text: A central theme of inferential models of cognition, like active 
  inference, is that actions are motivated by both “utilitarian” imper- 
  atives, such as reward achievement, and the “epistemic” impera- 
  tive to reduce uncertainty about one’s state (intended in a broad 
  sense, from bodily state to one’s identity and self-models). Var- 
  ious researchers proposed that paradoxical behaviors could be 
  motivated by reward achievement since they have (paradoxically) 
  positive effects, such as relief from emotional distress and nega- 
  tive affect (Nock and Prinstein 2004, Chapman et al. 2006, Bresin 
  and Gordon 2013, Selby et al. 2019). Here, we advance a com- 
  plementary perspective by suggesting that these behaviors might 
  appear less paradoxical when considering that they could serve 
  uncertainty minimization imperatives. For example, we recently 
  suggested that the starvation observed in restrictive anorexia 
  nervosa could serve the imperative of minimizing “interoceptive 
  uncertainty” or the uncertainty about one’s interoceptive state— 
  stretched up to the uncertainty of the self—which might be partic- 
  ularly severe when people receive ambiguous interoceptive signals 
  from the body, when they have poor models of their bodily or emo- 
  tional state, or when they are particularly intolerant to high levels 
  of uncertainty (Barca and Pezzulo 2020). 