Some number of the examples in this post don’t make sense to me. For example, where is the membrane in “work/life balance”? Or, where is the membrane in “personal space” (see Duncan’s post, which is linked).
I think there’s a thing that is “social boundaries”, which is like preferences— and there’s also a thing like “informational or physical membranes”, which happens to use the same word “boundaries”, but is much more universal than preferences. Personally, I think these two things are worth regarding as separate concepts.
Personally, I like to think about membranes as a predominantly homeostaticautopoietic thing. Agents maintain their membranes. They do not “set” boundaries, they ARE boundaries.
[I explain this disagreement a bit more in this post.]
An extra thought: All membranes (boundaries) are Markov blankets, but not all Markov blankets are membranes.
For example, if two social groups are isolated from each other there’s a Markov blanket between them. However, that could just be spurious because they happen not to talk, rather than because there is an agent there that is actively maintaining that separation.
Some number of the examples in this post don’t make sense to me. For example, where is the membrane in “work/life balance”? Or, where is the membrane in “personal space” (see Duncan’s post, which is linked).
I think there’s a thing that is “social boundaries”, which is like preferences— and there’s also a thing like “informational or physical membranes”, which happens to use the same word “boundaries”, but is much more universal than preferences. Personally, I think these two things are worth regarding as separate concepts.
Personally, I like to think about membranes as a predominantly
homeostaticautopoietic thing. Agents maintain their membranes. They do not “set” boundaries, they ARE boundaries.[I explain this disagreement a bit more in this post.]
An extra thought: All membranes (boundaries) are Markov blankets, but not all Markov blankets are membranes.
For example, if two social groups are isolated from each other there’s a Markov blanket between them. However, that could just be spurious because they happen not to talk, rather than because there is an agent there that is actively maintaining that separation.