A Cladistic Taxonomy of Cognitive States: An Integrated Model of Active Inference and Epistemic Parity

Mainstream analytic epistemology habitually treats doxastic attitudes as idealized, cost-free propositional calculations. This paper outlines an alternative, thoroughly materialist architecture rooted in Karl Friston’s Free-Energy Principle (FEP) and predictive processing. Moving away from rigid cladistic branching models, we formulate a dynamic framework of cognitive states defined by top-down precision weighting across cortical networks. Rather than functioning as passive truth-evaluators, mental states specifically belief, disbelief, and suspended judgment are energy constrained reality engines optimized for metabolic survival. We demonstrate that true suspension of judgment (neutrality) is not a passive baseline default, but a highly active prefrontal mechanism that enforces symmetrical precision weights on opposing internal models. Finally, building on the neuroimaging foundations of Harris, Kaplan, and Cohen (2008), we refine a forced-choice fMRI betting paradigm under asymmetric risk designed to empirically isolate the high thermodynamic cost of maintaining objective neutrality against baseline subcortical biases. This design uniquely distinguishes active objectivity (characterized by concurrent dlPFC precision gating) from generalized cognitive confusion (characterized by Anterior Cingulate Cortex activation due to heightened prediction error conflict). Ultimately, this framework reframes objectivity not as the absence of a bias, but as the deliberate, metabolically expensive, symmetrical anchoring of opposing biases.