Luca M. Possati is Assistant Professor at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. Trained as a philosopher, he has held positions at the Delft University of Technology, the University of Porto, and the Institut Catholique de Paris. He is the author of The Algorithmic Unconscious.

Introduction
0.1 What is active inference?
0.2 The third cybernetics
0.3 Scope and structure of the book
Chapter 1: The Brain as a Predictive Machine
1.1 The logic of prediction
1.2 The brain is not an organ passively waiting for stimuli
1.3 Action and perception
1.4 The dark room problem
1.5 Conclusions
Chapter 2: Active Inference: A Global Picture
2.1 A normative approach
2.2 Self-organization
2.3 Nonequilibrium steady states
2.4 Markov blankets
2.5 Bayesian inference
2.6 Machinery 1—Causal models of the world
2.7 Machinery 2—No optimality
2.8 Hierarchical models
2.9 A new Design for a Brain
2.10 Some criticisms, and a new image for the FEP
2.11 Conclusion
Chapter 3: Technology as Active Inference
3.1 Niche construction. Active inference applied to cultural and social processes
3.2 Machine agency and the FEP
3.2.1 A model of machine agency
3.2.2 Understanding technical mediation: post-phenomenology through the lens of active inference
3.2.3 Agency and symmetrical ontology: ANT and active inference
3.2.4 Rethinking the extended mind with FEP
3.3 Conclusions
Chapter 4: Design as Creation of Markov Blankets. A Roadmap
4.1 The act of design as the purposeful creation of new statistical boundaries
4.2 Three design mechanisms: precision crafting, curiosity sculpting, and prediction embedding
4.2.1 How can artifacts encode probability distributions?
4.3 Artifacts as synchronizers
4.3.1 Remarks on synchronization
4.3.2 Innovation and groups
4.3.3 The areas of technological innovation
4.4 Conclusions
Chapter 5: Smartphones, Robots, Smart Cities, and Holography with Dense Wireless Networks
5.1 The smartphone
5.1.1 Methodological caveats
5.1.2 Analysis of the agents
5.2 Adaptive robotics
5.2.1 Analysis of the agents
5.3 Smart cities and urban planning
5.4 Holography with dense wireless networks
5.5 Conclusions
Appendix. The DAU software package for active inference-based design
Chapter 6: Psycho-Technological Ecosystems
6.1 Technology and feelings
6.1.1 The depth of interoception
6.1.2 Technology as affective scaffold
6.2 Technology and psychopathology
6.2.1 A general approach to psychopathology
6.2.2 Depression
6.2.3 Addiction
6.3 An active inference framework for understanding mentalizing
6.3.1 Dimensions of mentalizing
6.3.2 Active inference and mentalizing
6.3.3 Mentalizing through artifacts
6.4 Conclusions
Conclusion and future research lines
Acknowledgments
References
Notes