Intelligence and Predictive Processing

Welcome back. In this post, we explore the foundational challenges of intelligence, focusing on the meta-problem of relevance realization and how it connects to predictive processing. This journey takes us through biology, cognition, and the deep principles that link life and mind.

The Deep Continuity Hypothesis

The deep continuity hypothesis, proposed by Evan Thompson, suggests a profound connection between the principles governing biology and cognition. It posits that:

Cognition operates similarly to biological processes.
Intelligence arises from being a living organism, even though not all living things are intelligent.

A key feature of life—and by extension cognition—is evolution. Organisms evolve by reproducing, adapting, and surviving through a dynamic system of feedback loops.

Causes and Constraints: A Crucial Distinction

Alicia Juarrero’s Dynamics in Action introduces a vital distinction:

Causes: Events that change what happens (e.g., pushing an object to make it move).
Constraints: Conditions that change what is possible (e.g., the object’s shape, a flat surface).

In Darwinian theory, these principles manifest as:

Enabling Constraints: Variations that open up possibilities.
Selective Constraints: Scarcity that limits possibilities.

Together, these constraints create a self-organizing system—a virtual engine of evolution that cycles between variation and selection.

The Sensorimotor Loop and Opponent Processing

Cognition mirrors evolution through the sensorimotor loop:

Sensory input guides movement, which in turn affects sensory input.
This loop continuously evolves, toggling between opposites like exploration and exploitation, foregrounding and backgrounding, and gestalt (whole) and featural (parts) processing.

This dynamic is called opponent processing—two opposing systems working in an integrated way to maintain adaptive balance.

Example

To read the phrase “The Cat”, your mind toggles between:

Identifying individual letters (features).
Recognizing the whole word (gestalt).

This continuous toggling integrates both perspectives, enabling understanding.

Relevance Realization: The Core of Intelligence

The key to intelligence lies in relevance realization—the ability to identify what matters in any given moment. This process is:

Dynamic: Constantly evolving in response to changing environments.
Self-organizing: Arising from feedback loops without a central controller.
Multidimensional: Balancing competing priorities through opponent processing.

By linking relevance realization with predictive processing, we see how cognition anticipates and adapts to the world. It involves:

Compression: Generalizing patterns to apply knowledge broadly.
Discrimination: Identifying specific details that matter in context.

Together, these processes guide attention, decision-making, and learning.

Predictive Processing and Anticipation

The predictive processing framework offers a powerful model of anticipation:

Predict yourself, not the world: Focus on internal patterns rather than the overwhelming complexity of the environment.
Prepare through prediction: Use predictions to complete patterns and adapt proactively.

This framework explains how the brain integrates sensory input (bottom-up) with imaginative models (top-down), achieving a balance between generalization and specificity.

Religio: The Binding Force of Intelligence

To capture the dynamic, self-organizing nature of cognition, we use the term religio (from Latin, meaning “to bind together”). It represents:

The evolving “optimal grip” on reality.
The deep connection between mind, body, and environment.
The integration of relevance realization and predictive processing.

Religio is the nexus of intelligence, linking biology, cognition, and meaning in a constant process of adaptation and anticipation.

Conclusion

General intelligence is not static or algorithmic—it is a dynamic, self-organizing process of relevance realization and predictive processing. By embracing the principles of religio, we see intelligence as deeply connected to life itself.

Next time, we will delve deeper into the relationship between meaning, rationality, and wisdom.