea, Thomas D. Mrsic-Flogel, and Sonja B. Hofer. “Cooperative Thalamocortical Circuit Mechanism for Sensory Prediction Errors.” Nature, vol. 28 (August 2024): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07851-w.
Google Scholar

Gallagher, Shaun. “Philosophical Conceptions of the Self: Implications for Cognitive Science.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 4, no. 1 (January 1, 2000): 14–21. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(99)01417-5.
Google Scholar

Genschow, Oliver, Emiel Cracco, Jana Schneider, John Protzko, David Wisniewski, Marcel Brass, and Jonathan W. Schooler. “Manipulating Belief in Free Will and Its Downstream Consequences: A Meta-Analysis.” Personality and Social Psychology Review: An Official Journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc, vol. 27, no. 1 (February 2023): 52–82. https://doi.org/10.1177/10888683221087527.
Google Scholar

Griffin, Donald R. “From Cognition to Consciousness.” Animal Cognition, vol. 1, no. 1 (July 1, 1998): 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s100710050002.
Google Scholar

Haggard, Patrick. “Sense of Agency in the Human Brain.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience, vol. 18, no. 4 (April 2017): 196–207. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn.2017.14.
Google Scholar

Haggard, Patrick, Sam Clark, and Jeri Kalogeras. “Voluntary Action and Conscious Awareness.” Nature Neuroscience, vol. 5, no. 4 (April 2002): 382–385. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn827.
Google Scholar

Hasz, Brendan M., and A. David Redish. “Deliberation and Procedural Automation on a Two-Step Task for Rats.” Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, vol. 12 (2018): 30. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnint.2018.00030.
Google Scholar

Hateren, Hans van. “Constructing a Naturalistic Theory of Intentionality.” Philosophia, vol. 49 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00255-w.
Google Scholar

Hawkins, Jeff. A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2021.
Google Scholar

Hawkins, Jeff, and Subutai Ahmad. “Why Neurons Have Thousands of Synapses, a Theory of Sequence Memory in Neocortex.” Frontiers in Neural Circuits, vol. 10 (March 30, 2016). https://doi.org/10.3389/fncir.2016.00023.
Google Scholar

Hawkins, Jeff, Marcus Lewis, Mirko Klukas, Scott Purdy, and Subutai Ahmad. “A Framework for Intelligence and Cortical Function Based on Grid Cells in the Neocortex.” Frontiers in Neural Circuits, vol. 12 (2018): 121. https://doi.org/10.3389/fncir.2018.00121.
Google Scholar

Hinwar, Rish P., and Anthony J. Lambert. “Anauralia: The Silent Mind and Its Association With Aphantasia.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 12 (2021). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.744213.
Google Scholar

Hohwy, Jakob. “Conscious Self-Evidencing.” Review of Philosophy and Psychology, vol. 13, no. 4 (December 1, 2022): 809–828. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-021-00578-x.
Google Scholar

Humphrey, Nicolas. Sentience: The Invention of Consciousness. London: The MIT Press, 2023.
Google Scholar

Hurlburt, Russell T., and Sarah A. Akhter. “Unsymbolized Thinking.” Consciousness and Cognition, vol. 17, no. 4 (December 1, 2008): 1364–1374. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2008.03.021.
Google Scholar

Huston, Joseph P., and Owen Y. Chao. “Probing the Nature of Episodic Memory in Rodents.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, vol. 144 (January 1, 2023): 104930. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104930.
Google Scholar

Johnson, Mark L., and Jay Schulkin. Mind in Nature: John Dewey, Cognitive Science, and a Naturalistic Philosophy for Living. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2023.
Google Scholar

Kirchhoff, Michael, Thomas Parr, Ensor Palacios, Karl Friston, and Julian Kiverstein. “The Markov Blankets of Life: Autonomy, Active Inference and the Free Energy Principle.” Journal of The Royal Society Interface, vol. 15, no. 138 (January 2018): 20170792. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2017.0792.
Google Scholar

Kononowicz, Tadeusz Władysław, Virginie van Wassenhove, and Valérie Doyère. “Rodents Monitor Their Error in Self-Generated Duration on a Single Trial Basis.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 119, no. 9 (March 2022): e2108850119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2108850119.
Google Scholar

