Intent

[durangodawood]

....In other words, is there ever a justification for ascribing 'intent' to the cell?

No. Intent is a capacity of mind. Essentially, its a desire. No mind, no desire.

 

[zippy2006]

Bad form, my friend.

Yes, requests for clarification seem to be labeled "bad form" in this thread. If you are unable to explain your position so be it, but please stop with the condescension.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

... we may find I misunderstood you on a few things, so there may be further clarification necessary on your part.
...
I feel as if you're stuck (maybe unconsciously) on human intent rather than a generalized concept of intent. As such, you appear to make leaps that don't follow - I have an intent centered in my brain, therefore organisms without brains are without intent. You express this through ideas such as levels and emergence, but you've not established why intent requires levels and emergence. It seems you're arguing intent requires a specific level of complexity without really defining complexity. You're just assuming more levels means more complexity, more likelihood for emergence, etc.

Ah; perhaps you missed the part where I suggested that "Intent is part of the language used for systems (e.g. creatures) that have the high-level cognitive capabilities of planning and forethought."

I did even ask if you thought this might apply to an amoeba: "Do you think an amoeba has high-level cognitive capabilities that permit planning and forethought (i.e. modeling the environment, self, future scenarios, etc.), or is it clearly much simpler than that?" This was intended to clarify whether you accepted that usage of 'intent' and that it wouldn't apply to an amoeba.

The idea was to highlight (without getting into philosophical depths) that, in my experience, intentionality is generally taken to be a cognitive function involving planning & forethought; IOW, a desire to take some action to achieve some goal, with an implication of knowing, and/or deliberation, and/or volition (the descriptive language used for aspects of high-level cognition).

The implication is that creature with little or no cognitive capacity can't have intent.

Does that make sense?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Evolution didn't program them to do anything......

And here we are back to the concerns of the OP concerning the words purpose and intent. Evolution (which doesn't exist in the first place) is not a rational thinking being and programed nothing..... The cell (if you want to leave God out of the equation), did it all by itself.....

Saying that evolution 'programmed' them is just shorthand for saying that the trial and error process of heritable variation coupled with natural selection repeatedly filtered out the less successful variant individuals and reproductively favoured the more successful variants, eventually resulting in individuals with cells that coordinate their activities in complex and sophisticated ways to the advantage of the reproductive success of those individuals.

 

[zippy2006]

There is more to it than that, as I said. Emergent properties are qualitatively different from those of the substrate from which they emerge. This is what makes the difference.

Presumably there is more than that, as I am no authority on emergence, but I did not mean to imply that there is no qualitative difference.

I probably don't know enough about current theories of emergence to have a productive conversation about it, but since the thread seems to be stagnating I will at least stir up the topic.

Is your position on emergence ontological or only epistemological? When I listen to the layman talk about emergence it seems to me little more than a placeholder for future knowledge (and thus it seems to be merely an epistemological position). This is because the nature of the coupling between the emergent property and the underlying substrate seems to remain always mysterious by definition. To put this crudely, the emergentist might be thought to say, "The emergent property emerges from the substrate and is qualitatively different from the substrate, but we don't know how any of this really works." What do you make of that?

...and if it is intended as an ontological position, then what kind of candidates exist for a future explanation of the reality of emergence itself?

 

[Resha Caner]

Yes, requests for clarification seem to be labeled "bad form" in this thread. If you are unable to explain your position so be it, but please stop with the condescension.

It was just a bit of playfulness. Asking for clarification is fair, so I was only bantering about your approach. If it upsets you I'll say no more.

 

[Resha Caner]

No. Intent is a capacity of mind. Essentially, its a desire. No mind, no desire.

But that doesn't mean anything. I can define playing chess to be a capacity of mind, and therefore computers don't play chess. They might be executing a set of instructions, but they're not playing chess. Big deal. You might win the semantic argument, but you'll still lose the chess game.

 

[durangodawood]

But that doesn't mean anything. I can define playing chess to be a capacity of mind, and therefore computers don't play chess. They might be executing a set of instructions, but they're not playing chess. Big deal. You might win the semantic argument, but you'll still lose the chess game.

OK. Then you tell me what you mean by intent in this context.

 

[Resha Caner]

Ah; perhaps you missed the part where I suggested that "Intent is part of the language used for systems (e.g. creatures) that have the high-level cognitive capabilities of planning and forethought."

