Deep neurophenomenology: An active inference account of some features of conscious experience and of their disturbance in major depressive disorder

This paper aims to leverage the free-energy principle and active inference to make sense of some central facets of the first-person conscious experience of human beings. More precisely, we explore two central facets of the first-person conscious experience of human beings via the free-energy principle and active inference. We examine how active inference is able to account for temporal nestedness of conscious experience and for the concern or care that is the main structure of first-person experience according to phenomenological philosophy. We investigate the breakdown of these features in depression—and explain some of the core aspects of the phenomenology of depression by appealing to the active inference framework.