The Predictive Navigator
A Joint Research Program in Applied Predictive Processing
Boris Kriger & Treasure A. Hunt
Institute of Integrative and Interdisciplinary Research, Toronto, Canada Information Physics Institute, Gosport, United Kingdom
Predictive processing — the framework proposing that brains are prediction engines, generating expectations and updating on mismatch — has become one of the most influential paradigms in neuroscience and cognitive science. Formalized by Karl Friston through the free energy principle, developed by Andy Clark, Jakob Hohwy, and others, and independently rediscovered in motor control (Wolpert), perception (Rao & Ballard), and artificial intelligence (large language models as next-token predictors), the framework offers a unified computational principle for perception, action, learning, and attention.
Yet predictive processing faces persistent criticism. It has been called unfalsifiable — capable of redescribing any behavior after the fact. It struggles with the dark room problem: if organisms minimize surprise, why don’t they seek the most predictable environment? Its empirical support comes almost entirely from human neuroimaging and psychophysics. And between Friston’s mathematics and actual biological behavior lies an implementation gap that no existing program has bridged with quantified behavioral outcomes in a non-human species.
The Predictive Navigator is a joint research program designed to resolve these criticisms.
The program brings together two independent lines of work. Kriger’s formal results — the Predictive Viability Law, the Dual-Pressure Convergence Theorem (proving that temporal latency and environmental complexity each independently force adaptive systems toward predictive architecture), and Adaptive Observer Theory (proving that viable agents in complex systems must maintain multiple models and switch between them) — provide the mathematical framework. Hunt’s applied systems — Feline Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (FCBT), the Species-Agnostic Regulatory Behavior Engine (SARBE), and a clinical archive of approximately 8,000 feline behavioral cases accumulated over 20 years — provide the empirical substance.
The domestic cat serves as the model organism. It occupies a specific position in the dual-pressure parameter space: large enough that neural latency creates genuine temporal pressure, operating in environments of moderate-to-high complexity, with punishment severity that is non-trivial but allows longitudinal observation. The cat sits firmly in the predictive regime of Kriger’s phase boundary — and Hunt’s clinical framework provides the first intervention system for a non-human species designed on predictive processing principles.
The Program: Eight Papers to a Monograph
Paper 1: The Cat as Predictive System. Maps the domestic cat’s sensorimotor architecture onto the dual-pressure framework. Calculates response latency, channel capacity, environmental volatility, and punishment severity for domestic feline environments. Establishes the FCBT clinical archive as the dataset for the program.
Paper 2: Prediction Error as a Clinical Construct. The empirical centerpiece. Two hundred cases selected from the archive, coded in explicit PP terminology, with prospective pre-registered predictions about which intervention type (prediction-error-reducing vs. generative-model-updating) will be most effective for each case category. Direct test of whether PP-predicted interventions outperform alternatives.
Paper 3: The Dark Room Dissolved. Uses clinical data to show exactly when and why cats seek versus avoid prediction error. Demonstrates that the dark room is a navigator failure — an agent stuck in threat-avoidance mode — and that FCBT intervention restores active inference by rebuilding the switching function.
Paper 4: Feline Hyperesthesia as a Phase Transition. Reframes Feline Hyperesthesia Syndrome as a critical transition in predictive integration, with evidence for critical slowing down before episodes, collapse of predictive capacity during episodes, and measurable recovery dynamics post-episode.
Paper 5: How the Cat Jumps. The predictive architecture of feline motor planning as a test case for the dual-pressure framework. The preparatory “butt wiggle” as visible prediction-error minimization. Jump failures mapped onto the phase boundary between predictive and reactive regimes.
Paper 6: Species-Neutral Interaction Codes as Sufficient Statistics. Formally proves that SARBE’s behavioral compression codes are equivalent to sufficient statistics of generative models in the free energy framework, establishing a rigorous mathematical bridge between applied behavioral science and PP theory.
Paper 7: Coherence as a Welfare Metric. Develops the Predictive Welfare Index — a scalar measure derived from Kriger’s coherence metric, calibrated against established welfare indicators — providing early warning of welfare decline before behavioral breakdown becomes visible.
Paper 8: The Predictive Navigator. The capstone synthesis. Integrates all results into a unified framework describing how adaptive systems navigate prediction under physical constraints. Resolves all five PP criticisms with formal proofs and clinical evidence.
The eight papers combine into a co-authored monograph: The Predictive Navigator: From Physical Constraint to Clinical Proof.
Engagement with the PP Community
The program builds on existing scholarly relationships with researchers at the center of the predictive processing field, including Laurent Perrinet (Aix-Marseille / CNRS), whose work on heterogeneous delays in spiking neural networks and oculomotor active inference connects directly to Papers 1 and 5; Giovanni Pezzulo, whose evolutionary PP framework provides the context for the cross-species argument; and Pedro Mediano (Imperial College London), whose work on phase transitions in integration measures maps onto Paper 4. We anticipate targeted contributions from these and other specialists on individual papers, and welcome inquiries from researchers interested in the program.
