Again, according to me, the intention is neither in the program or in the computer but in the relation between the omputer and its environment over time and space. I guess, I would have to say, then, that computers can't dointention, but robots can.
N Nicholas Thompson Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology Clark University [email protected] https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2020 4:28 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Dennett on agency On 10/20/20 3:35 PM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote: > I'm not sure you can have this conversation with a *gradation* of intent. I'm > fond of the insult "He's a tool", because people can be *used*. If a person > is used by another person, does that imply the "intent" of the tool is a > degraded form of "intent"? I think that's a reasonable conclusion. But the > argument suffers some sort of causa prima problem or recursion problem. > > Our common conception of a computer program defines it as a Pure Tool, no > agency whatsoever. But perhaps *some* kinds of computer program (e.g. an > individual S-expression grown by a genetic algorithm) might have a tiny bit > more agency/intention than a hand-written program. And is it entirely rhetorical to say that a computer virus or worm "intends" to infect/co-opt your system, even though it was hand written? Can the intentions of the creator transitively pass through the artifact? > The fundamental problem, though, is the ideal, in the limit, ultimate > agency/intention. I suspect we can narrowly escape that recursion problem by > only allowing co-evolutionary structures where the "objective functions" are > all implicitly defined by the churning milieu. That way agency/intention can > be *locally* transitive but not globally transitive. E.g. I can be Renee's > tool, but not the tool of someone I've never met in some small village in > Kazakhstan. Similarly, a cell might be a tool of its local tissue, but not > the tool of some distant cell in some other organism on Venus or somesuch. I like the juxtaposition of "agent" and "tool". I suppose I would argue against the above distinctions by contriving a chain of influence/persuasion/control from the Kazakh to you? Yes, on the face of it, you are more likely a tool of Renee's than that of the mysterious Kazakh, but maybe this (counter)example is too contrived/banal to mean anything. > > On 10/20/20 11:06 AM, Russ Abbott wrote: >> Computer programs can certainly be described using intentional >> language. Does that mean that a computer program can have intention? If so, >> that seems to degrade the notion of intent. - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
