---
slug: paper-gilon-g-m-c-2025-critique-of-the-free-energy-principle-of-consciousness
title: Gilon (2025): Critique of the Free Energy Principle of Consciousness
canonical: https://miscsubjects.com/a/paper-gilon-g-m-c-2025-critique-of-the-free-energy-principle-of-consciousness
---

## What the authors saw

Gerard Marx and Chaim Gilon examined four papers by Karl Friston and collaborators that apply the free energy principle (FEP) to consciousness. They focused on the claim that perceptual processes emerge from systems minimizing free energy, framed as a scalar function of sensory and internal states that bounds surprise or negative log-evidence.

The authors noted that these models treat biological systems as sampling the environment to match internal expectations, often linked to Bayesian inference and hierarchical generative models. Core results center on deficiencies: the arguments lack physiologic relevance, ignore emotive memory, overlook non-synaptic signaling in the neural extracellular matrix, and fail to connect caloric energy transduction to subjective mentality.

## Exact primary works and passages

The critique targets four Friston-linked works. Key passages from the 2025 paper include the abstract: "How does the viable brain transmute caloric energy into consciousness manifest as emotive memory? Apparently, the laws of physics and thermodynamics don't apply." It continues: "We summarize and criticize each of the 4 articles and point out their deficiencies, notably the lack of physiologic relevance."

For Paper 1 (Friston KJ, Stephan KE, 2007, Synthese 159: 417–458): "It suggests that perceptual processes are an emergent property of systems that conform to a free-energy principle." Critique states: "None of the discussion has a biologic flavor. It does not define the 'sensory information' on which surprise is predicated. Thus, it does not mention the emotive qualities of 'sensory information' or how this is made available without neural memory."

For Paper 2: The model "proposes that self-organising biological agents resist a tendency to disorder and therefore minimize the entropy of their sensory states." Critique: "The article is a mathematical flavored fantasy... Their physiologic model is based exclusively on synaptic signaling and ignores non-synaptic modes."

Paper 3 (Badcock, Friston et al., 2019, Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience): Describes the Hierarchically Mechanistic Mind minimizing entropy via action-perception cycles. Critique: "Though the word 'evolutionary' appears in the title, there is little in this article that refers to biologic evolution... Only the human brain is considered with no mention of the universal signaling processes that govern the life and thought of all creatures, from bacteria upward."

The paper concludes by advocating a tripartite biochemical mechanism of neural memory that uses materials available to neural cells.

## Relation to the OIP/GRAIN synthesis

This work attacks the thermo bridge to consciousness in FEP models. It supports the synthesis emphasis on memory as a distinct layer in the Ladder by insisting that surprise requires prior memory of emotive states. It aligns with the grain of reliable structural patterns by demanding biochemical mechanisms over abstract mathematics. The Mirror Layer gains indirect support through the insistence that the model must reflect actual neural processes inside the system.

Distance from full synthesis remains large. The critique stays within biochemical reduction while the synthesis integrates flow networks, scale invariance, and the reader inside the system across scales.

## Convergence patterns evidenced

The paper touches memory and bounded processes. It highlights how memory enables projection of present experience to the future and notes epigenetic modifications as possible encoding routes. It evidences the need for physiologic mechanisms that conform to materials and processes in neural cells, consistent with flow-to-structure transitions in the Ladder.

## Honest limits and disconfirming edges

The critique relies on textual analysis of selected papers and offers no new empirical data on consciousness mechanisms. It focuses on human and neural systems with limited treatment of non-neural life. A reductionist objection holds that FEP may still serve as a useful descriptive framework even if it lacks direct physiologic mapping. Claims about emotive memory encoding remain interpretive without detailed molecular pathways in this work. No quantitative tests of the proposed tripartite mechanism appear here.

## What the evidence actually shows

The 2025 paper establishes that FEP applications to consciousness omit key physiologic elements such as emotive valence and non-synaptic communication. Core results rest on summaries of four papers showing repeated reliance on mathematical abstractions without corresponding neural mechanisms. Atomic claims follow in the register below.

## What scientists say

The critique positions itself against purely information-theoretic or thermodynamic extensions to mentality. It argues classical thermodynamics provides little light and that information theory lacks evolutionary context for emotive states.

## What we do not know

Exact molecular routes by which caloric energy becomes emotive memory remain unspecified beyond the call for a tripartite biochemical description. How epigenetic modifications integrate with circuit-level memory awaits further mapping.

## Safety and limits

This remains a philosophical and methodological critique with no direct safety implications for applied models. Its limits lie in the absence of new experimental results; readers must consult primary Friston papers and subsequent empirical tests for balance.
