[lit-ideas] Re: Misreading
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:29:58 -0230
Dawkins regrets the metaphor, asks for forgiveness and and promises never to use
it again. He may be willing to make a donation to your favorite charity, if
requested.
On attributing intentional states: We typically do this in the case of dogs,
cats, maybe even ants. But nobody believes that animals, insects or Republicans
actually possess intentional states. If entities such as humans (i.e., genuinely
intentional beings) didn't exist, there would be no such phenomena as "Rover
knows it's time to go for a ride in the car because you're jiggling his leash
in front of him." Or: "Mickey believes there is a mouse inside that hole." Only
beings who can make inferences, give reasons, can be said to hold beliefs and
other intentional states.
Come to think of it, it may well be that no human agent can possess intentional
states independent of a linguistic community that attributes such states to
her.
Question: What/who is an intentional state?
Answer: Look at who is attributed to possess such states by others having such
states. (After all, Dasein does not exist independent of its understanding of
the being of Dasein.)
On vacation, with Robert Brandom on my mind,
Walter O
P.S. Anybody know of a good text that examines the accuracy of Hannah Arendt's
critique of Marx's notion of labour and freedom? (It may not be much of a
vacation, but at least my labours are my work. Vocation, vacation, tomayto,
tomatoe.)
Quoting Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
>
> --- On Tue, 25/8/09, David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > "In The
> > Alchemist, Paulo Coelho writes, "At a certain point
> > in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us,
> > and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the
> > world's greatest lie."
>
> But the world doesn't tell lies, genes are not selfish etc. This is a fallacy
> involving attributing intentional states to objects that cannot have them. It
> is entirely beside the point that we know this and mean something less
> literal:- perhaps that the biggest deception of which we might convince
> ourselves by living is that we lack any control of our lives or that genetic
> material can be understood as succeeding despite the selection pressures it
> faces by its having a 'selfish' strategy that maximises its replication. Mary
> Midgely was not fooled.
>
> Donal
> Speaking up for the silent Wittgensteinian
> Mind-Your-Grammar School of Thinking
>
>
>
>
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