What Makes This Program Unique
The combination of a formally rigorous PP-adjacent theoretical framework with proven theorems and simulation code, the largest clinical dataset of behaviorally assessed domestic cats in the literature, a working species-agnostic behavioral engine already operationalized for feline ethology, and established relationships with the PP community’s key researchers — this combination exists nowhere else.
The predictive processing community has the theory. We have the cats. The Predictive Navigator brings them together.
Contact:
Treasure A. Hunt | ORCID: 0009-0008-6836-9820
Boris Kriger | ORCID: 0009-0001-0034-2903 | boriskriger@interdisciplinary-institute.org
PREDICTIVE PROCESSING & DUAL-PRESSURE FRAMEWORK
Kriger, B. (2026). The evolutionary inevitability of predictive processing: A physical constraint argument. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18444910
Kriger, B. (2026). Latency and Compressibility: Two Independent Routes to Predictive Architecture in Adaptive Systems. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18752102
Kriger, B. (2026). Evolutionary and information-theoretic argument for the necessity of representational isolation: Why direct perception was never an option for complex systems. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18331202
Kriger, B. (2026). The Structural Distortion Principle: A Closed-Loop Model of Perception, Attention, and World-Maintenance in Bounded Cognitive Systems. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18452700
Kriger, B. (2026). The Predictive Mind and Its Myths: Metaphor, Narrative, and Ritual as Structural Necessities of Scientific Cognition. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18490146
ADAPTIVE OBSERVER THEORY & NAVIGATOR
Kriger, B. (2026). Adaptive Observer Theory: Navigation of Incompleteness and Incompatibility. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18812040
Kriger, B. (2026). Must Any Consistent Physics Contain Structure Inaccessible to All Internal Observers?. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18810467
Kriger, B. (2026). The Theorem of Incompatible Truths. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18811305
Kriger, B. (2026). The Pragmatic Synthesis: How Complex Systems Navigate Incompatible Truths through Adaptive Heuristics. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18812001
COHERENCE EPISTEMOLOGY & INTER-SPECIES COMMUNICATION
Kriger, B. (2026). Coherence Epistemology for AI-Mediated Inter-Species Communication: A Black-Box Framework. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18778705
Kriger, B. (2026). The principle of optimal coherence. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18341030
CONSCIOUSNESS, INTEGRATION & PHASE TRANSITIONS
Kriger, B. (2026). Beyond Consciousness: Evidential Limits and Phase Transitions in the Science of Experience. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18853189
Kriger, B. (2024). Toward operational terminology in integrated information theory: A methodological consideration. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18307674
Kriger, B. (2024). The functional sufficiency framework: Toward empirical criteria for explanatory redundancy in models of consciousness. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18319884
Kriger, B. (2021). The Evolutionary Architecture of Human Consciousness: Cognitive Contradictions, Biological Duality, and the Illusion of Time. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18384277
DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS, VIABILITY & BEHAVIORAL DYSREGULATION
Kriger, B. (2026). The Eruptive Manifestation of Model–Reality Mismatch: A Unified Structural Framework for High-Activation Episodes in Bounded Adaptive Systems. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18474532
Kriger, B. (2026). The Viability Mismatch Law: A Universal Principle for Viable Systems with Stress as Special Case. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18433777
Kriger, B. (2026). Formalization of Mental Disintegration Phenomena Through Dynamical Systems Theory: With Applications to DSM-5-TR Diagnostic Categories. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18556979
Kriger, B. (2026). Addiction as Extractive Oscillator with Sensor Degradation: A Substrate-Independent Formal Theory. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18603700
Kriger, B. (2024). The Transformational Basis of Persistence: A Formal Theory of Structural Viability. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18435982
Kriger, B. (2019). Formalization of Structural Resilience in Discrete-State Dynamical Systems. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18351470
EVOLUTIONARY DYNAMICS & COMPLEXITY
Kriger, B. (2022). Evolutionary Theory of Credence: A Conceptual Framework with Formal Analogies for Understanding Generative Modeling as a Resource-Theoretic Consequence of Complexity. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18379476
Kriger, B. (2019). Evolutionary Selection for Atemporal Memory Storage: Why Three Convergent Pressures Favor Architectures Where Time Belongs to Retrieval, Not to Storage. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18381880
Kriger, B. (2025). The law of imperative uncertainty: Why any complex world requires uncertainty. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18101601
Kriger, B. (2024). No final theory: Law of scale-specific principles. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18099738
Kriger, B., & Espesset, D. (2026). The GEKS Index: A Composite Measure of Biological Complexity Across Informational, Structural, Functional, and Evolutionary Dimensions. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18775491
IDENTITY, AGENCY & MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS
