Content free cognition: a path towards response-based intelligence

Submission note: A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the School of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Bundoora.

Can we account for our minds, our thoughts, feelings and actions without intentionality? Can we describe our intelligence purely in terms of elaborate responses to certain situations without invoking a mind that has states about other states (content)? This dissertation attempts to clear a path towards such an account, arguing that theories which rely on mental content are not only conceptually flawed but ultimately collapse into purely response-based accounts of intelligence. The argument that intelligence is free of mental content is three-fold. The first step is to show that content, as currently understood, is not amenable to naturalism (where naturalism is the doctrine that there exists only those entities and processes describable by science). The second step is to reject the cognitivist claim that a naturalistic cognitivist account, while not known at the moment will eventually be found. This is because cognitivist accounts (e.g. functionalist accounts) collapse into purely response-based descriptions of intelligence. The third and final step is to show that the problems associated with contentless cognition can be overcome. The focus here will be on how response-based accounts can distinguish between intelligent acts done on purpose and those done accidentally. By replacing intentional states with a notion of flexibility, such a distinction can be drawn without an appeal to content, clearing the way for a purely response-based account of intelligence.