The fourth law of thermodynamics (LMEP) and cognition from first principles: commentary on Barrett’s “On the nature and origins of cognition as a form of motivated activity”

Abstract

Nat Barrett’s “On the nature and origins of cognition as a form of motivated activity” puts a well-focused light on the central problems, plaguing the core of enactivist, or 4E cognitive theories and points to LMEP (the Law of Maximum Entropy Production or the fourth law of thermodynamics) and the thermodynamic groundwork Micheal Turvey and I presented a little less than three decades ago as the pathway in. Here, I offer some brief remarks supporting his efforts as well as some clarifying points following from work done in the ensuing years. We are now at a point where we can dissolve the problems Barrett so cogently identifies and get us to a nomologically grounded theory of embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended cognition, a robust alternative to the failed computationalist model, from first principles.