Epistemological Interfaces, Scientific Realism, and Active Inference: Five Dialectical Confrontations on Cognitive and Cosmic Cartography

This paper examines the epistemological tension between perceptual interfaces, scientific realism, and systemic thermodynamics. Structured around five adversarial dialectics, it confronts: (1) Donald Hoffman's interface theory and Anil Seth's predictive processing against James J. Gibson's ecological realism; (2) Alan Sokal's immutable physical realism against Thomas Kuhn's evolutionary paradigms; (3) Peter Harrison's theological foundations of science against Joseph Henrich's cumulative collective brain; (4) the cosmological Principle of Mediocrity (Hawking, Sagan, Smolin) against the Anthropic Principle (Carter); and (5) Bas van Fraassen's constructive empiricism against Karl Friston's variational free energy principle. The synthesis demonstrates that human cognition does not access mind-independent reality directly, but navigates a top-down, survival-optimized interface whose pragmatic validity is governed by active inference behind a Markov blanket.