animals, plants, and even microorganisms are equipped with competences that permit them to deal appropriately with the affordances of their environments. There are free-floating rationales for all these competences, but the organisms need not appreciate or comprehend them to benefit from them, nor do they need to be conscious of them. In animals with more complex behaviors, the degree of versatility and variability exhibited can justify attributing a sort of behavioral comprehension to them so long as we don’t make the mistake of thinking of comprehension as some sort of stand-alone talent, a
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