Does Separating Intentionality From Mental Representation Imply Radical Enactivism?
Frontiers in psychology January 1, 2018 Tobias Schlicht 16 citations
Intentionality—the aboutness of mental states—has resisted naturalistic explanation partly because most theorists treat it as equivalent to mental representation. This paper argues instead that intentionality is a feature of whole embodied agents (organisms) that can be directed at objects and states of affairs, while representation belongs to mental states and their mechanisms. The distinction is applied to Metzinger's project of naturalizing phenomenal representation. The paper challenges enactivism's equation of cognition with biology, proposing that a theory of intentionality and representation should delineate cognitive science's subject matter and allow for artificial intelligence.