A weak version of life-mind continuity thesis entails that every living system also has a basic mind (with a non-representational form of intentionality). The strong version entails that the same concepts that are sufficient to explain basic minds (with non-representational states) are also central to understanding non-basic minds (with representational states). We argue that recent work on the free energy principle supports the following claims with respect to the life-mind continuity thesis: (i) there is a strong continuity between life and mind; (ii) all living systems can be described as if they had representational states; (iii) the ’as-if representationality’ entailed by the free energy principle is central to understanding both basic forms of intentionality and intentionality in non-basic minds. In addition to this, we argue that the free energy principle also renders realism about computation and representation compatible with a strong life-mind continuity thesis (although the free energy principle does not entail computational and representational realism). In particular, we show how representationality proper can be grounded in ’as-if representationality’.

中文翻译：

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考察人与人之间的连续性：自体意图和代表性之间是否存在连续性？

弱化人心连续性的论点意味着，每个生命系统也都具有基本的思想（具有非代表性的意向性）。强势版本要求足以解释基本思想（具有非代表性状态）的相同概念对于理解非基础思想（具有代表性状态）也很重要。我们认为，关于自由能原理的最新研究支持了关于生命意识连续性论点的以下主张：（i）生命与思想之间有很强的连续性；（ii）可以将所有生命系统描述为具有代表性的状态；（iii）自由能原理所带来的“假设代表”对于理解非基本思想中的意图和意图的基本形式至关重要。除此之外，我们认为，自由能原理还使计算和表示的真实性与强大的生命连续性论点兼容（尽管自由能原理并不要求计算和表示现实性）。特别是，我们展示了如何适当地基于“假设表达”来建立适当的表达。