Kathryn Nave, "A Drive to Survive: The Free Energy Principle and the Meaning of Life" (MIT Press, 2025) (opens in new tab)

The cybernetic tradition in cognitive science analyzes the purposive behavior of many complex systems – from sensory-guided missiles to sensory-guided animals -- in terms of feedback control that maintains stability in the face of external perturbation. A more recent extension and elaboration of this framework brings in predictive processing and the minimization of free energy – essentially, minimizing getting inputs that conflict with what the system expects. In A Drive to Survive: the Free ...