about

XSCAPE (Material Minds) is a 6-year, 10M Euro, project investigating the various ways the material structures of our settlements, buildings, roads, and artefacts (from pottery to smartphones) actively change patterns of thought and attention, thereby shaping the modern mind.

Spanning multiple centres in the UK and Europe and bringing together an unusual mix of disciplines and approaches, the project seeks to put theoretical, practical, and computational flesh onto the idea that the modern mind is in many ways our own invention – the product of a staged series of changes to our self-created environments.

During the course of the project, we will conduct multiple field studies, explore archaeological sites and and historical records, and observe the many ways human agents interact with their material worlds. We will also build a platform for computer simulations using the ‘active inference’ (predictive processing) framework – a neurocomputational model that offers a principled account of the ways perception, thought,  and action are co-constructed within a material setting.

Two of the project teams are from the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas Spain. They are led by Luis M. Martinéz (Vision Science) and Felipe Criado-Boado (Archaeology), who is also responsible for coordinating the project. The other two teams are located at the University of Sussex, Great Britain, under the leadership of Andy Clark (Philosophy and Informatics), and at the CAU (Germany) under Prof. Johannes Müller (Archaeology).

The work is supported by of European Research Council, Synergy Grant (XSCAPE) ERC-2020-SyG 951631

XSCAPE at sussex.

The overall project investigates the various ways the material structures of our settlements, buildings, roads, and artefacts (from pottery to smartphones) actively change patterns of thought and attention, thereby shaping the modern mind. At Sussex, bridging Informatics and Philosophy, we will use the emerging computational neuroscience paradigm known as predictive processing as a principled means of linking perception, attention, and actions (including eye-movements) with cognitive change and learning. This will deliver insights into the fundamental principles that may be guiding materiality-driven cognitive change. We aim to implement and analyse a series of single and multi-agent simulation studies as part of this project. The simulations will use the ‘active inference’ paradigm as a platform to examine (at multiple scales of space and time) the complex interactions between learning, attention, and the material environment.

Constructing cultural landscapes: Active Inference for the Social Sciences

Date: July 7th 2023

Program: https://coda.io/@active-inference-institute/active-inference-social-science-aii-2023

SYNERGY retreat 2023

Date: May 2023

Santiago de Compostela, Spain

SYNERGY workshop 2023

Date: February 2023

Brighton, United Kingdom

talking xscape.

April 28th, 2024: Future Learning Design - Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6QlGSFAY6peXJbBCIDfeaV?si=4bd087de48c9426aI

February 19th, 2024: Scientist - Active Inference, AI in the classroom - YouTube

https://youtu.be/9txUwVtAOBk?si=DnvLVtL-YMHdCfg4

April 22nd, 2024: Active Inference Institute - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/live/viJt9sFqWdg?si=mlYogREN1gaxHnM5

Friday, March 17th, 2023: Converging Dialogues Podcast

Recorded Interview by Host, Xavier A. Bonilla, Psy.D. via Zoom

Tuesday, March 21st, 2023: LAVNCH [CODE] DeCoded

30-Minute Video Interview by Megan Dutta via Socialive

 

Thursday, March 30th, 2023: ITSP Magazine’s Audio Signals Podcast

45-Minute Recorded Podcast Interview by Hosts, Marco Ciappelli and Sean Martin via StreamYard

 

Wednesday, April 19th, 2023: Philosophy Talk | San Francisco, CA

Recorded Interview by Hosts, Josh Landy and Ray Briggs via Zoom

 

Thursday, April 20th, 2023: Sean Carroll’s Mindscape Podcast

Recorded Interview by Host, Sean Carroll via Zencastr

 

Thursday, April 27th, 2023: A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk Into a Bar Podcast

Recorded Podcast Interview by Hosts, Randy Knie and Kyle Whitaker via Zoom

 

Friday, April 28th, 2023:The Avid Reader Show

1-Hour Podcast Interview by Host, Sam Hankin via Zoom

 

