You want to put this to rest?

Oh please yes. This has been unbearably tedious.

I entered this thread because I had what I thought was a mildly interesting point to make (that human engineering looks like an evolutionary process to some extent). Somehow this got sucked into the usual endless, hopeless fight between materialism and whatever-it-is-that-you-people-believe. Almost always a waste of time.

You were wrong about Dennett and zombies; now you're wrong about Dennett and intentionality.

Considering my take on Dennett re: zombies was:

Considering that taking Dennett's claim to mean 'we are zombies' is the view of no less than John Searle, it could be that Dennett's defenders haven't really come to grips with what they're defending. Or maybe Searle doesn't understand. Or maybe Dennett himself is confused. But which of these is true isn't immediately apparent.

..followed later by..

Dennett denies qualia (among other things) - to someone who affirms qualia, Dennett's depiction of humans certainly comes across as zombie-like. The accusation doesn't have to do "work" because in this context it's descriptive - it's not like Searle or anyone else is accusing Dennett of being dishonest in his response to the zombie argument.

..I'd say you're the one who's clearly wrong. Certainly with regards to what I said before, and am saying now: I'm saying that Dennett's depiction of humans, between what he affirms and what he denies, does cast us as zombies. A mass of physical function, and even the experiental (if it can be called that) is function. Explain the functions, and nothing is left over. And any discrimination between one set of functions and another is either an issue of practicality or arbitrary by necessity.

You, I and anyone with a greater-than-fifth-grade level of reading comprehension can see that you are wrong (again).

Valerie, did you even read the damn article? I told you what follows, but apparently you just don't get it. So here's what exactly follows the quote you gave:

The fact that the theory is maximally neutral about the internal structures that accomplish the rational competences it presupposes has led to several attempted counterexamples

Do you know what it means for the theory to be maximally neutral? Do you know why it's in such a position regarding internal structures?

Right from the paper itself:

The intentional stance is the strategy of interpreting the behavior of an entity (person, animal, artifact, whatever) by treating it as if it were a rational agent who governed its "˜choice' of "˜action' by a "˜consideration' of its "˜beliefs' and "˜desires.' The scare-quotes around all these terms draw attention to the fact that some of their standard connotations may be set aside in the interests of exploiting their central features: their role in practical reasoning, and hence in the prediction of the behavior of practical reasoners.

In addition,

The intentional stance works (when it does) whether or not the attributed goals are genuine or natural or "˜really appreciated' by the so-called agent, and this tolerance is crucial to understanding how genuine goal-seeking could be established in the first place.

So take your pick, Valerie. Is the intentional stance a guide to determining whether a given example does or does not have beliefs? But Dennett says that the theory is neutral with regards to internal structure - he's saying questions of consideration, belief, and desires can be set aside. Why? Because the intentional stance is all about practicality of prediction given day to day situations.

Are you saying that you can tell what has a 'real, genuine' belief by way of what stance you take to interact with it? Alright - Dennett gives an example of a poker playing program. If I call a poker program a zombie, do you disagree? Bolded, because you keep missing this: I am not asking whether it is a philosophical zombie. Questions of qualia are put aside. If it's a zombie - just reducable physics in motion - then explain how a human isn't a zombie. If it's not a zombie, tell me why.

I tried to write this at a fifth-level reading comprehension level for you, Valerie. You know, the level you say Dennett writes at.

mtraven,

You keep repeating this as if it means something. "Qualitative difference" is not a well-defined concept, so for any given purpose you could say that people and thermometers are qualitatively the same (both are made of atoms and will fall if dropped from a height) or different (thermometers can't carry on a conversation). And as far as I know Dennett has never put forward a quantitative theory of intentionality where a human has either more the same "amount" of intentionality as something else, so this is a red herring on both sides. As for the main difference between humans and other intentional systems (or non-intentional systems) being complexity, yes, that is the main difference. So what? Quantitative differences in complexity result in qualitatively different behaviors, that is almost the definition of complexity.

Okay, so qualitative differences are an ill-defined concept, and obviously quantitative differences in complexity result in qualitatively different behaviors. Not ill-defined enough, I guess.

There's an argument there, but unlike Valerie, I think you're actually starting to get where I'm coming from so I'll leave this be, save for one small comment.

No. Every point you've made is either a distortion, or obvious (Dennett is a materialist! stop the presses!).

I haven't made any distortions - I've taken what I've read of Dennett and provided my view of what the results of his stances lead to. You've been so busy trying to prove me wrong by way of 'Dennett never said that explicitly!' - trying to "win" - that you've either missed that, or tried to avoid it. You talk about how, if a system is complex enough, then there's a qualitative difference rather than a quantitative. Sounds like emergence to me. But from what I read, I find Dennett's attitudes about realism with regards to emergence and 'genuine' belief a cop out, because it strongly hinges on practicality - and I argue, in turn, that that places him extremely close to the Churchlands. Your response has amounted to 'Show me where Dennett admits it's a copout'. Gee, I wonder why that isn't working.

You want to put this to rest? Then leave it at 'I view a reductivist/eliminative materialist stance towards belief and intentionality to reduce agents to zombies/machines/items with no difference between each other rather than arbitrary measures, and that Dennett's assertions of 'realism' with regards to such things is, being based on practicality more than anything, unpersuasive and poorly based. You disagree.' I doubt you're interested in honestly assailing what I view as superior ways for defining or approaching belief/intentionality concepts, considering they will be based either around recognized intractable points (qualia), or that my personal view amounts to "not eliminative/reductive classic materialism".

You were wrong about Dennett and zombies; now you're wrong about Dennett and intentionality.

You say that Dennett denies the existence of beliefs:

Doug can't lie to you, mtraven. Because there are no lies. Those require beliefs, which do not exist if you subscribe to Dennett's view.

Yet Dennett says that "real, genuine" beliefs do exist:

Although the earliest definition of the intentional stance (Dennett 1971) suggested to many that it was merely an instrumentalist strategy, not a theory of real or genuine belief, this common misapprehension has been extensively discussed and rebutted in subsequent accounts (Dennett 1987, 1991, 1996).

You, I and anyone with a greater-than-fifth-grade level of reading comprehension can see that you are wrong (again).

If you want to dispute this, fine, but I suggest you do so in a more suitable venue, such as your psychotherapist's office.

My argument is that, between what Dennett denies and what he affirms, a human has as much intentionality as a computer program, a thermometer, or anything else you want to describe as having intentionality - and that the main difference is that a human is more complex. Quantitative, not qualitative.

You keep repeating this as if it means something. "Qualitative difference" is not a well-defined concept, so for any given purpose you could say that people and thermometers are qualitatively the same (both are made of atoms and will fall if dropped from a height) or different (thermometers can't carry on a conversation). And as far as I know Dennett has never put forward a quantitative theory of intentionality where a human has either more the same "amount" of intentionality as something else, so this is a red herring on both sides. As for the main difference between humans and other intentional systems (or non-intentional systems) being complexity, yes, that is the main difference. So what? Quantitative differences in complexity result in qualitatively different behaviors, that is almost the definition of complexity.

Will you and mtraven have the grace to give up a perceived 'win' and admit that my view of Dennett brings up valid points, even if you disagree with my views in particular?

No. Every point you've made is either a distortion, or obvious (Dennett is a materialist! stop the presses!).

Your chief error is in assuming that derived intentionality is somehow not 'real' intentionality. When Dennett argues that intentionality forms a continuum, and that there is no principled way, therefore, to draw a boundary between original and derived intentionality, you interpret that to mean that he regards all intentionality as illusory.

My argument is that, between what Dennett denies and what he affirms, a human has as much intentionality as a computer program, a thermometer, or anything else you want to describe as having intentionality - and that the main difference is that a human is more complex. Quantitative, not qualitative. What neither you nor mtraven seem to get is 'Dennett never said that explicitly' or even 'Dennett explicitly said he denies what I'm arguing' (Which itself would be fun to see) doesn't prove me wrong. I'm taking his stances and arguing what they mean. I'm not pretending Dennett is running around saying 'Humans are thermometers', which isn't just oversimplified, but is actually against what I'm argued; that Dennett implies humans have a distinct, even qualitative difference insofar as intention and belief goes, but the 'implies' only goes that far. It's not even a real claim of qualitative difference, but a way of thinking.

That is not Dennett's position. He actually writes:

And that quote goes on to say that the theory is 'maximally neutral' in that it isn't actually arguing the presence or lack of "real" beliefs in a structure. And what did I say?

He considers the intentional stance useful primarily in terms of practicality - "actual" intention isn't taken into account

This works both ways, Valerie. I pointed to the intentional stance as being a construct, a thing of practicality. I've argued that between Dennett's reductivism, materialist commitment, and otherwise, his thoughts on intentionality and belief lead to a meaning of those words that sets him far apart from what people normally mean or expect. You don't even have to agree this is a bad thing, but if you want to argue against it, you'll have to do more work.

Doug had the grace to admit that he was wrong about Dennett. How will you acquit yourself?

Did you miss the part where I said, before Doug said he was wrong, that I'm not on any side but my own? Will you and mtraven have the grace to give up a perceived 'win' and admit that my view of Dennett brings up valid points, even if you disagree with my views in particular? Or are you going to try and argue 'No, Dennett doesn't believe humans are just really complex machines whose thoughts and actions can't be reduced to basic physics'?

What I've said is that Dennett is affirming intentionality by way of shifting what intentionality is - from something that is real and actual, to something that is, 'for the sake of a model', real - but fundamentally unreal.

Your chief error is in assuming that derived intentionality is somehow not 'real' intentionality. When Dennett argues that intentionality forms a continuum, and that there is no principled way, therefore, to draw a boundary between original and derived intentionality, you interpret that to mean that he regards all intentionality as illusory.

That is not Dennett's position. He actually writes:

Although the earliest definition of the intentional stance (Dennett 1971) suggested to many that it was merely an instrumentalist strategy, not a theory of real or genuine belief, this common misapprehension has been extensively discussed and rebutted in subsequent accounts (Dennett 1987, 1991, 1996).

Doug had the grace to admit that he was wrong about Dennett. How will you acquit yourself?

The task of point by point refutation of your distortions has exceeded my threshold of boredom. Presumably if anyone else is reading this they can figure it out for themselves.

You're doing it wrong, mtraven. You're supposed to close your eyes, cover your ears, and yell 'I can't hear you la la la la'.

So from your perspective, what else is there? You've dodged my question by throwing up a bunch of philsophical terms and saying you aren't committed to any of them. I'm still trying to figure out what you do believe. You reject supernaturalism, but you won't say why your naturalistic theory of mind, if you have one, is different from Dennett's.

I contend that supernaturalism, as a category, is meaningless and/or misunderstood. It's akin to the soul - the focus of a debate, with a variety of views and tentative arguments.

And I explicitly said why my theory is different:

It differs first and foremost from Dennett because he equates third person interpretation of intentionality as the only real standard, and treats humans different from thermostats on quantitative ('more reducible mechanisms') grounds.

I don't even have to decide between all of the options I outlined - I said I consider most of them to overlap at least in spirit if not in specifics. Whether it's because consciousness is emergent and irreducible, or because qualia is real, or because consciousness is quantum-based, or because consciousness speaks to and interacts with abstracts, is beside the point from my view. From the outset I contend that you can't have intention if you can't, as a composite being, comprehend intention. Contra Dennett, who argues that any intentionality you can 'get' from anything, whether it's a human, a poker program, or a thermostat (And, like it or not, a damn atom - ha ha), is insofar as the 'reality' of intentionality goes, the same thing.

You are misreading the point of the shopping list example (big surprise). The point is not to reduce your mind to a shopping list, but to illustrate that the problem of mental representations and external representations is the same problem. Part of the reason you are confused is your continued smudging of the concept of intentionality with other things, but I've pointed that out about five times already so I'm done with that. In both cases, the marks on paper or the marks in your head are intentional by virtue of their being causally linked to an interpretive system that can correllate them with real-world objects. A representation together with this causal mechanism constitutes an intentional system. That's why a thermostat (which contains a representation of the room's temperature, linked to bidirectional causal mechanisms) is an intentional system, but a pencil is not.

