Thanks for the inclusion in the newsletter and the opinion! (And sorry for taking so long to answer)
This literature review on goal-directedness identifies five different properties that should be true for a system to be described as goal-directed:
It’s implicit, but I think it should be made explicit that the properties/tests are what we extract from the literature, not what we say is fundamental. More specifically, we don’t say they should be true per se, we just extract and articulate them to “force” a discussion of them when defining goal-directedness.
One common difference is that goal-directedness is often understood as a _behavioral_ property of agents, whereas optimization is thought of as a _mechanistic_ property about the agent’s internal cognition.
I don’t think the post says that. We present both a behavioral (à la Dennett) view of goal-directedness as well as an internal property one (like what Evan or Richard discuss); same for the two forms of optimization considered.
It’s implicit, but I think it should be made explicit that the properties/tests are what we extract from the literature, not what we say is fundamental.
Changed to “This post extracts five different concepts that have been identified in the literature as properties of goal-directed systems:”.
Thanks for the inclusion in the newsletter and the opinion! (And sorry for taking so long to answer)
It’s implicit, but I think it should be made explicit that the properties/tests are what we extract from the literature, not what we say is fundamental. More specifically, we don’t say they should be true per se, we just extract and articulate them to “force” a discussion of them when defining goal-directedness.
I don’t think the post says that. We present both a behavioral (à la Dennett) view of goal-directedness as well as an internal property one (like what Evan or Richard discuss); same for the two forms of optimization considered.
Changed to “This post extracts five different concepts that have been identified in the literature as properties of goal-directed systems:”.
Deleted that sentence.
Thanks!