Kull, Kalevi, Dmitry Kozhevnikov, and Magdalena Kozhevnikova. “O logice zwierzęcych umweltów. Subiektywna teraźniejszość zwierząt, czyli zoosemiotyka wyboru i uczenia się.” Zoophilologica. Polish Journal of Animal Studies, vol. 11, no. 1 (2023): 1–20. https://doi.org/10.31261/ZOOPHILOLOGICA.2023.11.06.
Google Scholar

Lai, Chongxi, Shinsuke Tanaka, Timothy D. Harris, and Albert K. Lee. “Volitional Activation of Remote Place Representations with a Hippocampal Brain–Machine Interface.” Science, vol. 382, no. 6670 (2023): 566–573. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adh5206.
Google Scholar

Laurent, Vincent, and Bernard W. Balleine. “Factual and Counterfactual Action-Outcome Mappings Control Choice between Goal-Directed Actions in Rats.” Current Biology, vol. 25, no. 8 (2015): 1074–1079. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.02.044.
Google Scholar

Lee, David G., Caroline A. McLachlan, Ramon Nogueira, Osung Kwon, Alanna E. Carey, Garrett House, Gavin D. Lagani, Danielle LaMay, Stefano Fusi, and Jerry L. Chen. “Perirhinal Cortex Learns a Predictive Map of the Task Environment.” Nature Communications, vol. 15, no. 1 (July 2, 2024): 5544. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-47365-7.
Google Scholar

Leising, Kenneth J., Jared Wong, Michael R. Waldmann, and Aaron P. Blaisdell. “The Special Status of Actions in Causal Reasoning in Rats.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, vol. 137, no. 3 (2008): 514–527. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.137.3.514.
Google Scholar

Leptourgos, Pantelis, and Philip R. Corlett. “Embodied Predictions, Agency, and Psychosis.” Frontiers in Big Data, vol. 3 (2020). https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fdata.2020.00027.
Google Scholar

Levin, Michael. “Bioelectric Networks: The Cognitive Glue Enabling Evolutionary Scaling from Physiology to Mind.” Animal Cognition, May 19, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-023-01780-3.
Google Scholar

Levin, Michael. “The Computational Boundary of a ‘Self’: Developmental Bioelectricity Drives Multicellularity and Scale-Free Cognition.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 10 (December 13, 2019): 2688. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02688.
Google Scholar

Limanowski, Jakub, and Felix Blankenburg. “Minimal Self-Models and the Free Energy Principle.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 7 (2013). https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00547.
Google Scholar

Linson, Adam, Andy Clark, Subramanian Ramamoorthy, and Karl Friston. “The Active Inference Approach to Ecological Perception: General Information Dynamics for Natural and Artificial Embodied Cognition.” Frontiers in Robotics and AI, vol. 5 (2018). https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2018.00021.
Google Scholar

Luu, Phan, Don M. Tucker, and Karl Friston. “From Active Affordance to Active Inference: Vertical Integration of Cognition in the Cerebral Cortex Through Dual Subcortical Control Systems.” Cerebral Cortex, vol. 34, no. 1 (January 1, 2024): bhad458. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhad458.
Google Scholar

Magnani, Lorenzo. “Animal Abduction.” In Abductive Cognition: The Epistemological and Eco-Cognitive Dimensions of Hypothetical Reasoning, edited by Lorenzo Magnani, 265–316. Cognitive Systems Monographs. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03631-6_5.
Google Scholar

Markowitz, Jeffrey E., Winthrop F. Gillis, Maya Jay, Jeffrey Wood, Ryley W. Harris, Robert Cieszkowski, Rebecca Scott, et al. “Spontaneous Behaviour Is Structured by Reinforcement without Explicit Reward.” Nature, vol. 614, no. 7946 (February 2023): 108–17. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05611-2.
Google Scholar

Masís, Javier, Travis Chapman, Juliana Y Rhee, David D. Cox, and Andrew M Saxe. “Strategically Managing Learning during Perceptual Decision Making,” edited by Valentin Wyart, Michael J Frank, and Konstantinos Tsetsos. eLife, vol. 12 (2023): e64978. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.64978.
Google Scholar