Even Chalmers can and has argued that if you use an 'external' device as a placeholder for your memory, it can conceivably be considered part of your own mental framework. That's not what Dennett is arguing is here, and you damn well know it. If you see a boulder placed precariously near an incline, by Dennett's intentional stance nothing is stopping you from talking about how that boulder is planning on rolling down the incline - yes, you can go stance 1 and illustrate the situation with math. Yes, you can go stance 2 and treat the boulder (or boulder and incline, or what have you) as a device that can be made to function in one way or the other. And you can go stance 3 and grant it as much intention as living (or, in Dennett's world, I suppose "living") agents. The decision to go with stance 1, 2, or 3 is a question of accuracy-of-prediction and convenience. Nothing more.

You know what? I think I've made my case: The sort of intention people have under Dennett's view is primarily orchestrated by a combination of convenient illusion (He considers the intentional stance useful primarily in terms of practicality - "actual" intention isn't taken into account) and by nature of his commitment to materialism/reducible physicalism (mind is brain, and brain is just a 3 pound pile of essentially newtonian physics). A person intends to write a poem the way a computer program intends to bluff, or a thermometer intends to rise. That seperates his conclusions about belief from the Churchlands comes down to practicality.

I was asked to give cites, then cites from the man himself. I've done it. You've cursed and snorted and whined. If you don't want to accept what I assert, that's fine. If you want to argue that Dennett's method is the best, go argue with Chalmers - everyone knows where the dividing line is drawn. But if you want to convince me that there's more to Dennett's attributions of intention/belief than what I've outlined, it's your time to shine - I want proof.

From Dennett's perspective, everything is mechanism, period.

So from your perspective, what else is there? You've dodged my question by throwing up a bunch of philsophical terms and saying you aren't committed to any of them. I'm still trying to figure out what you do believe. You reject supernaturalism, but you won't say why your naturalistic theory of mind, if you have one, is different from Dennett's.

I think intentionality is reserved for composite beings who can comprehend intentionality, period. And by that I further mean 'they have a thought that contemplates a course of action before taking it'.

I am not really interested in your definition of intentionality. If you and Dennett choose to mean different things by the same word, that may be the cause of some confusion but is not itself interesting from either a scientific or philosophical standpoint. When I asked for a theory of intentionality, I meant a theory of how it works. If it's not supernatural and not mechanistic, what is it?

You are misreading the point of the shopping list example (big surprise). The point is not to reduce your mind to a shopping list, but to illustrate that the problem of mental representations and external representations is the same problem. Part of the reason you are confused is your continued smudging of the concept of intentionality with other things, but I've pointed that out about five times already so I'm done with that. In both cases, the marks on paper or the marks in your head are intentional by virtue of their being causally linked to an interpretive system that can correllate them with real-world objects. A representation together with this causal mechanism constitutes an intentional system. That's why a thermostat (which contains a representation of the room's temperature, linked to bidirectional causal mechanisms) is an intentional system, but a pencil is not.

Bullshit. Show me where I was "fighting" you on that question. As usual, you are making shit up.

As usual? First you called me a liar. Then you said I wasn't lying, just misunderstanding. Back to me lying. Because I was lying about Dennett. No, wait, just misunderstanding like the other critics. Those critics who LIE.

Maybe you 'misunderstood', though how that happened when I was asserting from the start that, yes, Dennett defends a kind of intentionality - but the problem is his 'intentionality' is not a real thing in any meaningful sense, but a predictive mechanism that he wants to have accepted as real. It's like panpsychism without the psychism.

God, what a pathetic attempt to weasel. In the off chance that you really don't understand the clear meaning of what Dennett was saying, imagine a pencil. It's an artifact, it is simpler than a thermostat, therefore according to Dennett not capable of being interpreted intentionally. So an atom is also unlikely to be interpretable that way.

Did you even read the papers I cited? Dennett argues that the only reason to not ascribe intention to simple objects is because the intentional stance is purely about ease and accuracy of predictability, and stances 2 and 3 may reduce accuracy. An atom is ENTIRELY 'capable' of being interpreted intentionally.

