"This lock-and-key variety of crude aboutness," Dennett says, "is the basic design element out of which nature has fashioned the fancier sorts of subsystems..." Design element? Fashioned? Do tell, Professor. It all sounds very purposeful to me.
Afterthought: The difficulty people have in discussing evolution without employing terms that imply intentionality strongly suggests that a sense of intentionality may be -- to use a favorite term of theirs -- hard-wired in us.
Post bumped.
Post bumped.
I may be getting old and impatient with philosophers’' musings...but so what?
ReplyDeleteWasn't it Wittgenstein who noted that the words we use for things control much of our thought about things? So, for example, debating whether a lock and key has “intentionality” is about the word "intentional"? And that debate, about the metes and bounds of the word “intentional” can go on forever…like angels dancing on pins…
More Wittgenstein: Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent