Fitting the Body to the Mind

Abstract

Human action is both intentional, directed toward goals, and it is subject to criteria of right and wrong. The problem of a simulation of intentionality has been much discussed but the issue of normativity has attracted less attention. It can be approached through the question of the relation between simulations of rule-following and how normatively constrained actions are performed in concrete situations. Writing out explicit rules can express the norms of an activity. Skills express norms from the point of view of action. There are three kinds of regularities in behavior: causal responses, monitored actions, and habits. Habits embody implicit rules. There are good and bad habits implemented by the neural mechanisms produced by programming a machine. But they also embedded in normative constraints of institutional or social orders extrinsic to the action and its foundations in the “innards” of organism or machine. Extrinsic norms are never complete, or completable. New situations call for new normative decisions. The Turing Test is limited, in that successfully passing it can never resolve the question of the normativity of a simulated action pattern.