evidentiary boundary

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Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

An evidentiary boundary is the sensory interface through which a predictive system receives evidence about causes beyond itself, as developed in RB2’s Hohwy–Clark discussion. It limits epistemic access without making the organism causally sealed from its environment. The proposal distinguishes this access condition from a literal wall, a complete definition of the organism or a proof that knowledge cannot be corrected.

Explanation

Hohwy’s emphasis concerns evidence available through sensory states, rather than direct inspection of every distal cause. The boundary therefore specifies an inference problem. It does not establish that the world is merely an internal invention, since prediction error remains a form of resistance to the system’s expectations.

Clark’s response keeps bodies, actions and environmental scaffolds in view: organisms can select, arrange and stabilize the evidence they encounter. This qualification prevents epistemic mediation from becoming a picture of passive imprisonment. It also preserves the difference between a sensory interface and the wider causal field supporting practical activity.

RB2 introduces the Markov blanket as a statistical relation among internal, external, sensory and active states. That apparatus is not simply a physical wall and its application carries idealization questions. The entry therefore preserves the local boundary discussion without claiming that every organism has one uniquely established, fixed statistical boundary at every scale.

Scope and attribution

Retain the Hohwy–Clark tension and statistical idealization limits.

RB2 — The Real Book, Volume II: Becoming Is Being

Sensory evidence, active scaffolding and statistical boundaries remain distinct aspects of the discussion.

Occurrence locators: 113, 114, 117, 118, 119, 134, 135.

Background used in the editorial explanation

The evidentiary-boundary issue is distinguished from generic idealization criticism.