RichardKennaway comments on The Comedy of Behaviorism - Less Wrong

12 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 August 2008 08:42PM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 02 August 2008 10:46:21PM 3 points [-]

poke: Skinner's belief that intentionality is on par with Aristotelian teleological physics is perfectly compatible with the first view.

Whatever views his belief may be compatible with, it is not compatible with reality. That is, it is false. Intentionality is explainable in physical terms. An intention is the reference signal of a control system, and a control system is something that acts so as to maintain a perceptual signal close to its reference signal.

I could expand on that, but not within the confines of a comment on this blog. It might take a few dozen Eliezer-style posts to cover the distance properly.