Abstract

In this paper, we develop an account of normative attitudes based on the active inference framework. According to this framework, by interacting with its environment, an organism integrates in its generative model the statistical regularities of its ecological niche, while simultaneously altering the niche to minimize prediction error. For social organisms such as humans, other members of the group and their behaviors constitute a crucial part of the ecological niche, which becomes a social niche. The active inference framework notably entails that the organism will not simply passively learn the regularities of its social niche, but also actively impose these regularities to construct a more predictable environment. The perception of a social regularity in the group should therefore lead to the integration of this regularity into the organism’s generative model in the form of social predictions, which in turn should lead to the production of various behaviors enforcing this predicted regularity in the group. On our account, these behaviors fulfill the role of social sanctions, and the social predictions that generate these behaviors constitute normative attitudes. This account can explain various empirical findings related to the development of normative cognition, as well as accommodate some apparent counterexamples.