I did even ask if you thought this might apply to an amoeba: "Do you think an amoeba has high-level cognitive capabilities that permit planning and forethought (i.e. modeling the environment, self, future scenarios, etc.), or is it clearly much simpler than that?" This was intended to clarify whether you accepted that usage of 'intent' and that it wouldn't apply to an amoeba.

The idea was to highlight (without getting into philosophical depths) that, in my experience, intentionality is generally taken to be a cognitive function involving planning & forethought; IOW, a desire to take some action to achieve some goal, with an implication of knowing, and/or deliberation, and/or volition (the descriptive language used for aspects of high-level cognition).

The implication is that creature with little or no cognitive capacity can't have intent.

Does that make sense?

Kind of. No doubt humans have more cognitive ability than amoebas. Hopefully you're aware, though, of Leibniz's criticism of Descartes in matters of degree? (I think it was Leibniz criticizing Descartes' principle of action, but I could be mistaken). The basic question is: Where do you draw the line? Pasting weighty words onto intent such as knowing, deliberation, and volition may sink the amoeba ship and win you the semantic debate, but you fail to then properly consider the amoeba's mechanism of action. And though one can discuss the extremes, the median cases are impossible to assess. On which side of the line is a lizard, a fish, a plankton, etc.?

All you really succeed in doing is distinguishing a form of high intent from a form of low intent ... and if you prefer I use a different word for low intent, I really don't care. Let's do it. But we're right back to the same discussion about the same question: Does an amoeba have low intent? It certainly seems so, since they entrap/surround their food. They reach out for it rather than sitting idly and waiting for the food to come to them.

So, yes, at a low level that indicates an awareness of environment (there's food to my left), planning (I should send a pseudopod left rather than right), and action based upon that knowledge (reaching out and absorbing the food). Intent - low level though it may be.

Again, the indicator I'm leaning toward is activity that can only be described with chaos - there are multiple solutions and an inability to predict which solution the system enacts. I don't know if anyone has specifically studied such a thing in the case of amoebas, but that's where I'll hang my hat. If none of their behavior is chaotic - is fully demonstrable as deterministic - then I'll concede they have no intent and we can discuss whether the next step up the chain has intent. If some of their behavior is chaotic, then what say you?

 

[Resha Caner]

OK. Then you tell me what you mean by intent in this context.

My apologies. My reply to you was probably too short and assumed too much about the extent to which you have followed the conversation. If that's your answer to the OP, then thank you for the reply.

In your opinion, things without mind do not demonstrate intent. How, then, do you determine what has 'mind'?

 

[durangodawood]

My apologies. My reply to you was probably too short and assumed too much about the extent to which you have followed the conversation. If that's your answer to the OP, then thank you for the reply.

In your opinion, things without mind do not demonstrate intent. How, then, do you determine what has 'mind'?

I will follow up for sure. But I really would like you to tell me what you meant by "intent" in your OP question, just so I can start off on the right foot here, as I seem to have misinterpreted your question right off the bat.

 

[Resha Caner]

I will follow up for sure. But I really would like you to tell me what you meant by "intent" in your OP question, just so I can start off on the right foot here, as I seem to have misinterpreted your question right off the bat.

No, I don't think you misinterpreted.

I'll try to keep the story short. Were you to read through all my posts you'll see that at one point I indicated a willingness to let the term evolve with the conversation. I began by saying that I simply infer intent. There are things I do that I believe I've done with intention. If I see other organisms do those things, I assume they have also done them with intention. So it was definition by example rather than by logical construct: the chemical reactions of volcanoes vs. cells, the consumption of forest fires vs. hunting/gathering.

Later I added some necessary criteria: 1) the external environment offers multiple possibilities and the path taken is determined internally to the organism, 2) the decision cannot be deterministically defined

Finally, I've begun discussing a mechanism (of sorts) where the decisions are an emergent property of the organism rather than a basic chemical (or other) mechanism of the organism - what can only be described with something like chaos.

 

[durangodawood]

No, I don't think you misinterpreted.

I'll try to keep the story short. Were you to read through all my posts you'll see that at one point I indicated a willingness to let the term evolve with the conversation. I began by saying that I simply infer intent. There are things I do that I believe I've done with intention. If I see other organisms do those things, I assume they have also done them with intention. So it was definition by example rather than by logical construct: the chemical reactions of volcanoes vs. cells, the consumption of forest fires vs. hunting/gathering.

