Bill Keezer, over at Bill's Comments, takes up the subject of intentionality. What does it mean for something to do something "intentionally".
In a discussion between Maverick Philosopher> Bill and Waka Waka Waka Malcolm, the example of ant trails came up. Ants leave chemical markers which other ants can follow to find food (and find their way back to the nest).
Another item discussed was piles of rock left as trail markers.
About intentionality, Bill says (among other things):
When we apply the term intention to the object it carries with it the implied, “who’s intent or for what purpose?” Inextricably tied to our use of the word intention is the idea of purpose or end. In the sense of there being an “end” to the pheromone trail, it is leading other ants back to the food source. But if it arose by chance, that some behaviors were more successful than other behaviors in survival of an ant colony, thus propagating them, can they be called purposeful? Especially in light of the changes in behavior being due to changes in the physical structure of the ant brain, not in some choice made by the ants.
A quick trip to Onelook.com shows that the verb "intend" implies purpose and meaning. Indeed, a child who argues an act was not intentional invariably says, "I didn't mean to". Moreover, the word "intend" traces back to the Latin for "turn one's attention toward". This implies that intention without conscious awareness is not possible.
It looks like Bill would agree:
To ascribe intentionality and in turn consciousness to any lesser animal or to plants or bacteria, much less to the inanimate forces of nature, is to render the term meaningless.
Does conscious awareness guarantee intention? Maybe not. There are such things as "unintended consequences". Either conscious awareness of doing something does not guarantee intention, or the phrase "unintended consequences" has no meaning.
So what is "meaning"? I'd say it's the act of forming a correlation between a real-world object or situation and an unrelated abstract entity. For example, in language, there is nothing particularly "two-like" about the word "two". Based on the physical properties of the sound, the word could just as easily be "too", "to", or "aardvark". In some ways, the fact that one refers to an abstraction in number theory and the other to a particular species of mammal is a historical accident. All the words listed above – indeed, all the words in this post – have meaning because they have been assigned a correspondence with real or abstract entities.
In the case of the ant trail, the act of laying the trail is essentially an inevitable consequence of how the ant is put together. It has no choice about laying down particular chemicals in particular situations. Other ants have no choice about following the trail – that's how they're put together. We have a simple cause-and-effect system. Effect A causes effect B, which causes effect C, and so on.
A biologist examining ants can dissect the ants involved and analyze the chemicals in the trail, and work out the effects of every part of the system. He can also attempt to put these effects in a hierarchy, from the most immediate (following a trail means other ants from the colony will find anything the trail-blazing ant found) to the most long-range (mechanisms that increase the efficiency with which an ant colony exploits food increases their ability to pass on their genes to future generations). The biologist assigns a model of cause and effect to the events he studies in the physical world.
But are these causes and effects intentional?
Not on the part of the ants. Ants do what they do.
Despite Richard Dawkins' title, The Selfish Gene
What the genes "mean" in terms of how well they survive, is determined by how well the effects they specify function in a particular environment. If some accidental change makes one organism's genes function better than the competition, it will have an advantage, even though it didn't "mean to".
In this case, the cause-effect chain is actually a circle. Genes cause the organism to interact in particular ways with the environment, and the environment causes certain genes to succeed or fail, depending on the results of this interaction.
Meaning that we impose on a situation may also have nothing to do with the actual intentionality of the situation.
For example: suppose two people are hiking across a meadow, and one wants to know where the other's house is. ("Are we there yet?")
"You see that cloud that looks a bit like a weasel?"
"A weasel? I see a salamander."
"'Methinks it is like a weasel.' Anyway, my house is right below the front paw of the weasel."
"OK, I see it. Maybe another hour?"
The cloud does not "intend" to help indicate the location of anyone's house, any more than it "intends" to look like a weasel. It just happens to do so, for at least one person at that moment. The shape of the cloud, and its utility as a reference marker, are imposed on it by a being capable of assigning meaning to a meaningless situation.
Bill's emphasis on choice in his post:
...I am going to take a short-cut here and offer as demonstrated that most of the mammals can be said to exhibit intentional behavior. Even if we ascribe most of their behavior to innate neural structure, evidence can still be argued for forms of choice, desire, communication, etc....
Since a rat can be trained to change its behavior, and negotiate a maze, yet based on the preceding paragraph cannot be said to exhibit choice in the correct sense, trainability is exhibited by intentional creatures, but trainability does not guarantee intentional behavior or the capability for it.
In the cloud example, one person chooses a cloud, and indeed, a part of a cloud, to use as a reference mark to direct another toward his home. He could have chosen a different marker – a tree, a large rock, a mountain, or even a compass reading. He simply chose what was (presumably) most convenient. There was no inevitability in his choice, so he had a free choice.
Was his choice intentional? Probably. It serves the function of indicating where his house is, and is the one of a large number of possible choices of marker that would not have done so. Occam's razor leads us to say it's probably not a coincidence. It was more likely made with an awareness of cause and effect. In this case, the cause of being directed toward a particular location would have the effect of letting someone know where his friend's house is.
So to me, "intention" has to be a matter of creating an abstract representation of the world, even if it's "only" a model of cause and effect, and then making a free choice to produce an effect using that model. Unless both of these are present in an action, the act is not intentional.
3 comments:
Karl,
Interesting extension of my remarks. I will keep these someplace to refer to when I revisit this question, as I will in the future. Malcolm and I had an email discussion also that I would like to work with later as well.
Thanks for dropping by.
Next time you want to take Dawkins out of context, have your Mommy explain at least a little tiny bit of what the words MEAN.
This is nothing more than sophistry. Dawkins has no intention of ascribing intent to genes. Nor does any biologist who isn't trying to tease a case out of genetics that isn't there.
A little learning is a dangerous thing. It's tedious,too.
Robert:
Given that I wrote:
Despite Richard Dawkins' title, The Selfish Gene, genes certainly don't intend to do what they do.
Your comment to me about "ascribing intent to genes" says a lot more about your reading comprehension than it does about my learning.
Next time you comment on what I wrote, try first reading all of it.
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