> So - in terms of answering your question about whether intentionality > is the mark of the vital, I would have to answer no. I do not see much > intentional behaviour amongst simple animals (eg insects) or plants - > rather I tend to think of these as complex machine. On the > contrary, to a > well designed artificial human (as in a computer game character) I > will assign > intentionality, even though I know they're only the outputs of > algorithms.
I agree with Russell's answer, but I would go even further. Intentionality, just like intelligence and cognition, is a property described by an observer. I can say that a tree is intentional because it wants to blossom when spring comes, or even that a rock is intentional because when I drop it it wants to go down. But really the question is not wether the rock is "really" intentional or not, because intentionality cannot be objective. The question is how useful it is for us to describe a rock as intentional... If anybody's interested in a more complete exposition of this argument, I exposed it for cognition (but you can just change the word for intentionality or intelligence) in the following paper: Cognitive Paradigms: Which One is the Best? Cognitive Systems Research 5(2):135-156, June 2004. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2003.10.002 Best regards, Carlos Gershenson... Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/ “Tendencies tend to change...” ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
