> FWIW, I'm not trying to *assert* collective intention (or higher-order > intention). The idea that a collection of intentions exhibits a relatively > closed "floor" or "logical layer of abstraction" below ... so that the > structure of a collective of intentional agents may well be self-organized in > the same way a group of non-intentional objects like molecules or grains of > sand might self-organize. > > But my intuition argues that that "floor" is not tightly closed ... that > there is a LOT of leakage from the intentions of the agents into the > "intention" of the collective. For that sort of reasoning, this paper is > interesting: > > Collective (Telic) Virtue Epistemology > https://philpapers.org/rec/CARCTV
Glen - I've been niggling about in my own noggin about the possibility that "awareness precedes intention", particularly while considering the collective versions of same, but your link here yields a delicious confounding of that in the line: "through a (collective) intentional attempt to get it right aptly" which suggests that awareness/knowledge might not arise in the absence of intention? thanks for leading me (back) to Sosa... his work is such a rich vein that I keep dropping away from it in perplexity I think. Intuitively I agree that there is a LOT of leakage from agent's intentionality into a collective, or at least in the one's we speak of here. But what of cells forming organs forming organisms? If a cell has an intention (at least to remain coherent?) then the collective (organ) supports that intention (as a reward for it's symbiotic participation in the organ's functions?) of the cell, but the cell does not provide the higher intentions of the organ, but rather merely supports them as a byproduct? Or maybe I'm wrong... since you often speak of kidney/nephron function... is the intention of the cell somehow reflected in the intention of the nephron which then becomes or informs the intention of the kidney which -> other organs -> organism - > social groupings of organisms -> ... or perhaps I'm buggering the term "intention" badly here. BTW... this is not an attempt to be argumentative, but rather reflects my own wonderment at the implications that seem to arise from what you offered here... - Steve
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