From: Dogan Goecmen (Dogangoecmen@AOL.COM)
Date: Sat Nov 18 2006 - 05:33:04 EST
Ian, You say: Consider a thermostat. Does the temperature setting, if it differs from the current ambient temperature of the room, refer to a future temperature? Would it do so even if humans were not there to observe it? I think the answer is yes to both questions. The thermostat therefore has intentionality of a kind. It represents the absence of a temperature. And it has a causal structure that changes the world to absent that absence. It is a goal-following mechanism. The goal is real, a part of objective reality, rather than the subjective ascription of a human scientist attempting to understand its operation. Just few questions: Where there a thermostat at all if there were not any human being? Where does the 'intentionality' of the thermostat come from? Is it not a product of human labour and is it not so that humans put their intention into practice by producing themostat for a particular purpose? Cheers Dogan
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