[Wittrs] Re: Original and derived intentionality
- From: "jrstern" <jrstern@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:31:43 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@...> wrote:
>
> I'll start with the background.
Well stated.
> That's enough of an introduction, I hope. So now a thought experiment.
>
> The Traffic light controller
OK.
> Human interaction with the world
> ...
> My own view, and the one I have been arguing on that older thread,
> puts people in a rather different position with respect to their
> relation to the world. I see us as more in the role of the
> engineers. As I see it, we don't just receive inputs. We engineer
> those inputs ourselves to suit our own needs. We may use off-the-
> shelf (or off-the-DNA) sensors, but we control how those sensors
> are used and thus we control what our inputs are about. Moreover,
> we monitor our inputs to make sure that they are about what we
> want them to be about, and we re-engineer their use, as needed,
> to make sure that they continue to provide input that is
> about what we want it to be about. And that's why we have original
> intentionality.
I'm not sure you've quite answered the question.
Whatever it is about us that allows us to have original
intentionality, in what way is it different from something a
computer might have?
All I see above is, "We monitor out inputs", but that doesn't sound
like a show-stopper for even simple machines.
You say "We engineer", but I didn't engineer any traffic lights,
so do I therefore lack intentionality? Anyway it seems odd that
my engineering of X explains why X does not have property P.
If object X is red, is it because I made it red, or because it
has certain physical properties that cause others to see it as red?
Certainly there are red objects I never painted.
My own newest position - is basically John McCarthy's oldest.
It has taken me thirty years to see the wisdom of his ways,
though I would still qualify it very heavily, as he never has.
Which is, that even the bimetallic strip in a thermostat
"is intelligent, just not very". I would make it that your
traffic light controller (or something not much more complex)
has all the intentionality that any object in the world ever
has, and it's not a matter of how it got that way, but simply
that it has certain relationships with physical objects and
consequential state changes, and that's all the intentionality
could possibly be, and nobody has ever said a word otherwise.
Josh
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