McMillen, Patrick, and Michael Levin. “Collective Intelligence: A Unifying Concept for Integrating Biology Across Scales and Substrates.” Communications Biology, vol. 7, no. 1 (2024): 378. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-024-06037-4.
Google Scholar

Miller, Mark, and Andy Clark. “Happily Entangled: Prediction, Emotion, and the Embodied Mind.” Synthese, vol. 195, no. 6 (June 1, 2018): 2559–2575. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1399-7.
Google Scholar

Misak, Cheryl. “The Metaphysical Club.” In The Routledge Companion to Pragmatism, edited by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse, 7–12. New York–London: Routledge, 2023.
Google Scholar

Mitchell, Kevin J. Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will. First edition. Princeton Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2023.
Google Scholar

Monzel, Merlin, David Mitchell, Fiona Macpherson, Joel Pearson, and Adam Zeman. “Aphantasia, Dysikonesia, Anauralia: Call for a Single Term for the Lack of Mental Imagery–Commentary on Dance et al. (2021) and Hinwar and Lambert (2021).” Cortex, vol. 150 (2022): 149–152. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2022.02.002.
Google Scholar

Mountcastle, Vernon B. “An Organizing Principle for Cerebral Function: The Unit Module and the Distributed System.” In The Mindful Brain: Cortical Organization and the Group-Selective Theory of Higher Brain Function, edited by Gerald M. Edelman and Vernon B. Moundcastle, 7–50. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1978.
Google Scholar

Nagel, Thomas. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” The Philosophical Review, vol. 83, no. 4 (1974): 435–450. https://doi.org/10.2307/2183914.
Google Scholar

Nave, Kathryn. A Drive to Survive: The Free Energy Principle and the Meaning of Life. London: The MIT Press, 2025.
Google Scholar

Nave, Kathryn, George Deane, Mark Miller, and Andy Clark. “Wilding the Predictive Brain.” WIREs Cognitive Science, vol. 11, no. 6 (2020): e1542. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1542.
Google Scholar

Nedergaard, Johanne S. K., and Gary Lupyan. “Not Everybody Has an Inner Voice: Behavioral Consequences of Anendophasia.” Psychological Science, vol. 35(7) (2024): 09567976241243004. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976241243004.
Google Scholar

Nicholson, Daniel J. “Reconceptualizing the Organism From Complex Machine to Flowing Stream.” In Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, edited by Daniel J. Nicholson and John Dupré, First edition, 139–166. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Google Scholar

Nieh, Edward H., Manuel Schottdorf, Nicolas W. Freeman, Ryan J. Low, Sam Lewallen, Sue Ann Koay, Lucas Pinto, Jeffrey L. Gauthier, Carlos D. Brody, and David W. Tank. “Geometry of Abstract Learned Knowledge in the Hippocampus.” Nature, vol. 595, no. 7865 (July 2021): 80–84. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03652-7.
Google Scholar

Parr, Thomas, Giovanni Pezzulo, and Karl J. Friston. Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain, and Behavior. New York: The MIT Press, 2022.
Google Scholar

Peña-Guzmán, David M. When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness. Princeton–Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2022.
Google Scholar

Pezzulo, Giovanni, Emilio Cartoni, Francesco Rigoli, Léo Pio-Lopez, and Karl Friston. “Active Inference, Epistemic Value, and Vicarious Trial and Error.” Learning & Memory, vol. 23, no. 7 (2016): 322–338. https://doi.org/10.1101/lm.041780.116.
Google Scholar

Piasini, Eugenio, Liviu Soltuzu, Paolo Muratore, Riccardo Caramellino, Kasper Vinken, Hans Op de Beeck, Vijay Balasubramanian, and Davide Zoccolan. “Temporal Stability of Stimulus Representation Increases along Rodent Visual Cortical Hierarchies.” Nature Communications, vol. 12, no. 1 (2021): 4448. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24456-3.
Google Scholar

Potter, Henry D., and Kevin J. Mitchell. “Naturalising Agent Causation.” Entropy (Basel, Switzerland), vol. 24, no. 4 (2022): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.3390/e24040472.
Google Scholar

