poke comments on The Comedy of Behaviorism - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: poke 03 August 2008 01:51:03PM 0 points [-]

Richard Kennaway,

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.

Everybody has a pet theory of intentionality. The problem isn't intentionality but why anybody would want to explain intentionality in the first place. You're either explaining: (a) a part of what you take to be your experience of the world; or (b) a part of our folk psychological explanations of behavior. Either way, you're not doing science to begin with, so it's unlikely you'd stumble upon science along the way.