• View
• Edit
• History
• Print

Andrius Kulikauskas would like the Active Inference Institute to submit a proposal on his behalf to the Templeton Foundation. Here is his sketch of the proposal.

Dear Daniel and all,

I am considering applying for a grant from the Templeton Foundation. The deadline is August 16. As an individual, I have practically no chance of winning. I am wondering if it would be possible and meaningful for the Active Inference Institute to submit a proposal on my behalf. I am sketching out my ideas of what such a proposal could look like. For my own sake, I would find it worthwhile to write a proposal to express what I would like support for in terms of what both the Active Inference Institute and the Templeton Foundation would find meaningful. This may prove meaningful in approaching other potential supporters.

What I truly want support for

I wish for a community of investigators who seek profound answers to the big questions in life, who discover, validate, share and apply fundamental, universal, absolute truths which enrich our human experience. I want to facilitate this by contributing my ongoing life's work, Wondrous Wisdom, a holistic language of conceptual frameworks, which documents the limits of our imagination regarding our own lives. I want to create a website, Theory Translator, http://www.theorytranslator.com to describe roughly 30 frameworks and illustrate them with at least 500 examples taken from the works of all manner of thinkers. I wish to work with others to verify the reality of these frameworks in three areas:

• As cultural invariants which can serve as a universal language for translating ideas from one theory into another, providing a broader, richer, deeper context for all manner of theories, and notably, Active Inference, a robust contemporary theory of sentient life.
• As abstract mathematical structures, such as Bott periodicity, adjunctions, chain complexes, which can be interpreted as modeling mathematical thinking itself;
• As conceptual grounds for a morality which suggests itself from the converging worldviews of diverse ecological thinkers.

I wish to help others develop and conduct insightful investigations of their boldest questions, making the most of their personal intuitions, often leveraging the Theory Translator and expanding upon it. I wish to pursue my own investigations, including contemplating the big picture, how God's investigations (as 24-fold structures expressing whether, what, how, why God is) relate with human's investigations (as 8-fold structures expressing how to live in God's will, good will, wisdom and eternal life). (1754 characters)

Why I expect my proposal would be rejected

Although on the face of it, The Templeton Foundation was established to support the very work that I am doing, but in practice, I do not resemble the typical project they fund. I do not fit neatly within their funding areas. I am not affiliated with an academic institution. I have not published peer reviewed articles in the areas that I am researching. Furthermore, my perspective is so unusual, original, bold and incomprehensible, that it's unlikely that a reviewer would make sense of me. In principle, they do consider proposals from independent researchers, but in practice, they rarely fund them. In general, they fund academics for interdisciplinary research. Here is their database of funded projects, which I suggest sorting starting with the smallest: (777 characters) https://www.templeton.org/grants/grant-database

Why it could be meaningful for the Active Inference Institute to submit a proposal

Here are some examples of proposals that have been accepted in the life sciences area. (Search on "life sciences".)

• Bayesian Agents In A Physical World $232,446
• Purpose, Agency, And Field Theory $246,053
• A workshop to integrate three disciplines relevant to goal directedness in abiogenesis $246,646
• Agency, Directionality, And Function: Foundations For A Science Of Purpose $14,559,516

All of the proposals in the Life Science category were made by large institutions. So the Active Inference Institute might not have much chance of winning, though more than me. Perhaps some day the Active Inference Institute could team up with a university to make a submission. In the meanwhile, submitting a proposal on my behalf could be an opportunity for the Active Inference Institute to get more practice submitting proposals. It is also a chance to think through why and how it might work together with me or other independent researchers. Unfortunately, the Templeton Foundation generally does not supply any feedback as to why proposals were rejected or how they could be improved.

Active Inference of Absolute Truth

Active inference is a theory explaining how any sentient living being interacts with its environment. This robust theory is part of a wider movement, which the Templeton Foundation has supported, to expand scientific discourse to include questions of why, causality, agency, purpose, sentience, animal emotions, plant communication, consciousness, meditation, prayer and panpsychism. These expanding horizons lead to perhaps the greatest academic taboo, the concept of absolute truth, which inherently transcends academic distinctions. Absolute truth is the inevitable foundation for an overarching perspective, a divine view upon the purpose and meaning of life, which is what so many people actually seek yet cannot within contemporary science.

The Active Inference Institute is a setting for pursuing a better understanding of Active Inference. The Institute blurs the boundary between academics and nonacademics as they learn, research and apply Active Inference, which touches on practically all of life. Leaders host live streams in math, art, sociology, biology and psychology, lecture on the physics of information processing, and organize conferences in robotics and artificial intelligence. In the spirit of active inference, the Institute and its leaders actively infer the bigger picture, both by perceiving - recognizing the successes and limitations of their existing models, and by acting - engaging others to discover new ways of looking at things.

Active Inference Institute President Daniel Friedman thus met Andrius Kulikauskas of Math 4 Wisdom, an investigatory online community for absolute truth. Since 1982, Kulikauskas has documented a language of conceptual frameworks, Wondrous Wisdom, and now wants to present it as an interactive website, a Theory Translator http://www.theorytranslator.com describing some 30 ubiquitous conceptual frameworks, illustrating them with at least 500 examples taken from all manner of thinkers. Kulikauskas has a PhD in mathematics - algebraic combinatorics - and explores where "divisions of everything" such as free will vs. fate, or the learning cycle of taking a stand, following through, reflecting, or four levels of knowledge - whether, what, how, why - appear in advanced mathematics: Bott periodicity, adjunctions and the Yoneda embedding. With Friedman's help, Kulikauskas is learning the intricacies of Active Inference and relating them to Wondrous Wisdom, especially the gap between an Unconscious mind, neuronally enmeshed with the environment, and a Conscious mind, conceptually modeling itself, as related by a third mind, Consciousness, which balances the other two and governs their implementation. Kulikauskas wants to apply Wondrous Wisdom to establish bridges between the mathematical ontology of Active Inference and an amazing variety of theories, showing how similar ideas arise in different contexts.

