How cECT Could Be Created A Philosophical Genealogy from Ingold, Popper, Deutsch/Marletto, Tononi, and Friston

AbstractThis paper reconstructs a plausible philosophical pathway by which Computable Embodied ConstructorTheory (cECT) could be created as a framework for engineering knowledge without treating subjectivephenomenology as a scientific primitive. The reconstruction follows a deliberate dependency order. TimIngold provides the foundational move: knowledge as skillful grip grown in ongoing engagement with anenvironment. Karl Popper adds the requirement of objective knowledge—externalizable and criticizablestructures whose validity does not depend on a knowing subject's certainty. David Deutsch and ChiaraMarletto supply the physical backbone via constructor theory: knowledge is tied to counterfactualcapability, i.e., which transformations are possible or impossible in nature, and information is defined inpurely physical terms. Giulio Tononi contributes a formal lens for integration/irreducibility, clarifying whyrobust competence often demands a unified cause–effect organization rather than a bag of separablesubroutines. Karl Friston supplies a computable motor—active inference and free-energy minimization—by which skillful engagement can be expressed as explicit update laws coupling inference and action. cECTemerges as an engineering epistemology: knowledge is an auditable trajectory of an embodied systemthat becomes capable of reliably bringing about transformations while maintaining integratedorganization under physical constraints.Keywords: physical epistemology; embodied cognition; constructor theory; active inference; free energy;integrated information; auditability