I'm not going to say that this paper does what it does well (it gets to be a bit much when "dog + meat → dog + meat eaten" is presented as a 'reaction') but what it does is well worth doing. From the abstract: "The separation between mind and matter is an artefact of the outdated mechanistic worldview, which leaves no room for mental phenomena such as agency, intentionality, or experience... networks of reactions constitute more complex super-agents, which moreover exhibit memory, deliberation and sense-making." My problem with the paper is that I don't think you can describe 'reactions' at the intentional level (ie., the level of beliefs and desires) in the same way you can describe reactions at the physical level. The physical impact of a sign isn't the same as the cognitive impact of a sign. But what is worth doing is trying to make sense of what to means to say things like "the cognitive impact of a sign".
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