Haugeland (1998) eloquently describes the relation between mind and world as one of intimacy, a ‘commingling’ or ‘integralness’ of mind, body, and world. Cognition depends as much on aspects of the agent’s environment as on the agent’s inherent properties. Because it is the joint effect of these properties that control cognition, their contributions to individual cognitive processes cannot be considered one by one. As Haugeland observes, the level of cognitive complexity that an agent can attain at a given point in time is a function of the properties of agent and environment taken together. Consequently, cognitive processes cannot be understood.
