Representation Based on Goal-Achievement: Explaining Motor Intentionality

Whether motor intentionality needs representation is debated, and what sense of representation it is needs clarification. Dreyfus (2000, 2002) interprets Merleau-Ponty’s notion of motor intentionality as different significantly from that in traditional cognitive science, and argues for intelligence without representation. The involving intelligence is demonstrated in Freeman’s (1991) attractor theory. By contrast, Clark (1997, 2002, 2003), Christensen & Hooker (2000, 2002), Grush (2004), Keijzer (2001), and Pezzulo (2008) argue for the need of representation for the motor intentionality. In the debate, a question needs answer: is there a naturalistic account of the motor intentionality? To answer this question, the present project raises a naturalistic account of motor intentionality, on grounds of goal-setting and goal-achievement with recourse to the bodily movement. The present project argues that the motor representation can even be demonstrated in an architecture based on the dynamic field theory, a version of the attractor theory.