Xref: utzoo sci.bio:3765 sci.chem:2332
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!media-lab!minsky
From: minsky@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Marvin Minsky)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.chem
Subject: Re: Forgotten Entities: Do You Remember Any?
Keywords: protoplasm
Message-ID: <3879@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Date: 30 Oct 90 22:49:02 GMT
References: <1990Oct25.232546.12357@portia.Stanford.EDU> <3870@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <4155@kitty.UUCP>
Reply-To: minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Organization: MIT Media Lab, Cambridge MA
Lines: 20

In article <4155@kitty.UUCP> larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman) writes:
>	I've got one better: ectoplasm (the "spiritual" variety, that is).

That reminds me of an entity that badly needs to be forgotten.  It is
called "intentionality" and was described by F. Brentano in 1874 as
the feature or aspect that distinghuishes mental from physical
phenomena.  It has been revived in the past few years to explain why
machines can never "really think", no matter how convincingly they may
eventually behave as though they did, and beg for mercy when
threatened with termination, etc.

The problem is that this revival is disturbing my colleagues and
students, who will not accept my declaration that there simply isn't
any such thing.  Naturally, no one can produce a test for the presence
of intentionality because, by its "nature" it is (1) non-physical, so
it can't affect any instrument and (2) it is irreducible (according to
Brentano) hence cannot be explained.

At least those N-rays could be diffracted by aluminum prisms (until
Robert Wood of Johns Hopkins managed to palm the prism without being
noticed by the demonstrators).