Mechanism is (locally) enough: rethinking normativity with the free energy principle in light of interactivism

This paper examines the role of predictive mechanisms in explaining normativity by engaging critically with Mark Bickhard’s argument that mechanisms alone are insufficient for naturalizing normative functions. While Bickhard emphasizes the necessity of asymmetries between system and environment—particularly those sustaining far-from-equilibrium conditions—I argue that the free energy principle provides conceptual and formal tools to model a mechanistic layer of normativity embedded within such asymmetries. By focusing on systems that minimize variational free energy, I show how predictive mechanisms can be understood as normatively organized insofar as they contribute to the system’s adaptive functioning and stability. Rather than opposing Bickhard’s view, the paper proposes a complementary account: normativity arises both from the organism’s relation to its environment and from the internal causal architecture that supports anticipatory, representational, and action-guiding capacities. On this view, mechanisms are not sufficient in an ontological sense, but they can be explanatorily sufficient for modeling how normativity operates within living systems.