# Full Text: Systems Processes, Active Inference, and Beyond

> Extracted from `2025_SystemsProcesses.pdf`

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## Page 1

Systems Processes, 
Active Inference, 
and Beyond ~ 
Sept 17, 2025
Daniel Friedman
cognitivesecurity.us/ 
These slides published open source on Zenodo: 
10.5281/zenodo.17138224

## Page 2

Outline
●Introduction & Context
●Roads from Systems Processes to Active Inference 
●The Warp and Weave of the Meta
●Discussion: Towards a fuller Systems Science

## Page 3

Daniel and Sasha went to Claremont on June 24, 2024, to meet with Luke Friendshuh and pick up some materials from Len Troncale + talk with him.
Currently the 11 boxes (10 boxes of content with lids, 11th box of extra Behavioral journal article are being stored in Crescent City, CA, USA
Link in the ISSS Knowledge Engineering document

## Page 4

Roads to Active Inference 
2022 textbook
textbook-group.activeinference.institute  
Figure 1.2
Today: 
1
2
3
5
4
Many more 
resources & get 
involved!!
welcome.activeinference.institute/

## Page 5

Active Inference & Systems Processes
https://github.com/ActiveInferenceInstitute/Active_Inference_Ontology
●
Same words, same meaning
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Different words, same meaning
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Same words, different meaning
In the SoSPT model, a “systems” process 
is defined as that series of steps typical of 
surviving systems that adequately fulfills a 
needed systems function when considered 
at the abstract systems level
What do we get with applied 
Active Inference? Yes, and…
Computable, Typable, Translations, Open Source 
education and software, first principles…

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1 Boundaries ⇆ Markov Blankets
Free Energy Principle formalises the idea of 
Boundaries through Markov blankets—statistical 
partitions of internal, sensory and active states 
that mediate all exchanges with the outside world
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2024: Structured Active Inference 
https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.07577 
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2019: A free energy principle for a 
particular physics  
https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.10184 
2022 textbook 
Figure 3.1 
limit, connect, interact, action within/across…
formation, change, un-form, sediment….

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2 Feedback & Cycles ⇆ Predictive Coding Loops
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2023 Path integrals, particular kinds, and strange 
things https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064523001094 
cycle, return, change, loop, open/closed, wheel-within-wheel
Positive/negative, dampen/augment, (de)stabilize….
2022 textbook 
Figure 5.2
And connection with Min/Max rules!

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3 Self-Organization & Autopoiesis 
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2018 Answering Schrödinger's question: A free-energy 
formulation  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5857288/ 
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2023 Cartography of the multiple formal systems of 
molecular autopoiesis: from the biology of cognition and 
enaction to anticipation and active inference 
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0303264723001302 
○
Framing the multiple formal systems of autopoiesis (FSA) into the Rosen's modeling 
relation (a process of bringing into equivalence the causality of NS and the inferential 
rules of FS), allows a classification of FSA into analytical categories, most importantly 
Turing machine (algorithmic) vs non-Turing machine (non-algorithmic) based, and FSA 
with a purely reactive mathematical image as cybernetic systems, i.e. feedbacks based, or 
conversely, as anticipatory systems making active inferences. 
Embodied, persistence, reproductive, 
open-ended, Material organization, 
sensemaking, mortal, self-recreating, 
self-reference, Strange Loop…
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2022 Active inference, 
morphogenesis, and computational 
psychiatry 
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9731232/

## Page 9

4 Flows and Fields
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2022 A Worked Example of the Bayesian Mechanics of 
Classical Objects 
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2022 Regarding Flows Under the Free 
Energy Principle  https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.07793v2 
Fluid, Space-filling, Difference-pursuing, Across, 
Bridging or Clearing, Downhill, Path of least resistance
2023 On Bayesian 
mechanics: a physics of and 
by beliefs https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsfs.2022.0029

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5 Hierarchies & Networks ⇆ Nested Generative Models
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2025  As One and Many: Relating Individual and 
Emergent Group-Level Generative Models in Active 
Inference https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40003140/ 
Fractals, heterarchy, induction/deduction, abstraction, 
enclosure, (multi)scale space and time, nested, 
learning, updating, evolution, structure….
2022 textbook 
Figure 9.1
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2023 A Variational Synthesis of Evolutionary and 
Developmental Dynamics https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/25/7/964

## Page 11

The Warp and Weave of the Meta
Archiving Library Science, Knowledge Engineering
Education Research, Accessibility, Applicability

## Page 12

Thank you Len & All
And now, Discussion….


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*Extraction method: pymupdf*