Liberty Severs

Ambient smart environments (ASEs) have been proposed as technologically enriched spaces capable of supporting adaptive behaviour and healthier habits Aydin (_Philosophy and Technology 32_(2):321–338, 2019); Hipólito et al. (_Synthese 199_(11):4457–4481, 2023); White & Hipólito, (_Cognitive Systems Research, 84,_ 101199, 2024) White & Miller, (_Synthese, 204_(2), 1–24, 2024) White et al. _Synthese, 205_(1), 1–18, 2024); Verbeek (_NanoEthics 3_(3):231–242, 2009). Proponents suggest that ASEs effectively disrupt maladaptive habitual behaviours by introducing optimal levels of uncertainty, implicitly guiding users towards healthier patterns of thinking and acting without requiring deliberate reflection. However, we argue that these interventionist approaches risk overlooking the conditions necessary for the consolidation of more sustainable and beneficial habits. In particular, we argue that such habits require the engagement of motivational states, effortful interaction, and opportunities for further reinforcement. To address this gap, we propose that ASE interventions must be complemented by more stable, deliberately structured, design-centred environments (DEs), which provide consistent affordances that explicitly invite reflective, intrinsically motivated interactions. We emphasise how these hybrid environments scaffold learning and feedback processes, and enable agents to progressively refine their engagement with affordances through experience and reflection. Finally, we discuss the broader philosophical and ethical implications, highlighting how hybrid environments mitigate the risks of techno-paternalism, and actively support adaptive autonomy, reflective control, and meaningful behavioural change.

Tourette syndrome (TS) has been associated with a rich set of symptoms that are said to be uncomfortable, unwilled, and effortful to manage. Furthermore, tics, the canonical characteristic of TS, are multifaceted, and their onset and maintenance is complex. A formal account that integrates these features of TS symptomatology within a plausible theoretical framework is currently absent from the field. In this paper, we assess the explanatory power of hierarchical generative modelling in accounting for TS symptomatology from the perspective of active inference. We propose a fourfold analysis of sensory, motor, and cognitive phenomena associated with TS. In Section 1, we characterise tics as a form of action aimed at sensory attenuation. In Section 2, we introduce the notion of epistemic ticcing and describe such behaviour as the search for evidence that there is an agent (i.e., self) at the heart of the generative hierarchy. In Section 3, we characterise both epistemic (sensation-free) and nonepistemic (sensational) tics as habitual behaviour. Finally, in Section 4, we propose that ticcing behaviour involves an inevitable conflict between distinguishable aspects of selfhood; namely, between the minimal phenomenal sense of self—which is putatively underwritten by interoceptive inference—and the explicit preferences that constitute the individual’s conceptual sense of self. In sum, we aim to provide an empirically informed analysis of TS symptomatology under active inference, revealing a continuity between covert and overt features of the condition.