Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

How may intentionality, the capacity of mental states to beabout the world, emerge from neural processes? We proposea set of theoretical concepts that enable a simulated agent tohave intentional states as it perceives, acts, memorizes, plans,and builds beliefs about a simulated environment. The con-cepts are framed within Dynamic Field Theory (Sch ̈oner et al.,2015), a mathematical language for neural processes modelsat the level of networks of neural populations. Inspired bySearle’s analysis of the two directions of fit of intentional states(Searle, 1980), we recognize that process models of intentionalstates must detect the match of the world to the mind (for “ac-tion” intentions) or the match of the mind to the world (for“perceptual” intentions). Neural representations of Searle’scondition of satisfaction implement these detection decisionsthrough dynamic instabilities that are instrumental in enablingautonomous switches among intentional states.