Dennett on agency
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... and why tornados fail to have it. A key feature appears to be that agents
have a history that makes a difference, can exploit information the way a thermostat can. Electrons or motor proteins, for instance, don't pick up scratches or scars. Sean Carroll adds that agents participate in the arrow of time. Queued up to the relevant part of the discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yZw4wxvnVQ&ab_channel=SeanCarroll&t=1670s -- Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.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/ |
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Not sure what the point is. Larger systems can exploit information and "pick of scars." Cells in that sense are larger systems. I'm confused about what that is supposed to add to the discussion. 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. -- Russ Abbott Professor, Computer Science California State University, Los Angeles On Tue, Oct 20, 2020 at 9:23 AM jon zingale <[hidden email]> wrote: ... and why tornados fail to have it. A key feature appears to be that agents - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . 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/ |
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Russ, I have not had time to follow this thread, but just want to remind you what my first response to your question would be. Intentions are not the sorts of thing we “have”. They are things that we do. They are of a higher order than knee jerks, or even apple bites, but they are patterns in behavior all the same. I have busy because I signed up to do all sorts of things in September because I had nothing to do, and to my horror and surprise, every thing I signed up for, bore fruit and now I am overwhelmed. I have a prejudice against Dennett. I think he worries too much about his standing with the Big Kids at Harvard and trying NOT to violate vernacular ways of thinking so much as to dent his royalties. And I am jealous of him. So there. Hope you are well Nick Nicholas Thompson Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology Clark University https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Russ Abbott Not sure what the point is. Larger systems can exploit information and "pick of scars." Cells in that sense are larger systems. I'm confused about what that is supposed to add to the discussion. 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. -- Russ Abbott On Tue, Oct 20, 2020 at 9:23 AM jon zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:
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I intend to check the mail in a few minutes. I am not doing it now. Nobody else knows of my plan until you read this. Why can't I validly say that I have that intention? --- Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, Santa Fe, NM 87505 505 670-9918 Santa Fe, NM On Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 2:27 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:
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In reply to this post by Russ Abbott
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. 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. 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. -- ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . 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/
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In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2
Nick - I'm not splitting hairs on you here to pester... but truly trying to sort out my own use of these terms. An "intention" is a passive thing in my vocabulary. It is something I have not yet acted on, even though it is *about an action*. In that sense I "hold" an intention (if "have" is too passive?). When I actively "hold" onto an action and don't execute it, that is an intention. I think. To the extent that an MRI or a good body-language reader or my own (unreliable?) introspective narration can provide a chronicle of my "intentions" they are in some way very passive "actions". I suppose this is what you mean by "action"? On the other side (bracketing what we might mean by this)... an
"intention" is *more* of an action than "having a value" or
"having an idea" or "having a desire"? Each of these might
*activate* into an "intention" which then also must activate into
an "action"? values, ideas, desires are more passive than
intentions? Maybe this is an oblique tangent to what you really wanted to talk about. - Steve
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In reply to this post by gepr
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/ |
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No, it's not entirely rhetorical to say that a computer virus "intends" to infect your system. The intent translates from the programmer's *behavior* to the program's behavior. It's more interesting if the virus fails to do what the programmer intended it to do. But if it succeeds, then the intent of the program was faithful to the intent of the programmer.
It's not clear to me which distinction you're arguing against: local vs. global transitivity? I don't think it's too banal. RussA was pointing to a graded intent. Swapping out influence, persuasion, or control doesn't change the idea that a grading is necessary to make the argument work. If we talk in terms of networks, we could use something like hop distance (never mind edge weights for a minute). Sure, the Kazakh's intention/behavior might percolate all the way through the graph to me. But the strength of that intent would pale in comparison to the strength of the nodes more local to me. I.e. 'local intent'. The question comes when we have to talk about larger scale intent, collective intent. Can the nodes go into some kind of harmonic where many nodes lose their local intent entirely? ... so that a large clique of the graph exhibits some kind of coupled/coherent, nearly atomic, intent? If so, then maybe something like Tononi's IIT mutual information measure could quantify the gradation RussA implies? And ... if so, then maybe *that's* why we tend to associate intent with organisms and things like cells rather than the efficient-cause-open structures like tornadoes? And it might make sense to talk of cancer cells as having *more* localized intent than a well-behaved normal cell who gets along with her neighbors? But that could be twisted into a contradiction by considering parasites that kill their hosts vs. ones that live in some relatively successful symbiosis for awhile, retroviruses, etc. ... which, again, returns us to the concept of co-evolution. And the whole thing smacks of the prior conversation about side effects vs. primary effects, wherein Nick, EricC, and Jon keep using the word "epiphenomenon" ... choose your poisonous word: "intent", "epiphenomenon", none of it makes any sense without some scoping, some distinction between local, non-local, and global. If it doesn't scale, it's useless. On 10/20/20 3:27 PM, Steve Smith wrote: > > On 10/20/20 3:35 PM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote: >> 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. -- ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . 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/
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In reply to this post by Steve Smith
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 [hidden email] https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2020 4:28 PM To: [hidden email] 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/ |
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In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2
"I intend to check the mail in a few minutes. I am not doing it now. Nobody else knows of my plan until you read this. Why can't I validly say that I have that intention?" You CAN say that you have that intention. The Big Questions are 1) To what are you referring when you say that. 2) Could you be in error regarding the thing being referred to? Once we work out the answer to Question 1 we will, Nick and others of his ilk would assert, find that it would be more grammatically clean to not use the word "have", because that implies a thing that can be possessed. I have a bank account; I do my morning exercises. Of course, some other languages don't distinguish those verbs in exactly the way English tends to... and English varies from place to place... so your mileage may vary. For example, under some circumstances "I am going to have tea" could be synonymous with "I am going to do high-tea." At any rate, some of us would assert that when you say "I intend to check the mail in a few minutes" you are predicting/asserting things you will do in the future (barring some dramatic change in circumstances) and that you are an imperfect predictor of such things. To reify that pattern-of-future-behavior as a thing you "have" now is, at the least, some sort of category error. And, of course, if you aren't trying to do philosophy of psychology or scientific psychology, then your using vernacular phrasing is no worse than similar things that people in other sciences might object to. For example, you can find physicists who will get snippy over whether it is correct to say that you add cold to something (vs. take away heating), but, like, if it's a cooking show or a casual conversation, it really doesn't matter much. On Tue, Oct 20, 2020 at 4:55 PM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:
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