The “free energy principle” and the representation of legal systems

Faculty Colloquium

Presenter: Fabien Gélinas, Full Professor, Sir William C. Macdonald Chair, McGill.

Discussant: Louis Hill, PhD candidate, Sciences Po Law School.

The free energy principle is touted by neuro-scientist Karl Friston as the governing principle of all living organisms and a possible key to general artificial intelligence. The principle is that biological systems act to minimize the difference between their model of the world and their sense and associated perception of that world. This difference is described as "surprise" and is minimized by the continuous correction of a system’s model of the world (inferred from a Bayesian representation of the human brain as a dynamic “inference engine”), and by action geared to changing the world into the expected state. By correcting its representation of the world and by acting on the world, a system minimizes its free energy. This is true, it is claimed, at the level of a cell, an insect, an animal, all the way up to a human, and out to a human society. The free energy principle may have important implications for our understanding of social systems in general and of legal systems in particular. This paper explores the possible implications of the free energy for the representation of legal systems and our understanding of law more broadly.