Predictive processing theories are increasingly popular in philosophy of mind; such process theories often gain support from the Free Energy Principle (FEP)—a normative principle for adaptive self-organized systems. Yet there is a current and much discussed debate about conflicting philosophical interpretations of FEP, e.g., representational versus non-representational. Here we argue that these different interpretations depend on implicit assumptions about what qualifies (or fails to qualify) as representational. We deploy the Free Energy Principle (FEP) instrumentally to distinguish four main notions of representation, which focus on organizational, structural, content-related and functional aspects, respectively. The various ways that these different aspects matter in arriving at representational or non-representational interpretations of the Free Energy Principle are discussed. We also discuss how the Free Energy Principle may be seen as a unified view where terms that traditionally belong to different ontologies—e.g., notions of model and expectation versus notions of autopoiesis and synchronization—can be harmonized. However, rather than attempting to settle the representationalist versus non-representationalist debate and reveal something about what representations are simpliciter, this paper demonstrates how the Free Energy Principle may be used to reveal something about those partaking in the debate; namely, what our hidden assumptions about what representations are—assumptions that act as sometimes antithetical starting points in this persistent philosophical debate.

预测处理理论在心智哲学中越来越流行。这样的过程理论通常会得到自由能原理（FEP）的支持，自由能原理是自适应自组织系统的一种规范性原理。然而，对于FEP的相互矛盾的哲学解释，例如代表性与非代表性，存在着当前且讨论最多的辩论。在这里，我们认为，这些不同的解释取决于隐含的假设，即关于哪些东西符合（或不符合）代表性的假设。我们有条不紊地运用自由能原理（FEP）来区分表示的四个主要概念，它们分别关注组织，结构，内容相关和功能方面。讨论了这些不同方面对自由能源原理的代表性或非代表性解释产生影响的各种方式。我们还将讨论如何将“自由能原理”视为一个统一的视图，在该视图中可以统一传统上属于不同本体的术语（例如，模型和期望的概念与自生和同步的概念）。但是，与其试图解决代表制与非代表制的争论，不如揭示什么是代表制。简单来说，本文演示了如何使用自由能原理来揭示辩论中那些参与其中的人；即，我们对表示形式的隐含假设是什么？这些假设在这场持续不断的哲学辩论中有时是相反的起点。