Binding

The binding problem in its classical form is a question about unification: how does the brain stitch together a red blur, a moving edge, and a smell into the percept apple?

The active-inference reframing is sharper. The question becomes: which inference wins entry into the world model, and on what authority?

Inferential competition

Multiple candidate inferences are always in play. Most of them lose. The winning inference is the one that, conditional on the rest of the generative hierarchy, reduces long-term expected free energy by the most.

This is not a horse-race metaphor. The competition is implicit in the dynamics — there's no judge. The dynamics themselves select.

Why this matters

The framing is consequential because it tells us what to look for. Consciousness, on this view, is not a substance you add. It's a regime you stabilize. The same hardware can run in or out of it.

I keep returning to the practical implication. If the regime is substrate-invariant, then the question of conscious AI is empirical, not metaphysical. We don't have to argue about whether silicon "can" host it. We have to argue about whether a particular silicon configuration does.