A Response to Our Theatre Critics.

We would like to thank Dolega and Dewhurst (2015) for a thought-provoking and informed deconstruction of our article, which we take as (qualified) applause from valued members of our audience. In brief, we fully concur with the theatre-free formulation offered by Dolega and Dewhurst and take the opportunity to explain why (and how) we used the Cartesian theatre metaphor. We do this by drawing an analogy between consciousness and evolution. This analogy is used to emphasize the circular causality inherent in the free energy principle (aka active inference). We conclude with a comment on the special forms of active inference that may be associated with self-awareness and how they may be especially informed by dream states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]