Ramstead, Maxwell. “The Free Energy Principle – a Precis.” Dialectical Systems (2023). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10014870.
Google Scholar

Ramstead, Maxwell J. D., Karl J. Friston, and Inês Hipólito. “Is the Free-Energy Principle a Formal Theory of Semantics? From Variational Density Dynamics to Neural and Phenotypic Representations.” Entropy, vol. 22, no. 8 (2020): 1–29. https://doi.org/10.3390/e22080889.
Google Scholar

Redish, A. David. “Vicarious Trial and Error.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience, vol. 17, no. 3 (2016): 147–159. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn.2015.30.
Google Scholar

Rouleau, Nicolas, and Michael Levin. “Brains and Where Else? Mapping Theories of Consciousness to Unconventional Embodiments.” OSF Preprints, 2025, 1–32. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/va5mk.
Google Scholar

Rowlands, Mark. Can Animals Be Moral? Reprint edition. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Google Scholar

Sawa, Kosuke. “Predictive Behavior and Causal Learning in Animals and Humans.” Japanese Psychological Research, vol. 51, no. 3 (2009): 222–233. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5884.2009.00396.x.
Google Scholar

Schultz, Wolfram. “Dopamine Reward Prediction Error Coding.” Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, vol. 18, no. 1 (2016): 23–32. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4826767/.
Google Scholar

Schultz, Wolfram, Peter Dayan, and Pendleton Read Montague. “A Neural Substrate of Prediction and Reward.” Science, vol. 275, no. 5306 (March 14, 1997): 1593–1599. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.275.5306.1593.
Google Scholar

Seth, Anil. Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. London: Penguin Publishing Group, 2021.
Google Scholar

Seth, Anil K. “Being a Beast Machine: The Origins of Selfhood in Control-Oriented Interoceptive Inference.” In Andy Clark and His Critics, edited by Matteo Colombo, Elizabeth Irvine, and Mog Stapleton, 238–253. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Google Scholar

Seth, Anil K. “Inference to the Best Prediction.” In Open MIND, edited by Thomas Metzinger and Jennifer M. Windt. Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group, 2015.
Google Scholar

Seth, Anil K. “Interoceptive Inference, Emotion, and the Embodied Self.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 17, no. 11 (2013): 565–573. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.09.007.
Google Scholar

Seth, Anil K., and Karl J. Friston. “Active Interoceptive Inference and the Emotional Brain.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 371, no. 1708 (2016): 20160007. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2016.0007.
Google Scholar

Silva, Francisco J., and Kathleen M. Silva. “Causal Reasoning in Rats (Blaisdell et al. 2006).” In Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, edited by Todd K. Shackelford and Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford, 936–940. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19650-3_3116.
Google Scholar

Słuszkiewicz, Zbigniew. “Of Rats and Men I: A Pragmatist Take on the Concept of Free Will as a Challenge to the Human-Animal Dichotomy.” Zoophilologica. Polish Journal of Animal Studies, vol. 2, no. 14 (2024): 1–43. https://doi.org/10.31261/ZOOPHILOLOGICA.2024.14.12.
Google Scholar

Słuszkiewicz, Zbigniew. “Szczur w badaniach psychologii społecznej i w naukach kognitywnych. Bestia sacer czy istota motywowana moralnie?” Zoophilologica. Polish Journal of Animal Studies, vol. 10, no. 2 (2022): 1–70. https://doi.org/10.31261/ZOOPHILOLOGICA.2022.10.04.
Google Scholar

Smith, Ryan, Karl J. Friston, and Christopher J. Whyte. “A Step-by-Step Tutorial on Active Inference and Its Application to Empirical Data.” Journal of Mathematical Psychology, vol. 107 (2022): 102632. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmp.2021.102632.
Google Scholar

So, Wing Yi, Karl J. Friston, and Victorita Neacsu. “The Inherent Normativity of Concepts.” Minds and Machines, vol. 34, no. 4 (2024): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-024-09697-7.
Google Scholar

Solms, Mark. “The Hard Problem of Consciousness and the Free Energy Principle.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 9 (2019). https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02714.
Google Scholar

