The emperor has no blanket!

While we applaud Bruineberg et al.'s analysis of the differences between Markov blankets and Friston blankets, we think it is not carried out to its ultimate consequences. There are reasons to think that, once Friston blankets are accepted as a theoretical construct, they do not do the work proponents of free energy principle (FEP) attribute to them. The emperor is indeed naked.

The stimulus-response crisis.

Yarkoni correctly recognizes that one reason for psychology's generalizability crisis is the failure to account for variance within experiments. We argue that this problem, and the generalizability crisis broadly, is a necessary consequence of the stimulus-response paradigm widely used in psychology research. We point to another methodology, perturbation experiments, as a remedy that is not vulnerable to the same problems.

The Markov blanket trick: On the scope of the free energy principle and active inference.

The free energy principle (FEP) has been presented as a unified brain theory, as a general principle for the self-organization of biological systems, and most recently as a principle for a theory of every thing. Additionally, active inference has been proposed as the process theory entailed by FEP that is able to model the full range of biological and cognitive events. In this paper, we challenge these two claims. We argue that FEP is not the general principle it is claimed to be, and that active inference is not the all-encompassing process theory it is purported to be either. The core aspects of our argumentation are that (i) FEP is just a way to generalize Bayesian inference to all domains by the use of a Markov blanket formalism, a generalization we call the Markov blanket trick; and that (ii) active inference presupposes successful perception and action instead of explaining them.

Extended Skill Learning.

Within the ecological and enactive approaches in cognitive science, a tension exists in how the process of skill learning is understood. Skill learning can be understood in a narrow sense, as a process of bodily change over time, or in an extended sense, as a change in the structure of the animal-environment system. We propose to resolve this tension by rejecting the first understanding in favor of the second. We thus defend an extended approach to skill learning. An extended understanding of skill learning views bodily changes as being embedded in a larger process of interaction between the organism and specific structures in the environment. Such an extended approach is committed to the claims that (1) the appropriate unit of analysis for understanding skill learning is not the body but the activity and (2) learning consists in the establishment and adaptive organization of enabling constraints on that activity. We focus on two example cases: maintaining upright posture and walking. In both cases, environmental structures play a constitutive role in the activity throughout learning, but the specific environmental structures that are involved in the activity change over time. At an early stage, the child makes use of an environmental "support"-for example, holding onto furniture to maintain upright posture. Later, once further constraints have been established, the child is able to let go of the furniture and remain upright. We argue that adopting an extended understanding of skill learning offers a promising strategy for unifying ecological and enactive approaches and can also potentially ground a radically embodied approach to higher cognition.

Thinking with other minds.

We applaud the ambition of Veissière et al.'s account of cultural learning, and the attempt to ground higher order thinking in embodied theory. However, the account is limited by loose terminology, and by its commitment to a view of the child learner as inference-maker. Vygotsky offers a more powerful view of cultural learning, one that is fully compatible with embodiment.

Culture in the world shapes culture in the head (and vice versa).

We agree with Heyes that an explanation of human uniqueness must appeal to cultural evolution, and not just genes. Her account, though, focuses narrowly on internal cognitive mechanisms. This causes her to mischaracterize human behavior and to overlook the role of material culture. A more powerful account would view cognitive gadgets as spanning organisms and their (shared) environments.