Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id SAA25615 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 11 Feb 2000 18:40:20 GMT From: Robin Faichney <robin@faichney.demon.co.uk> Organization: Reborn Technology To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Intentionality (was Re: What are memes made of?) Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 17:24:54 +0000 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.0.21] Content-Type: text/plain References: <B4C773C4.E6%heuvel@muc.de> Message-Id: <00021117330802.00360@faichney> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On Wed, 09 Feb 2000, William van den Heuvel wrote:
>William van den heuvel:
>>> If you like to think in terms of "stances" then you could say
>>> information as matter is the "physical stance", and information as
>>> data is the "formal stance". But now I am tempted to suggest the
>>> introduction of an additional stance; information as meaning, which
>>> would be the "meaning stance".
>
>
>Robin Faichney:
>> The "meaning stance" is a great idea, but it's already been had: this is
>> effectively the same as Dennett's "intentional stance" -- see his book of
>> that name.
>
>
>Unfortunately, I don't have much time to read books so I don't know if
>Dennett gives a special meaning to 'intention'.
Depends what you mean by "special". His meaning is certainly not the common
one, but on the other hand it's pretty standard within philosophy. I've written
something on it that may help. Apologies for the length of this, but if we're
going to argue about the relationship between intentionality and memetics, then
we should have some idea what "intentionality" means, at least.
<begin quote>
Psychological Information
When we learn about a thing, we do so via a complex interaction
between various things. The prime example is that of sight,
minimally involving a light source such as the sun, atmospheric
conditions, the object concerned, the reflective properties of
other objects around it, the various components of the eye, the
optic nerve and the brain. We have evolved and learned to be able
to use this set of interactions to learn something about that
particular object. Each element in the system (such as the light
entering the eye) has its own physical information, that in some
cases is capable of conveying information about something else
(such as an apple) because it has been affected, however
indirectly, by that thing, and thus one has characteristics (such
as colour) that somehow correspond to the other.
As always, we have a choice as to whether to adopt the formal
stance. What goes on inside a human skull, or for that matter in
the nervous system of any organism, can be viewed as material
processes, or as information processing. In the case of
psychological information, however, there is another choice open
to us, and that is whether to adopt "the intentional stance":
psychological information can be considered to be "about things".
The concept of intentionality originated in medieval philosophy,
but was revived by Franz Brentano (1838-1916). It differs somewhat
from what is usually meant by "intention". Brentano suggested that
it was the "ineliminable mark of the mental". Our beliefs, for
example, are necessarily about something, and Brentano claimed
that this is true for all mental phenomena, and no physical
phenomena: "...beliefs, desires, hopes, loves, wonderings,
expectings, and so on-are about something; they take an object."
[Fla91, page 61] This object is the semantic content of mental
states. The object need not actually exist-we might be thinking
about a unicorn, or Santa Claus-but without some object, however
imaginary, there is no thought.
When a beam of light entering your eye carries information about
an apple off which it has bounced, that information is encoded.
The encoding takes place as the light encounters the surface of
the apple and is filtered by the structures it finds there, so
that the balance of the mixture of wavelengths within it is
changed. The decoding takes place within the eye, the optic nerve
and the brain, as that particular mixture of wavelengths is
interpreted as being the colour of the apple. At the physical
level, only the light's own information enters the eye, but that
can be processed, using other information already in the brain, to
yield information about the apple. The light's physical
information is the carrier, the brain with its existing relevant
information is the decoding mechanism, and the apple's colour is
the coded message.
Daniel Dennett introduced the concept of "the intentional stance"
to emphasise that this is a strategy we adopt for certain
purposes, even though we use it so habitually that we are not
normally aware of doing so. If we ignore the encoding and decoding
processes, taking the view that we receive information about an
apple directly, when one is in sight, then we are taking the
intentional stance. When we view any information as being "about"
any thing, we are taking the intentional stance. Otherwise, there
is only physical information, which, as the form or structure of
physical reality, is not about anything, and exists entirely for
its own sake. But it is worth noting that, where the intentional
stance is adopted, it builds on the formal stance: mere matter
cannot be "about" anything. Only information has that capacity.
Intentionality is very closely linked to meaning and reference.
<end quote>
-- Robin Faichney===============================This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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