The quotes you offered from Dennett do not support your arguments.

We disagree. A surprise, I know.

Yes (depending, of course, on what counts as "qualitative", which you refuse to specify).

OK, now I'm done with this conversation until you answer this question without weasling: what is your theory of intentionality, and if it doesn't involve the supernatural, how is it different from Dennett's?

Ha. Avoiding the Churchland question, I see.

Qualitative means a difference in quality. A different kind. As opposed to quantitative. 2+2 = 4 and an addition problem that spanned several pages would be quantitatively different, but qualitatively the same. From Dennett's perspective, everything is mechanism, period. One more time, because - considering your 'a pencil is simpler than a thermostat but Dennett won't ascribe intentionality to it' ploy - you need a reminder:

Suppose you have composed a shopping list, on a piece of paper, to guide your shopping behavior. The marks on the piece of paper have derived intentionality, of course, but if you forgo the shopping list and just remember the wanted items in your head, whatever it is that "stores" or "represents" the items to be purchased in your brain has exactly the same status as the trails of ink on the paper. There is no more real, or intrinsic, or original intentionality than that.

Your thoughts have intentionality, sure. Every bit as much as ink on paper.

Same status.
No difference.
Qualitatively the same.
Churchlands.

OK, now I'm done with this conversation until you answer this question without weasling: what is your theory of intentionality, and if it doesn't involve the supernatural, how is it different from Dennett's?

I think intentionality is reserved for composite beings who can comprehend intentionality, period. And by that I further mean 'they have a thought that contemplates a course of action before taking it'. Whether they are capable of doing that due to mental language, developed language, emergence, panpsychism, property dualism, substance dualism, or otherwise - is another question entirely, and I frankly see overlap between just about every view listed, since the question becomes one of framing. So a physicalist who believes mental states are irreducible, or a physicalist who believes mental states are emergent properties, a person who believes matter has both mental and physical properties, or a person who believes in ghosts, to me, share too many similarities for me to be overly concerned with. I continue to read up on it, and frankly most of the physicalists sound like effective dualists anyway.

It differs first and foremost from Dennett because he equates third person interpretation of intentionality as the only real standard, and treats humans different from thermostats on quantitative ('more reducible mechanisms') grounds.

I see Dennett as, one more time, trying to have his cake and eat it too. He wants us to view the world not only as mechanism, but base mechanism, with no qualitative difference in intention between a shopping list and thoughts. But, with next to no justification other than 'You're more complex and therefore can do more', also jump back and treat everything as normal, slap the intentional stance onto things, quietly mention it's an illusion, and otherwise have business as usual. Which is easy, because the 'intentional stance' is superficially similar to what everyone does anyway. The only difference is the intentional stance allows Dennett to smuggle in a commitment to materialism. It's the Churchlands with a blanket over it.

Considering you've been fighting me on 'Dennett shifts intention's definition to justify his view of it' until just now, that's gaining validity.

Bullshit. Show me where I was "fighting" you on that question. As usual, you are making shit up.

As simple an artifact, mtraven. Do you know what an artifact is?

God, what a pathetic attempt to weasel. In the off chance that you really don't understand the clear meaning of what Dennett was saying, imagine a pencil. It's an artifact, it is simpler than a thermostat, therefore according to Dennett not capable of being interpreted intentionally. So an atom is also unlikely to be interpretable that way.

I brought out Dennett's own words.

The quotes you offered from Dennett do not support your arguments.

Answer my questions, mtraven. All of them

I really don't see why I'm under some obligation to answer your stupid questions when you haven't answered mine. But to make you happy:

When a street light turns green, can you say (by Dennett's view) that it decided/intended to turn green?

Yes.

When you go to the supermarket, can you say (by Dennett's view) that you decided/intended to go to the supermarket?

Yes.

Is there a shred of qualitative difference (by Dennett's view) between the intention and decision you showed, and the intention and decision the street light showed?

Yes (depending, of course, on what counts as "qualitative", which you refuse to specify).

OK, now I'm done with this conversation until you answer this question without weasling: what is your theory of intentionality, and if it doesn't involve the supernatural, how is it different from Dennett's?