Name for the "cut" between an agent and its environment

Question

This question broadly regards the Denettian "intentional stance" to agency, which says that on the most fundamental level there are only physical things in the world, but nevertheless for certain complex physical entities (and people in particular) it is often pragmatically useful to treat them as if they were agents acting according to beliefs, goals, etc., rather than try to understand them fully on the physical level.

In order to do this, we have to decide which parts of the physical world constitute the agent and which its environment. In some cases there may be more than one useful place in which this boundary can be drawn - Clark and Chalmers give the example of a person called Otto who has to write everything in a notebook due to a memory disorder, and they argue that the notebook can reasonably be seen as part of Otto as an agent.

With that background in place, my question is as follows: is there a name for the "cut" that we must make in order to apply the intentional stance, between something we wish to treat as agent and its environment?

There are two other "cuts" that seem related, but not the same. The first is the "Cartesian cut" between the world of the physical and the world of the mental. This cut is different because it is a cut between two parts of the physical world - one that is to be considered an agent, and one that consists of everything else.

The other related cut is the "Heisenberg cut" in quantum mechanics, between the system we wish to measure (to be treated using quantum theory) and the apparatus we use to measure it (to be treated classically). This cut shares the property that we have some flexibility in where we draw it, but it deals with a different domain of enquiry.

Answer 1

I don't know if there is a term for this "cut", but it seems to me that it doesn't have to be a "cut"; it could be simply the boundary of an object. I take the term "cut" to imply something more ontologically significant than boundary, like a separation between things of different nature, but here the agent and its environment are both physical systems. You only need to specify which object is an agent and the rest of the world (all other objects) constitute its environment, so the identification of the agent (and its boundary/cut) boils down to the identification of an object in the world, as distinct from other objects.

Answer 2

A baby when growing up learns to make a cut between his body and his environment. In order to establish this cut it is of fundamental importance that the baby explores the world not only by seeing and hearing but also by acting - not only sensing but also acting as agent.

Those objects where I can act upon and get a sensual feedback, they form my body. I see my foot, touch it with my hand and have a corresponding preception.

All objects where I can act upon without getting such feedback, they form my environment.

Hence the cut between the system and its environment depends on the feedback from the motor areas to the sensoric areas of the cortex due to intentional actions. So far - in short - the first approximation.

I do not know whether Dennet coined a separate term for the cut between the system and its environment. Thomas Metzinger, also coming from cognitive science, names the system in question the “phenomenal self-model”. Hence the cut is the boundary of the phenomenal self-model, where the latter embeds into the world-model of the system which is the environment. Both the system and its environment are located on the mental level. Both are inner models.

For a survey see

Thomas Metzinger: Empirical perspectives from the self-model theory of subjectivity: a brief summary with examples. In: R. Banerjee & B.K. Chakrabarti (Eds.) Progress in Brain Research, Vol. 168 (2008)

Apparently an individuum can extend his self-model due to later experiences, e.g. by using tools. Temporarily it can even release the phenomenal self from the body and make an out-of-body experience. Anyhow, I would consider the notebook from the example of your post, being a kind of external hard-disc, part of the system – and not of its environment.

The Cartesian cut is the mind-body problem. It is still unsolved but it is tackled now also by methods from neuroscience.

The Heisenberg cut - or Kopenhagen cut – seems to be not the final word. Since the beginning it has been highly debated whether such cut between system and observer – or more general between micro-cosmos physics and meso-cosmos physics – exists at all. The concept of decoherence attempts to bridge both levels by a unified explanation.