Mapping Husserlian phenomenology onto active inference
This work addresses the integration of philosophical phenomenology with computational models for researchers in cognitive science and AI, but appears incremental as it builds on existing frameworks without new empirical validation.
The paper tackles the problem of formalizing Husserlian phenomenology by mapping it onto active inference, aiming to advance computational phenomenology, but does not report concrete numerical results.
Phenomenology is the rigorous descriptive study of conscious experience. Recent attempts to formalize Husserlian phenomenology provide us with a mathematical model of perception as a function of prior knowledge and expectation. In this paper, we re-examine elements of Husserlian phenomenology through the lens of active inference. In doing so, we aim to advance the project of computational phenomenology, as recently outlined by proponents of active inference. We propose that key aspects of Husserl's descriptions of consciousness can be mapped onto aspects of the generative models associated with the active inference approach. We first briefly review active inference. We then discuss Husserl's phenomenology, with a focus on time consciousness. Finally, we present our mapping from Husserlian phenomenology to active inference.