Solms, Mark. The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2021.
Google Scholar

Solms, Mark, and Karl Friston. “How and Why Consciousness Arises: Some Considerations from Physics and Physiology.” Journal of Consciousness Studies, vol. 25 (2018): 202–238. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10057681/1/Friston_Paper.pdf?ref=quillette.com.
Google Scholar

Sprevak, Mark, and Ryan Smith. “An Introduction to Predictive Processing Models of Perception and Decision-Making.” Topics in Cognitive Science, vol. 00 (2023): 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12704.
Google Scholar

Steiner, Adam P., and A. David Redish. “Behavioral and Neurophysiological Correlates of Regret in Rat Decision-Making on a Neuroeconomic Task.” Nature Neuroscience, vol. 17, no. 7 (July 2014): 995–1002. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3740.
Google Scholar

Sweis, Brian M., Samantha V. Abram, Brandy J. Schmidt, Kelsey D. Seeland, Angus W. MacDonald, Mark J. Thomas, and A. David Redish. “Sensitivity to ‘Sunk Costs’ in Mice, Rats, and Humans.” Science, vol. 361, no. 6398 (July 13, 2018): 178–181. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aar8644.
Google Scholar

Tramacere, Antonella, and Colin Allen. “Temporal Binding: Digging into Animal Minds through Time Perception.” Synthese, vol. 200, no. 1 (2022): 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03456-w.
Google Scholar

Tschantz, Alexander, Laura Barca, Domenico Maisto, Christopher Buckley, Anil Seth, and Giovanni Pezzulo. “Simulating Homeostatic, Allostatic and Goal-Directed Forms of Interoceptive Control Using Active Inference.” Biological Psychology, vol. 169 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2022.108266.
Google Scholar

Vasilev, Dmitrii, Isabel Raposo, and Nelson K Totah. “Brightness Illusions Evoke Pupil Constriction Preceded by a Primary Visual Cortex Response in Rats.” Cerebral Cortex, vol. 33, no. 12 (June 15, 2023): 7952–7959. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhad090.
Google Scholar

Vitti Rodrigues, Mariana, and Claus Emmeche. “Abduction: Can Non-Human Animals Make Discoveries?” Biosemiotics, vol. 10 (July 1, 2017): 295–313. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-017-9300-0.
Google Scholar

Waldmann, Michael R., Martina Schmid, Jared Wong, and Aaron P. Blaisdell. “Rats Distinguish between Absence of Events and Lack of Evidence in Contingency Learning.” Animal Cognition, vol. 15, no. 5 (2012): 979–990. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-012-0524-8.
Google Scholar

Wang, Qinwen, Qianyue Yang, and Xingyin Liu. “The Microbiota–Gut–Brain Axis and Neurodevelopmental Disorders.” Protein & Cell, vol. 14, no. 10 (2023): 762–775. https://doi.org/10.1093/procel/pwad026.
Google Scholar

Waytz, Adam, Ravi Iyer, Liane Young, Jonathan Haidt, and Jesse Graham. “Ideological Differences in the Expanse of the Moral Circle.” Nature Communications, vol. 10, no. 1 (September 26, 2019): 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12227-0.
Google Scholar

Yokose, Jun, William D. Marks, and Takashi Kitamura. “Visuotactile Integration Facilitates Mirror-Induced Self-Directed Behavior through Activation of Hippocampal Neuronal Ensembles in Mice.” Neuron, vol. 112, no. 2 (January 17, 2024): 306–318.e8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2023.10.022.
Google Scholar

Zeithamova, Dagmar, Margaret L. Schlichting, and Alison R. Preston. “The Hippocampus and Inferential Reasoning: Building Memories to Navigate Future Decisions.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 6 (2012). https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00070.
Google Scholar

Zimmerman, Aaron. “Pragmatism in the Philosophy of Mind.” In The Routledge Companion to Pragmatism, edited by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse, first edition, 226–238. New York–London: Routledge, 2023.
Google Scholar

Vol. 15 No. 1 (2025)
Published: 2025-06-30

ISSN: 2719-2687

eISSN: 2451-3849

10.31261/ZOOPHILOLOGICA

Publisher

Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

Licence CC

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Submit