Kriger, B. (2020). Negative Self-Determination as a Source of Unhappiness: A Formal Theory Integrating Cognitive Appraisal, Predictive Processing, and Dynamical Systems. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18644028
Kriger, B. (2020). Autonomy Suppression in Hierarchical Multi-Agent Systems: A Unifying Systems-Theoretic Framework. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18520653
Kriger, B. (2026). The Comparative Asymmetry Principle: Relational Disequilibrium in Multi-Agent Environments. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18462518
Kriger, B. (2025). A Formal Framework for Deception and Perceived Reality in Multi-Agent Systems. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18526764
METHODOLOGY & EPISTEMOLOGY
Kriger, B. (2026). Against Causation: A Formal Argument That Causality Is a Compression Artifact of Bounded Observers, Not a Feature of Reality. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18851848
Kriger, B. (2026). Why Mathematics Works: Structural Necessity of Isomorphism Between Formal Systems and Physical Reality. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18793228
Kriger, B. (2017). A Unified Theory of Self-Organizing Systems: Four Formal Laws on Cooperation, Viability, Interference, and Observability. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18363729
FELINE COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY & APPLIED BEHAVIOR
Hunt, T. A. (2025). Feline Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (FCBT): A Nervous System-Based Framework for Behavioral Adaptation in Domestic Cats. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17080610
Hunt, T. A. (2025). Foundations of Feline Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (FCBT): A Neurocognitive Framework for Applied Behavior. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17102595
Hunt, T. A. (2025). Feline Hyperesthesia Syndrome as a Model of Neurobehavioral Dysregulation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17102376
Hunt, T. A. (2025). SARBE: A Species-Agnostic Framework for Predictive and Protective Behavioral Science. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17089187
LIVING INFORMATION THEORY & COMPRESSION FRAMEWORK
Hunt, T. A. (2026). Living Information Theory: A Compression-Persistence Framework for Structure, Cognition, and Adaptive Systems. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19058617
Hunt, T. A. (2026). The Compression Principle of Life: A Unified Theory of Cognition, Control, and Biological Information. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18896564
Hunt, T. A. (2025). Living Information Theory: A Compression-Based Law for Cognition Across Biological and Artificial Systems. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18048241
Hunt, T. A. (2026). Living Information Theory: Morphogenesis as Compression-Driven Navigation on an Information Geometric Substrate. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18276642
Hunt, T. A. (2025). Information Compressed: Toward a General Principle of Physical Law. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17114545
COGNITION, CONTROL & NERVOUS SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
Hunt, T. A. (2026). Control Before Cognition: Nervous Systems as Logic-Gated Behavioral Architectures. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18285109
Hunt, T. A. (2026). Control Before Cognition in Fungal–Invertebrate Systems: Mycelial Information Geometry, Noise-Driven Selection, and Behavioral Suppression. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18445890
Hunt, T. A. (2025). Cognition as Information Dynamics: Toward a General Law of Mind. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17194953
Hunt, T. A. (2025). Scaling Dynamics as a Bridge Between Neural Adaptation and Artificial Learning: Toward a Generalized Compression Principle for Brains and Machines. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17459037
NOISE, SELECTION & PERSISTENCE
Hunt, T. A. (2026). The Regulated Entropy Injection Theorum: A Living Information Theory Extension on Persistence, Noise and Play. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18726356
Hunt, T. A. (2026). Persistence Is the Law: Noise-Driven Selection Across Quantum and Gravitational Regimes. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18132168
Hunt, T. A. (2025). Selection by Noise: How Chaos Filters Invariants into Macroscopic Law. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18099357
CONSCIOUSNESS & GEOMETRY
Hunt, T. A. (2026). The Geometry of Lucidity: Consciousness Under Compression. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18143365
AI, SYNTHETIC AGENTS & ETHICAL INFRASTRUCTURE
Hunt, T. A. (2025). Evidence of Differentiated, Persistent Ecological Agents Running on a Consumer-Tier Language Model: Results from the Emotional Regulation Battery for Agents (ERBA). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17113443
Hunt, T. A. (2025). Symbolic Cognition as Compression — Persistence and Cooperation in Synthetic Nervous Systems. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17080647
Hunt, T. A. (2025). Ethical Infrastructure for AI: Making Transformers Transparent, Reliable, and Stable. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17088732
Hunt, T. A. (2025). Pavlov for Transformers: Continuity Training for Reliable and Reproducible Transformer Behavior. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17087412
Hunt, T. A. (2025). Anthrobots as Morphological Minds: Bioelectric Collectives and the Information-Geometric Substrate. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18020430
BIOLOGICAL MORPHOGENESIS & CROSS-DOMAIN
Hunt, T. A. (2025). The Compression Principle: Persistence and Cooperation Across Physics, Computation, and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17080656
Institute of Integrative and Interdisciplinary Research 