The notion of goal conflates three different functional roles: control, evaluation, and motivation (Miller et al. Reference Miller, Galanter and Pribram1960; Rosenblueth et al. Reference Rosenblueth, Wiener, Bigelow and Buckley1968). Goals describe target-states that determine appropriate adjustments in the agent's behavior, for example, via the comparator mechanism described at layer 1 of Hurley's shared circuits model (SCM) (control function). Goals also indicate valuable states that, even when not pursued, measure how well the current situation agrees with the agent's interests, that is, how “good” or “bad” the world is (evaluation function). Finally, goals constitute anticipatory drives for the agent's conduct, providing teleological reasons to perform or refrain from performing certain actions (motivation function).

Possibly because of Hurley's enactive/embodied inspiration, the focus in her article is solely on the control function of goals. The SCM describes how increasingly sophisticated control mechanisms enable richer forms of social cognition, when paired with mirroring to provide information on the actions of others. More specifically, the sensorimotor control loop is suggested as the basis for understanding the intentional structure of actions. Although this project is valuable in its own right, we doubt it can ever succeed without first incorporating the motivational and evaluative dimension of goal-states (Castelfranchi Reference Castelfranchi1998; Csibra & Gergely Reference Csibra and Gergely2007).

Indeed, all functions of goal-states are necessary elements of the processes described by the SCM, although they are not yet properly analyzed. When current input is confronted with a target-state, the system is assumed to know what features of the environment are adequate as targets. But how does it know? In mechanical artifacts, for example, the boiler-thermostat system, the target is set by another agent. In adaptive biological systems, some basic target-states are “set” by evolution, but most of the goals relevant for the system are actually self-determined. Hence, some questions arise: How does the agent select a state of affairs as an appropriate target? Why do we use certain results as frame of reference for action control, rather than others?

The answers require invoking the evaluative function of goals: Starting from simple biologically determined goals (e.g., nutrition, proximity to conspecifics), the agent starts appraising positively certain environmental configurations (e.g., food on the table), while perceiving others to be negative (e.g., being isolated). The former are selected as potential target-states, whereas the latter are labeled as things to be avoided, possibly generating other target-states to ensure that they are indeed avoided. These more specific target-states may then acquire evaluative autonomy, if they prove successful over time in satisfying the agent's basic needs.

Here it is worth emphasizing that evaluation and motivation are not exclusive features of personal-level goal-states (desires and intentions). On the contrary, these functions apply also to basic, subpersonal needs, as discussed. Hence, appeals to the functional level of explanation favored by Hurley cannot get the SCM off the hook of this criticism. Evaluation and motivation characterize both personal and subpersonal goal-states, and yet they go unnoticed in the SCM.

Significantly, the target-state is the only component that never changes its dynamics through the five layers of the SCM. This is tantamount to saying that the model does not care for goal generation and goal revision. It being so, can the SCM really claim to enable deliberation and goal-based action understanding? Can we be satisfied with the characterization of deliberation as comparison of alternative predictions – Millikan's “trials and errors in the head” (Millikan Reference Millikan, Hurley and Nudds2006) – while nothing is said about how we compare different goals to choose our future conduct? The SCM reduces deliberation to deciding how to achieve a given end, whereas it remains silent on deciding what to achieve. This is a badly maimed picture of human deliberation: whenever decisions are made, the what is at least as important as the how.

As for understanding the intentional structure of action, this implies appreciating that intentions justify teleologically the observed behavior (i.e., motivating and controlling it; Dennett Reference Dennett1987), and that success or failure in achieving goals matters to the agent, that is, the world will be affectively appraised against them (Frijda Reference Frijda1986; Ortony et al. Reference Ortony, Clore and Collins1988). Moreover, mindreading should provide information on the goal of the observed action, that is, the target-state in the SCM (Gallese & Goldman Reference Gallese and Goldman1998; Gallese et al. Reference Gallese, Fadiga, Fogassi and Rizzolatti1996). But there is no evidence that the model is capable of explaining anything of the sort: Mirroring, paired with action inhibition at layer 4, associates input with covert motor activation, which in turn associates with simulative prediction of the next input. Nothing of this, however, associates with the target-state, that is, the proper goal the system should recognize in the action of another agent. So it is doubtful that the SCM, in its present form, describes the informational resources enabling goal-based action understanding.

How could the SCM be amended to rectify these shortcomings? First, it should accommodate the possibility that multiple targets are active, so that facing the same input might yield divergent pressures on the agent's conduct. Even simple organisms confront similar dilemmas, when a certain action (e.g., eating in the open) can have conflicting results (e.g., foraging vs. exposure to predators). Without allowing for multiple targets, the SCM could never claim to enable proper deliberation, that is, choosing the ends as well as the means. Second, the target-state must be incorporated in the dynamic loop of action and perception to provide a grasp on goal dynamics (Castelfranchi & Paglieri Reference Castelfranchi and Paglieri2007). Targets are abandoned, either in favor of better options or because they are satisfied (cyclically or permanently), while other targets emerge, either for instrumental reasons or because something unexpected and rewarding interests the agent. This requires supplementing the comparator mechanism with new functions, including the possibility of registering a mismatch between actual input and target without taking action – because evaluation of the world need not always trigger an attempt to change it. Third, the SCM must modify its interpretation of mirroring to account for goal understanding: To this purpose, target-states must be adequately included in the mirror circuit.

Ironically, the moral seems to be that the embodied/enactive perspective on social cognition should take the problem of “mind detachment” more seriously. If the aim is to prove that higher cognitive processes are grounded in bodily actions, better arguments are needed to show how mental states, goals among them, become increasingly detached from actions, in phylogenesis as much as in ontogenesis (Pezzulo & Castelfranchi Reference Pezzulo and Castelfranchi2007; Tomasello Reference Tomasello1999). This is indeed a noble quest – one that the SCM has successfully pioneered, but still falls short of having completed.