# A precis of two principles - Towards a relational perspective on the FEP Presenter: Avel Guénin—Carlut Contribution: Pre-recorded Video presentation Public ID: talk-5f1d4f1776db95c2 ## Submitted abstract The Free Energy Principle offers a physically grounded account of intentional properties in mind and life, framed within Dynamical Systems Theory. Because of this generality, it was proposed as a formal basis to study biological autonomy, autopoiesis, and enactive cognition. Yet, those approaches are defined by a relational understanding of mind and life, centred on the description of engagement with the world as a constructive process where agents are “laying down a path in walking”. Building from Rosen’s relational biology, we argue that such processes are by construction outside a “Newtonian” description in terms of well-defined observables and their dynamics. Rather, we draw from Fields’ demonstration of the emergence of contextuality – the participatory production of observables against which the agent regulates their activity – in classical, thermodynamically bounded processes of observation. We suggest a complementarity between Friston’s classical FEP and Fields et al.’s “quantum” (or, in our account, relational) FEP, describing respectively the dynamics within a biological / cognitive space of relevant observables and the physical processes underlying the construction of that space. Finally, we propose a structural realist interpretation of this complementarity within the “closure of constraints” account of biological autonomy, where both principles are understood to act on a physically embedded system of biological constraints rather than an abstract mathematical space assumed to fully represent biological / cognitive organization. This approach foregrounds the synthesis between mathematical and theoretical approaches to biological autonomy, thus supporting a principled approach to both analyzing the organization of natural systems and attempting the implementation of artificial autonomy. This presentation is adapted from Guénin--Carlut, Avel. 2026. “A Tale of Two Principles - Towards a Relational Perspective on the FEP.” https://hal.science/hal-05697510., currently under review at the Entropy Special Issue “Active Inference in Cognitive Neuroscience”. Source: [submitted source]() Abstract SHA256: 059387f4d15fe2e1057fbd24d182cb5053d346ced3cd03029ac6e472ba395df8 ## Organizer review checklist - [ ] Confirm the submitted title, presenter, and abstract with the presenter. - [ ] Confirm contribution format and scheduling needs. - [ ] Confirm public permissions for any additional material before publication. - [ ] Prepare discussion questions grounded in the submitted abstract. ## Public learning resources These approved event resources are starting points; topic relevance and author identity have not been inferred. - Active Inference Ontology: https://github.com/ActiveInferenceInstitute/Active_Inference_Ontology - Cognitive Agent Modeling: https://github.com/ActiveInferenceInstitute/ActiveInferenceImplementations - GEO-INFER: https://github.com/ActiveInferenceInstitute/GEO_INFER - Generalized Notation Notation: https://github.com/ActiveInferenceInstitute/Generalized_Notation_Notation - pymdp: https://github.com/infer-actively/pymdp - Reproducible publication template: https://github.com/docxology/template OpenAlex discovery-only search (not a verified identity or literature match): https://openalex.org/works?search=A%20precis%20of%20two%20principles%20-%20Towards%20a%20relational%20perspective%20on%20the%20FEP