1. Evidence for anticipation ≠ evidence for a global principle of “uncertainty minimization.
Elite batting or return tasks show anticipatory control because neural and sensorimotor delays demand feed-forward strategies. That is perfectly compatible with many control-theoretic explanations (internal models, Smith predictors, model predictive control, dynamical systems) that do not require Bayesian inference or a universal principle of “uncertainty minimization.” From “organisms behave as if anticipating” it does not follow that they literally minimize epistemic uncertainty.
2. Shannon information, thermodynamic free energy, and semantic or epistemic uncertainty are categorically different concepts.
Formal similarities (e.g., entropy, noise, and signal) do not justify treating them as identical. Variational free energy in Friston’s sense is a model-relative bound on surprisal, not a physical energy quantity; and “uncertainty” here is a term defined over the probability distributions of a generative model. Sliding between these domains without a strict translation rule is a category error.
Between physics and semantics there can be no bridge law, only correlation.
A physical process can correlate with a semantic or cognitive state, but it can never produce, translate into, or explain it. The physical and the semantic belong to different epistemic domains; their connection is observational, not generative.
3. What would count as a risky, discriminative prediction?
If “organisms minimize uncertainty” is to be an empirical claim rather than a post-hoc description, it must yield a pre-specified, falsifiable prediction that (i) distinguishes the FEP/predictive-coding framework from alternative non-Bayesian control models, (ii) is measurable in the organism itself (not only in our statistical model), and (iii) could in principle fail.
Without such criteria, the “principle” remains unfalsifiable and collapses into metaphor.
So the issue is not anticipation or control per se — I fully agree that organisms stabilize their internal dynamics. The issue is the illegitimate conceptual leap from physical energy flow to semantic uncertainty, and from probabilistic modelling to biological reality. That’s precisely the confusion I am objecting to.