2024/04/24 by Chauncey Maher · 1 voice
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Neuroscience · Social Sciences · #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #Neurobiology and Insect Physiology Research #Plant and Biological Electrophysiology Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/09515089.2024.2344824
openalex publication_date 2024/04/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/14
In Representation in Cognitive Science, Nicholas Shea offers a theory of representation, of what it is for something to be a representation or have intentionality. Some things have intentionality derivatively. They have it in virtue of something else that has it. Not all intentionality can be like this. Some items must have original intentionality. That is what Shea offers a theory of. Near the end of the book, he makes a provocative suggestion about plants: if his theory is correct, then some of their parts have original intentionality. That is provocative for at least two reasons. First, many theorists think that every cognitive system has original intentionality; since plants don’t have it, they’re not cognitive systems. However, if plants do have it, that argument fails. It can’t be used to show that plants aren’t cognitive systems. Second, and separately, many theorists think that any system with original intentionality is also a cognitive system. On that assumption, if plants turn out to have original intentionality, then they positively are cognitive systems. While Shea makes this suggestion with these provocative implications, he does not adequately develop it. Doing so is my goal in this essay, focusing on the foraging of parasitic vines.