Summary: intelligence is not separable from the world
If we are to understand mind as the locus of intelligence, we cannot follow Descartes in regarding it as separable in principle from the body and the world. I have argued that such separability would haveto coincide with narrow-bandwidth interfaces, among the interactions that are relevant to intelligence. In recent decades, a commitment to understanding intelligence as rational problem solving—sometimes assumed a priori—has supported the existence of these interfaces by identifying them with transducers. Broader approaches, freed of that prejudicial commitment, can look again at perception and action, at skillful involvement with public equipment and social organization, and see not principled separation but all sorts of close coupling and functional unity. As our ability to cope with the absent and covert, human intelligence abides in the meaningful—which, far from being restricted to representations, extends to the entire human world. Mind, therefore, is not incidentally but intimately embodied and intimately embedded in its world.
—Haugeland, J., 2000: Mind Embodied and Embedded, p. 30-31 (Part 17, “Conclusion”). Chapter 9 in Haugeland, J., 2000: Having Thought: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind. Harvard University Press.
author:haugeland-john book:haugeland-having-thought paper:haugeland-mind-embodied-and-embedded snip:summary-intelligence-is-not-separable intelligence embodied infrastructure interaction intimacy complexity embodiment embedded embeddedness semiotics culture practices custom sociology order organization society network list:mind-body-world type:summary
