Intentionality and evolution

Abstract

Three conditions are, according to Dretske, necessary for representations to be causal in an organism's behavior, and typically not fulfilled by phylogenetic representations: 1. (a) The system must be able to pick up present information; 2. (b) it must use that information to satisfy its various needs and purposes; 3. (c) the piece of information to which the system responds must be available to it in some central way. Condition c is first discussed: it is argued that, in some plausible interpretation of ‘system as a whole’, at least some types of information can shape behavior in a teleological way without being available to the system ‘as a whole’. Then condition b is shown not to provide in itself any way of establishing the privileged status of learning over other kinds of flexible, information-driven processes in goal-oriented behaviors. A third section examines the notion of present versus past causal roles, which are supposed respectively to belong to informational contents and to genetic plans. To this, it is objected that learned correlations share with phylogenetic representations such a temporal gap and that informational content did play a role in recruiting a particular phylogenetic representation to control motor output.