Thursday 4 May, 2023: Waterstones Brighton public/University book  launch event for The Experience Machine

 

Saturday, May 6th, 2023: West Portal Books X Wonderfest | San Francisco, CA

Virtual Solo Author Presentation, Moderated by Tucker Hiatt, followed by Audience Q&A via Zoom

 

Wednesday, May 10th, 2023: Literati Bookstore At Home with Literati Series | Ann Arbor, MI

Virtual In-Conversation with Casey Schwartz, followed by Audience Q&A via Zoom

        

Thursday, June 1st, 2023: The Jordan Harbinger Show Podcast

1.5 Hour Recorded Podcast Interview by Host, Jordan Harbinger via Squadcast

 

Friday, June 2nd, 2023: The Intentional Clinician Podcast

50-Minute Recorded Podcast Interview by Host, Paul Krauss via Zoom

 

Monday, June 5th, 2023: Making Sense Podcast

Recorded Interview by Host, Sam Harris via Squadcast

 

Monday, June 12th, 2023: Something You Should Know Podcast 

30-Minute Recorded Podcast Interview by Host, Mike Carruthers via Zencastr

 

Print and Media

Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023: Pulse 2.0

Email Interview with Amit D. Chowdhry

 

Tuesday, May 9th, 2023: Nautilus Magazine

Interview with George Musser Jr via Zoom

publication key.

The Acquisition of Culturally Patterned Attention Styles Under Active Inference

Front. Neurorobot., 05 October 2021 | Volume 15 - 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2021.729665

Abstract

This paper presents an active inference based simulation study of visual foraging. The goal of the simulation is to show the effect of the acquisition of culturally patterned attention styles on cognitive task performance, under active inference. We show how cultural artefacts like antique vase decorations drive cognitive functions such as perception, action and learning, as well as task performance in a simple visual discrimination task. We thus describe a new active inference based research pipeline that future work may employ to inquire on deep guiding principles determining the manner in which material culture drives human thought, by building and rebuilding our patterns of attention.

publication list.

  1. Constant, A. (2024). Personomics: Precision Psychiatry Done Right. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. https://doi.org/10.1086/729750

  2. Di Paolo, L. D., White, B., Guénin--Carlut, A., Constant, A., & Clark, A. (2024). Active inference goes to school. The importance of active learning in the age of large language models. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/zwa83

  3. Constant, A., Friston, K. J., & Clark, A. (2024). Cultivating creativity: predictive brains and the enlightened room problem. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 379(1895), 20220415. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0415

  4. Pezzulo, G., Parr, T., Cisek, P., Clark, A., & Friston, K. (2024). Generating meaning: active inference and the scope and limits of passive AI. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 28(2), 97–112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2023.10.002

  5. Constant, A. (2023). A Bayesian model of legal syllogistic reasoning. Artificial Intelligence and Law. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-023-09357-8

  6. Guénin-Carlut, A., White, B. and Sganzerla, L. (2023) Concrete Lifeforms and Cognitive Archeology. OSF Preprints. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/qxszh

  7. Clark, A. (2022). Extending the Predictive Mind. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2022.2122523

  8. Constant, A., Tschantz, A. D. D., Millidge, B., Criado-Boado, F., Martinez, L. M., Müeller, J., & Clark, A. (2021). The Acquisition of Culturally Patterned Attention Styles Under Active Inference. Frontiers in Neurorobotics, 15, 729665. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2021.729665

events past and future.

