(January 22, 2016 at 11:13 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: No it isn't a memory. The information is represented in these states, but these states do not form a representational system. Note that in the case of the robot, a representational system consists of information, a system for representing it, and an environment for which that representation is meaningful (and by meaningful here I mean that it contains information which, by its content, guides the behavior of the representational system; in the robot driver example, this element is reflected by the road being represented being amenable to the motion of the vehicle; a robot driver in mid-air or on its back wouldn't be representing objects in a meaningful sense).
Does not a single photon from a thousand light years away affect the state of even an entire galaxy? Isn't the way the galaxy unfolds a "behavior?"
It still seems to me that we are using a lot of substance-dualist words here: intention, meaning, even behavior. But it is WE as thinking humans who see intention, meaning and behavior in some systems.