Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: How can we explain the intelligence of behaviors? Radical enactivists maintain that intelligent behaviors can be explained without involving the attribution of representational contents. In this paper, I challenge this view by providing arguments showing that the intelligence of a behavior is reliant on ways of presenting the relative purpose and the environment in which that behavior is performed. This involves that a behavior is intelligent only if intesional contents are ascribed to the related agent. Importantly, this conclusion also concerns basic behaviors such as those related to the perception of affordances in the environment. Accordingly, either affordance-related behaviors are not instances of intelligent behaviors and can be accounted in a contentless way or affordance-related behaviors are intelligent, but cannot be accounted without involving contents and modes of presentation.
Source: Synthese
Author: Silvano Zipoli Caiani
Institution: University of Florence
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,990
OpenAlex ID: W4223477653