  • Andy Clark | principal investigator | Andy.Clark@sussex.ac.uk

    Andy Clark is Professor of Cognitive Philosophy at the University of Sussex. He is the author of several books including The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality (Penguin Random House, 2023), Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind (Oxford University Press, 2016), Mindware (Oxford University Press, Second Edition 2014), Supersizing the Mind (Oxford University Press, 2008), and Being There: Putting Brain, Body And World Together Again (MIT Press, 1997). Academic interests include artificial intelligence, embodied and extended cognition, robotics, human-technology systems, and computational neuroscience. From 2017-2021 he was PI on a European Research Council Advanced Grant: Expecting Ourselves: Embodied Prediction and the Construction of Conscious Experience. He is currently PI on an ERC Synergy Grant, XScape. Material Minds: Exploring the Interactions between Predictive Brains, Cultural Artifacts, and Embodied Visual Search.

  • Axel Constant | research fellow | A.Constant@sussex.ac.uk

    Axel is a postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Engineering and Informatics of the University of Sussex (UK). His research focuses on Bayesian approaches to human cognition as applied to the study of Law, Psychiatry, Evolutionary Cognitive Anthropology, and Evolutionary Biology.

  • Laura Desirèe Di Paolo | PhD student | lauradesiree.dipaolo@gmail.com

    Laura Desirèe Di Paolo is currently doing her PhD in Cognitive Sciences at the University of Sussex. She has already earned a PhD in Philosophy of Mind and Biology at Sapienza, University of Rome, and has worked as Postdoctoral researcher at the German Primate Center (Deutsche PrimatenZentrum) and at the Lichtemberg-Kolleg Institute in Göttingen, Germany. As Editor-in-Chief, she published the volume Evolution of Primate Social Cognition (Springer, 2018), along with paleoanthropologist Fabio Di Vincenzo and primatologist Francesca De Petrillo. Her interests lie in Social Learning and Cognition in Primates, Early Homo, and Children. Right now, she is looking at the design of objects, and their role in transmitting mental models and learning mechanisms, with a particular emphasis on “educational” (schools and learning devices), and on “archeological” artefacts, within the ERC Synergy Grant, XScape. Material Minds: Exploring the Interactions between Predictive Brains, Cultural Artifacts, and Embodied Visual Search.

  • Avel Guénin—Carlut | PhD student | A.Guenin-Carlut@sussex.ac.uk

    Avel GUÉNIN--CARLUT is currently a PhD student in cognitive science under the supervision of Andy CLARK. Their research focuses on the relation between cognition and cultural evolution, as well as the formalisation of the "unfolding" of physical possibilities in evolution and cognition and its link to consciousness / sentience. Their work in the XSCAPE project leverages the computational phenomenology of human agents, as described by Active Inference. They aim to build from it a detailed conceptual and mathematical framework enabling the inference of the socio-cognitive landscapes of past societies from archeological and historical evidence. In particular, their research suggests the necessity of reframing the target of cognitive archeology as the socio-cultural constraints enacted by past societies and their intrinsic self-productive "flow", rather than the grist and mills of individual minds.

  • Ben White | PhD student | B.White@sussex.ac.uk

    University of Sussex, Leverhulme funded PhD student

  • Karl Friston | collaborator

    University College London | Karl Friston is a theoretical neuroscientist and authority on brain imaging. He invented statistical parametric mapping (SPM), voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and dynamic causal modelling (DCM). These contributions were motivated by schizophrenia research and theoretical studies of value-learning, formulated as the dysconnection hypothesis of schizophrenia. Mathematical contributions include variational Laplacian procedures and generalized filtering for hierarchical Bayesian model inversion.

  • Anil Seth | collaborator

    University of Sussex | I am Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, where I am also Director of the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science. I am also Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Program on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness, and of the Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Programme: From Sensation and Perception to Awareness. I was recently an Engagement Fellow with the Wellcome Trust

  • Maxwell J.D. Ramstead | collaborator

    University College London | VERSES | I'm the Senior Director of Research at VERSES and affiliated with the Spatial Web Foundation. My research focuses on the free-energy principle, multiscale active inference, and computational phenomenology. I now direct the VERSES Research Lab, which focuses on probabilistic model-based approaches to (artificial) intelligence (active inference, multi-agent modelling and group inference, computational phenomenology of XR experience, category theory, and AI ethics