Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id RAA08283 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 16 Feb 2000 17:42:53 GMT From: Robin Faichney <robin@faichney.demon.co.uk> Organization: Reborn Technology To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Intentionality (was Re: What are memes made of?) Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 13:51:27 +0000 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.0.21] Content-Type: text/plain References: <B4CDF573.13B%heuvel@muc.de> Message-Id: <00021614170201.00393@faichney> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On Mon, 14 Feb 2000, William van den Heuvel wrote:
>Question: Is there an advantage in going back to medieval philosophy?
As Joe already said, it originated there, but it's very much alive and kicking
in contemporary 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.
"Intentionality" has a widely agreed-upon meaning, "mentality" does not.
Brentano said that all mental phenomena are intentional, but (a) not everyone
will agree with that, and (b) it leaves open the possibility that some
intentional phenomena are not mental.
> > >> ...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?
I'm very interested in finding out how and why phenomena appear to fall into
two main categories, i.e. mental and physical. I don't think anyone has yet
come up with a satisfactory explanation of this, and I don't go for either
idealism (mental things are real, physical ones unreal), materialism (vice
versa) or dualism (there just are these two kinds of things). I'm convinced
that understanding physical and intentional information is a significant step
in the right direction.
>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.
This has been very thoroughly "done", if you accept that what you're saying
here is a version of the "brain=hardware, mind=software" story. As you point
out, there are similarities but also differences. I can't get into this right
now, and I don't think this is the appropriate forum, anyway. I suggest you do
a web search, and look at newsgroup comp.ai.philosophy. Of course, Dennett has
also written on this, but off hand I can't recall in which of his books it's
covered most thoroughly.
>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.
I need to take the long view on that one, myself.
>Anyway, thanks for
>your help.
You're very welcome!
-- 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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