The Hard Problem of Intentionality for Radical Enactive Cognition
Adrian Wieczorek
Synthese April 21, 2026 DOI: 10.1007/s11229-026-05559-0 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | Enactivism Intentionality Philosophy of science Philosophy of language Cognition Appropriation Naturalism Epistemology Cognitive science Autopoiesis Neurophenomenology Cognitivism psychology Metaphysics Cognitive psychology Internalism and externalism Semiotics Deliberation |
| Key points | Argues that teleofunctional resources cannot ground content-free intentionality, identifying the Determinacy Problem and Distality Problem that lead to a collapse into stimulus-response behaviorism, posing the Hard Problem of Intentionality for non-representational theories. |
Abstract
Abstract Radical Enactive Cognition challenges teleosemantic representationalism while proposing a naturalistic, content-free account of basic intentionality – “Ur-intentionality” – based solely on teleofunctional resources such as information-as-covariance and natural selection, a view known as Teleosemiotics. This paper argues that this appropriation is insufficient to ground content-free intentionality. Two problems for functional information-as-covariance are identified: the Determinacy Problem and the Distality Problem. Furthermore, teleofunctionalism fails to prevent Ur-intentionality from collapsing into a form of stimulus-response behaviorism, which Radical Enactivism itself deems non-cognitive. An enactive stimulus-response account is developed to show that teleofunctional mechanisms can explain adaptive behavior without invoking intentionality. The paper concludes that these issues pose a serious and previously overlooked challenge to non-representational, selectionist theories of cognition – the Hard Problem of Intentionality – and points to possible ways to deal with the problem.
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| The phenomenology of deep brain stimulation-induced changes in OCD: an enactive affordance-based model. | 2013 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Looking for the Self: Phenomenology, Neurophysiology and Philosophical Significance of Drug-induced Ego Dissolution | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cites 9
- Radicalizing Enactivism The MIT Press eBooks December 14, 2012
- A tale of two densities: active inference is enactive inference. Adaptive Behavior August 1, 2020
- 4E Cognition The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition October 9, 2018
- Information without content: a Gibsonian reply to enactivists' worries. Cognition 2015
- Does Separating Intentionality From Mental Representation Imply Radical Enactivism? Frontiers in Psychology 2018
and 4 more in the library