The machine isn't using a heuristic. The machine is just a system of electric field oscillations. A rock rolling down a hill isn't using the "geodesic heuristi

The machine isn't using a heuristic. The machine is just a system of electric field oscillations. A rock rolling down a hill isn't using the "geodesic heuristic" either. We impart to physical systems we have designed our intentions in designing them: we interpret so-and-so field oscillation as a "heuristic". But this is an observer-relative designation. By the same observer-relative gesture, the rock has its heuristics too. Animals however actually have heuristics; ie., dynamical interior models of their environment which are analysed to prescribe action. Animals in being present within environments and having genuine interior reasoning/imagination/intutition etc. existi in a different relationship to "the chess game". They aren't like rocks just "following the geodesic" (they do that at the atomic level, sure). But relevant heuristics here are genuine interior processes which are dynamically attached to environments.