Later I added some necessary criteria: 1) the external environment offers multiple possibilities and the path taken is determined internally to the organism, 2) the decision cannot be deterministically defined

Finally, I've begun discussing a mechanism (of sorts) where the decisions are an emergent property of the organism rather than a basic chemical (or other) mechanism of the organism - what can only be described with something like chaos.

I see. (I think)

I'm not typically disposed to cracking open words too much.

The dictionary is a good guide for me here:
Intent: intention or purpose.
Intention: a thing intended; an aim or plan.

Aim and plan are functions of mind or cognition, I think, in that they require genuine foresight.

We should come up with a different word for the function of, say, a simple path seeking algorithm... which is essentially just a machine possessed of no foresight or plan-making capacity

(Maybe our minds are mere machines too. But I dont think so. They possess qualities utterly lacking in what we typically think of as a machine.)

 

[Resha Caner]

The dictionary is a good guide for me here:

A definition shouldn't repeat the word being defined. In my summary I forgot to mention that I had suggested the phrase, "to set a goal".

Maybe our minds are mere machines too. But I dont think so. They possess qualities utterly lacking in what we typically think of as a machine.

That's fine as an opinion, but it does nothing to persuade. My question to you was how you know if something has a mind.

 

[durangodawood]

....My question to you was how you know if something has a mind.

Well first of all it has to have a physical architecture thats even capable of the necessary information processing. That rules out rocks, probably plants, and various other things.

After that its about determining whether a being displays actual plan-making capabilities, rather than just program-executing. Thats more difficult. But I think a test is whether or not we see any novelty in attempted plans.

To me plan-making is the real key to "intent".

 

[Resha Caner]

Well first of all it has to have a physical architecture thats even capable of the necessary information processing. That rules out rocks, probably plants, and various other things.

After that its about determining whether a being displays actual plan-making capabilities, rather than just program-executing. Thats more difficult. But I think a test is whether or not we see any novelty in attempted plans.

To me plan-making is the real key to "intent".

Agreed. Some sort of Turing test? I never thought that test was really very effective.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Daniel Dennett has written quite a bit on intentionality. While he tends to focus on the intentional stance treating other things as though they have rational minds and purposes as a shortcut to predicting their behavior, he also discusses the design stance, where we treat things as though they were designed as a shortcut to predicting their behavior. Or for cases where we know they were designed, it is clearly a useful shortcut to use this knowledge of design rather than try to predict the behavior of, say, an alarm clock by taking it apart and working out the physics of its innards (the physical stance).

The sorts of entities so far discussed in relation to design-stance predictions have been artifacts, but the design stance also works well when it comes to living things and their parts. For example, even without any understanding of the biology and chemistry underlying anatomy we can nonetheless predict that a heart will pump blood throughout the body of a living thing. The adoption of the design stance supports this prediction; that is what hearts are supposed to do (i.e., what nature has "designed" them to do).

A thermostat doesn't want or intend to regulate its temperature any more than a human body wants to regulate its temperature through the mechanisms of homeostasis. But it can be a shortcut to describe things in such terms to avoid having to directly refer to and derive the resultant behavior of the complex physiological and biochemical mechanisms that produce it.

So I'm amenable to this, but it's important to keep in mind that it is a shortcut of sorts, an act of pretend that we regard these things 'as though' they have design or intent.

 

[durangodawood]

...So I'm amenable to this, but it's important to keep in mind that it is a shortcut of sorts, an act of pretend that we regard these things 'as though' they have design or intent.

Not sure how amenable I am.

Falsely attributing "intent" perpetuates various illusions about the how the world works. And generally I value truth above illusion.

otoh, there might be some value in imagining that things are "beings". The animistic view might encourage more respect for the world we inhabit?.

 

[durangodawood]

Agreed. Some sort of Turing test? I never thought that test was really very effective.

Seems to me the Turing test could produce a ridiculous amount a false positives depending on the (lack of) imagination of the administrator.

At the moment the only test I can think of is does the proposed "mind" show us novelty in its plan making. I'll need to think more deeply to go any further with this....

 

[Resha Caner]

At the moment the only test I can think of is does the proposed "mind" show us novelty in its plan making. I'll need to think more deeply to go any further with this....

Maybe, but novelty is also subject to how imaginative the administrator is. Amoebas do some very novel things I never would have imagined because I eat with a fork. I wouldn't have imagined eating with pseudopods.