Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mailrus!cornell!oravax!daryl From: daryl@oravax.UUCP (Steven Daryl McCullough) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Discovering What Nature Wants Summary: It depends on what you mean by intention. Keywords: Consciousness and Intentionality. Message-ID: <1090@oravax.UUCP> Date: 17 Oct 89 14:30:16 GMT References: <357@massey.ac.nz> <2376@munnari.oz.au> <2394@uceng.UC.EDU> <2450@munnari.oz.au> Organization: Odyssey Research Associates, Ithaca NY Lines: 156 In article <2450@munnari.oz.au>, ok@cs.mu.oz.au (Richard O'Keefe) writes: > > Then you go on to give a million and one examples, enough to make it obvious > > to someone of the meanest of intelligence that it is not a valid rule of > > inference. Was this necessary? > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > Yes it was, for the simple reason that Kort stated explitly that > he didn't follow my reasoning. That shows that it was neither necessary, nor sufficient 8^) A little familiarity with the way people behave would tell you that if one clear example doesn't convince, then a million won't---you have to try a different tack. > > Common usage is > > consistent with this: people often say "this committee intends to ...", > > or "Congress intends to ...". It is not necessarily the case that *every* > > intention held by the part is held by the whole, but it is surely possible > > that *some* intentions are held by the whole are inherited from the parts. > > I'm afraid we can't appeal to common usage. Common usage "the sun rose" > is pre-Copernican with respect to physics... It seems to me that this disagreement springs from the fact that we haven't said what we *mean* by the word "intention". Of course we cannot appeal to common usage to decide whether it is a *fact* that nature (or anything else) has intention, but we can appeal to common usage to discover what is *meant* by intention. > > > More generally, it is often the case with abilities that, if the part has > > a certain ability then the whole has. For example, I conclude that > > "Richard O'Keefe can think" from the fact that "Richard O'Keefe's brain > > can think". > > I do believe that I can think, but I do not believe that my brain can think. ^ At this point I hope I am not being a smart-aleck to ask : What is the "I" in that sentence? Is it your entire body, including your hair, your teeth, and your fingers? If so, can you still think if you lose some of those members? This is getting remotely closer to the topic of this newsgroup, AI. The premise of at least part of AI is that a "brain", be it flesh or electronic, *can* think, without all the other accessories that come with a human body. Perhaps this premise is wrong, but once again, it depends on what you mean by "thinking". > In terms of what really happens, it is simply FALSE that anyone has yet > concluded > "that can think" from the fact that "'s brain can think" > or > "that can play the piano" from the fact that "'s brain and > fingers can play the piano". > In both cases, the inference goes the other way. Again, I have to ask, when someone says that can think, what do they mean by ? I think a good case can be made that it is the brain and (as you suggest) the spinal nerves that do the thinking. However this is not common usage: usually one invokes the concept of the "whole person" which does the thinking. In my opinion, the "whole person" is an abstraction which does not have an objective definition. You are considered the "same person" even if you lose a leg, or have a heart transplant. > Basically, the ``Nature''-can-form-intentions-because-we-can viewpoint > is just reductionism run backwards. I find this to be an extremely insightful statement! (Even if you meant it as a put-down.) The usual course of reductionism runs as follows: The human body and brain are described by mechanical laws. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Man is a machine, so consciousness, intention, and free will are illusions. A more upbeat way of looking at the same facts is: (1) Man is a machine. (2) Man has consciousness, etc. ------------------------------------------------------------- A machine (or nature itself) may have consciousness, etc. I agree with you that these are flip sides of the same coin: in either case, one basically admits that reductionism (or more generally, materialism) has won. The difference is in where one goes from there. Several new ideas, such as the Gaia hypothesis, bear a resemblence to "new age" anti-rational beliefs, but are actually quite opposed to them, since there starting point is an acceptance of current science as essentially correct. I believe that Barry Kort's belief that nature can form intentions is essentially a slight strengthening of the Gaia hypothesis. (Am I right, Barry?) > > It is a perfectly legitimate question to ask "what does it *mean* for > > nature to form intentions". > > Yes, and I wish someone would try to answer it. I *did* try to answer it. You don't like my answer because, as you point out, it allows even thermostats (or rocks) to have intentions. Sheesh! Some people are so picky! 8^) > With any definition of "goal-directed" that does not take into account > the notions of the agent having a model of an actual state of affairs, > a model of a hypothetical state of affairs, some way of distinguishing > between the agent's ATTITUDES and the agent's ACTIONS (so that we can > talk about intentions an agent forms but does not carry out and actions > an agent performs without having intended them), with any such limited > definition of "goal-directed" we can talk about stones intending to > fall down. Many people claim the same difficulty in understanding what it means for a *human* *being* to have intentions. How *do* we separate attitudes from actions? What does it mean to say "Joe Blow intended to lose weight, but he didn't have the willpower?". Behaviorists might say that it doesn't mean anything at all. I disagree, but I think the true meaning has more to do with *our* model of Joe Blow than it does with Joe's model of the world. Barry Kort suggests a model of nature in which human beings serve the role of brains with which nature thinks about the future and makes plans, etc. > But to say that 'nature acting in a "goal-directed fashion" follows > from human beings act in such a fashion' is merely to reASSERT Kort's > rule. If human beings act in a goal-directed fashion, then all that > follows is that some PARTS of ``Nature'' act in a goal-directed fashion. > We cannot conclude that ``Nature'' herself acts in a goal-directed > fashion unless P="acts in a goal-directed fashion" obeys Kort's rule. > Merely asserting that it does gets us not one step further. I don't find your "part of nature" versus "nature herself" distinction to be very illuminating in the case of intentionality. For some properties, such as "being made of ivory" it is possible to identify what part of an object has the property. For instance, it is definitely the tusks of an elephant which are made of ivory, and not its tail. However, I don't understand the principle you are using to say which part of an entity is the part which has intentions. Give me a criterion which would allow me to determine that it is the man, and not the brain which forms intentions, and *simultaneously* allow me to determine that it is the man and not nature which forms intentions. Unlike the case of "being made of ivory", I believe that drawing the boundaries to determine "what part has intentions" will be quite arbitrary. > One more example: Algol 68. [stuff deleted] Yes, committees can be in disagreement. What does that prove? A single human being can disagree with himself. I do it often. 8^) > > > Daryl McCullough > > (I have a Master's Degree...in Science!) > So have I. There's a lot of it about. It's a joke, son! Have you ever heard the radio show "Ask Dr. Science"? Dr. Daryl (Remember! He's not a *real* doctor!)