On Embedded Normativity - An Active Inference account of agency beyond flesh

We introduce and motivate the concept of \emph{embedded normativity} to account for the externalization of social norms in the material environment through human social activity. We ground this notion in the Active Inference framework, and more specifically through the derived Skilled Intentionality framework of ecological perception and action. This framework considers that skilled agent experience the world as a landscape of affordances, or opportunities for action. This landscape is inherently normative, as its experience is tied to the agent's anticipations over its own behaviour (and therefore, indirectly, to its motivations). We emphasize that given this framework, normativity does not exist inside or outside the agent's boundaries, but is brought about by its engagement with the world. We discuss the dynamics of \emph{internalization} and \emph{externalization} by which agents come to project normativity onto elements of their environment, and experience this normativity as a simple attraction toward favoured states. Given this account, we revisit earlier descriptions of the shared material and sociocultural niche enable the broadcasting and integration of norms. Finally, we discuss how embedded normativity can be brought into existence by the perception of humans, and relate our discussion to the ontological stance of participatory realism.