Habitus and Animats

Abstract

Adaptive behaviour research has been heralded as a new paradigm in the cognitive sciences, whose main virtue is in eschewing the notion of representation. But the assumption that this new paradigm is immune from Heideggerian critiques which have been seen to be relevant to traditional representational AI is false. Behaviour-Based ideas are in accordance with an aspect of the critique but omit to confront the nature of language. The problem is the elusiveness of the traditionary aspect of language which ultimately renders any computational cognitive science impotent. It in not only the traditional notion of representation which needs despatching, but also a related notion of reality as purely physical reality. This paper identifies common structures in contemporary thought which serve to raise the traditionary aspect of language to the fore.