On 09/15/2012 06:59 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: > Wow! This Zombie thing is WAY more complicated than I thought it was. > Although I haven't read any Kant first hand, I hear him lurking in the > background. For me, a thermostat/furnace system is a telic system. It acts > in such a way as to maintain a set point. So do I, sometimes. Me and my > furnace: we are telic systems.
I disagree about the furnace, obviously. I could argue from the dictionary, but I'll spare you that. ;-) How about if I launch the argument from the concept of "stigmergy"? Any artifact, however intuitive it's interface, will be [mis-|ab-]used. To boot, its use (proper or not) will produce side effects not intended by the designer. Hence, any artifact like your furnace doesn't _express_ or _have_ a goal or purpose so much as one is ascribed to it by observers. It's this perspective that allows me to enjoy graffiti, even gangster tags, so much more than some people. I even enjoy some forms of vandalism (though I can't bring myself to participate). A more benign form of vandalism are the relatively new "unconferences" and things like collaborative fiction. Hell, even open-ended nonlinear games like grand theft auto help demonstrate the (absence of) telos in artifacts. No, I maintain that the only objects capable of expressing purpose or tending toward a goal are those with actor status, those identifiable (but non-atomic) units who act as their own agents. Everything else is premature conclusion and wishful thinking on the part of some observer. (Perhaps your furnace is not really a furnace! It just acts that way when you're not around.) -- glen =><= Hail Eris! ============================================================ 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