Active Inference, as a theory, is compatible with absolute truth. In Bayesian statistics, a conceptual model can have priors that are taken to be absolutely certain. Such models are not necessarily doomed but may, in particular cases, prove justifiable in terms of their outcomes. It may even be that there are universal attractors to which a wide class of systems tends towards universally. Active Inference is remarkable in that it draws inferences not only from bottom-up evidence of perceptions but also from top-down explorations driven by existing conceptual models. Thus Active Inference is a natural context for the freedom of an agent. Kulikauskas proposes to clarify that context of freedom by using the Theory Translator to explore how that context for free will is understood in a wide variety of theories. In particular, he will pay special attention to ecological thinkers to see how their diverse values may converge upon the foundations for a universal morality, which again could inform the development of Active Inference.

Kulikauskas and many of his colleagues at Math 4 Wisdom are PhDs doing independent research that they could not do within academia. The Templeton Foundation and Active Inference Institute can provide support and inclusion for successful work by this conceptual avant garde. (4,194 characters)

John Templeton Foundation. Online Funding Inquiry.

The John Templeton Foundation supports interdisciplinary research and catalyzes conversations that inspire awe and wonder. Our funding areas define our philanthropic priorities and advance our aspiration to create a world where people are curious about the wonders of the universe, free to pursue lives of meaning and purpose, and motivated by great and selfless love.

Funding Areas

• The Life Sciences funding area supports projects that seek novel and fundamental insights into the meaning and significance of life processes, by which we can better understand humanity’s place within nature.
  • Science of purpose. We are looking for experimental and theoretical research projects that will provide insight into the purposive, goal-directed, or agential behaviors that characterize organisms and various components of living systems. Researchers who have familiarity with our ongoing work in this area are especially encouraged to apply.
• The Public Engagement funding area supports content projects that include video, audio, public events, and print media. In addition, we seek proposals that support the next generation of thought leaders, generate durable courses and programming at leading universities.
• In our Mathematical and Physical Sciences funding area, we support research seeking to shed light on the fundamental concepts of physical reality. We also explore the interplay between these sciences and broader human experience.
• The Religion, Science, & Society funding area will seek to advance our collective understanding of the ways in which religious and spiritual beliefs and practices affect human flourishing and to apply those insights to society in meaningful and practical ways.
• The Character Virtue Development funding area supports research and catalyzes conversations that seek to advance the science and practice of character, with a focus on moral, performance, civic, and intellectual virtues such as humility, gratitude, curiosity, diligence, and honesty.
• The Individual Freedom & Free Markets funding area supports education, research, and outreach projects to promote individual freedom, free markets, free competition, and entrepreneurship.

Project Description

• 1. Project Title: (Limit your response to 150 characters)
• 2. Executive Summary: (Limit your response to 1,300 characters)
• 3. Project Description: (Limit your response to 4,000 characters)
• 4. Statement of Significance: (Limit your response to 1,300 characters)
• 5. Outputs: (Limit your response to 1,300 characters)
• 6. Outcomes: (Limit your response to 1,300 characters)
• 7. Capacity for Success: (Limit your response to 1,300 characters)
• 8. Relation to Sir John Templeton's Donor Intent:(Limit response to 1,000 characters)
• 9. Project Relationship to Previous Grants:
• 10. Proposed Project Start Date:
• 11. Proposed Project End Date:

Personnel

• 12. Primary Contact [display only]
  • Prefix:
  • First name:
  • Middle name:
  • Last name:
  • Suffix:
  • Professional Title:
  • Email:
  • Phone Number:
• 13. Project Leader [select and update information if needed]
  • o The Primary Contact is the Project Leader
  • o The Project Leader is different than the Primary Contact
  • CV/Resume attachment: [upload]
• 14. Project Co-Leader [select and update information if needed]
  • o The Primary Contact is the Project Leader
  • o The Project Leader is different than the Primary Contact
  • • CV/Resume attachment: [upload]
• 15. To the best of your knowledge, is the Project Leader or Project Co-Leader a JTF Trustee, Officer, or staff member, or related to a JTF Trustee, Officer or staff member as a spouse, sibling, child, or parent? * [Yes/No]
• 16. Additional Personnel (Limit your response to 1,000 characters)
• 17. History with the Foundation (Limit your response to 1,000 characters)

Organization Information

• 18. Applicant Country:
• 19. Are you seeking funding as an individual? [Yes/No]
• 20. Organization Name:
  • a) Also Known As:
  • b) Did this organization receive 50% or more of its annual funding in any one of the last three years from any combination of the John Templeton Foundation, Templeton World Charity Foundation or Templeton Religion Trust?: [Yes/No]

Budget Information

• 21. In what currency are you requesting support from the Foundation?:
• 22. Request Amount:
• 23. Total Project Amount:
• 24. Brief Budget explanation and Sources of Additional Funding (maximum 1300 characters):

Calendar

• August 16, 2024 Deadline for Online Funding Inquiry.
• October 11, 2024 Decision made by this date whether you should submit a Full Proposal.
• January 17, 2025 Deadline for Full Proposals.
• July 11, 2025 Decision made for Full Proposals.