Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id RAA01651 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 14 Feb 2000 17:11:11 GMT User-Agent: Microsoft Outlook Express Macintosh Edition - 5.0 (1513) Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 18:09:55 +0100 Subject: Re: Intentionality (was Re: What are memes made of?) From: William van den Heuvel <heuvel@muc.de> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Message-ID: <B4CDF573.13B%heuvel@muc.de> In-Reply-To: <00021117330802.00360@faichney> Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit 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'.
>
> Robin Faichney:
> 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.
Yes, thank you. I appreciate your piece about "Psychological Information" in
which you exlain where your notion of intentionality comes from (from
medieval philosophy via Brentano and Dennett). I can now see my notion of
"intentional stance" is very different from yours (Dennets). However, let me
say first that I don't intend to argue about anything. Rather, I like to
think we are exploring together. Isn't that the purpose of this list?
Anyway, in the spirit of exploration I will see if I can contribute
something by making some comments to your following quote:
> <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".
Question: Is there an advantage in going back to medieval philosophy?
I mean, if intentionality is the "ineliminable mark of the mental" why not
simply call it "mental stance"? Or is there more to intentionality than
mentality? If "mentality" is the same thing then it would have the advantage
of not having to explain intentionality to everyone who is not a medieval
philosopher.
> ...Our beliefs, for
> example, are necessarily about something, and Brentano claimed
> that this is true for all mental phenomena, and no physical
> phenomena: "
I am slowly getting the impression that you are thinking in traditional
Cartesian catagories of "matter and mind". If this is the case I can now
also see how you can speak of "physical information" and "intentional
information": the physical information is matter, the intentional
information is mind. Right?
> ...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.
In computer jargon there is a programming method called "Object Oriented
Programming". Here we also have "objects". These objects are not real (not
made of matter) but they are what we call "virtual". Virtual objects do not
exist in reality but they are... well, virtual. Sometimes they speak of
"virtual reality" but I think that is a bit confusing. There appears to be
certain similarities between mental objects in the human mind and virtual
objects in the computer but there are of course also important differences.
I am a software developer myself and I feel very comfortable with virtual
agents roaming in virtual reality and somehow I can imaging memes to be like
that. If you try to explain memes to a virtual object programmer he (or she)
would almost certainly ask if you mean something similar to virtual agents
or computer viruses. What would you say? Has this analogy (between virtual
reality in the computer and mental objects in the human mind) already been
discussed here on this list? I am sorry to raise it again if it has been
done already. In any case, it is only another variation of Descartes.
>
> 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>
This helps in my attempt to understand what you are saying. My memory on
philosophy is slowly fading over the years but I seem to detect some
Cartesian influences in your distinction between physical information and
intentional information and I vaguely recall something about Aristotlian
metaphysics in your distinction between form and matter. Anyway, thanks for
your help.
William van den Heuvel
heuvel@muc.de
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