From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!wupost!darwin.sura.net!convex!constellation!a.cs.okstate.edu!onstott Tue Mar 24 09:57:18 EST 1992
Article 4598 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!wupost!darwin.sura.net!convex!constellation!a.cs.okstate.edu!onstott
>From: onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR)
Subject: Re: Causes and Goals (was re: The Systems Reply I
References: <1992Mar16.003442.9891@husc3.harvard.edu> <1992Mar16.224536.2719@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> <515@trwacs.fp.trw.com>
Message-ID: <1992Mar18.230623.22704@a.cs.okstate.edu>
Organization: Oklahoma State University, Computer Science, Stillwater
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 92 23:06:23 GMT
Lines: 49

In article <515@trwacs.fp.trw.com> erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin) writes:
>santas@inf.ethz.ch (Philip Santas) writes:
>
>>In article <1992Mar16.003442.9891@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
>>>...
>
>>I am wondering why, according to your definitions, a rain cloud does not
>>communicate rain.
>
>>>somatic}, sufficient for volition, but not for intention, and hence
>>>bereft of non-natural, semantic meaning; in other words, the
>>>communication effected by it is natural, rather than expressive.  Thus
>>>the necessary condition for an occurrence of expressive meaning is
>>>intentional action, which depends on {\it noetic} agency.
>
>>What causes the intentionality?
>
>>Philip Santas
>
>I am reminded of a certain species of monkey that raises it's tail when it
>is nervous. This is an automatic reaction, to the extent that individuals
>have been observed holding their tail down when they didn't want to be
>seen as being nervous, yet this also communicates expressive meaning.
>Non-intentionality communicating expressive meaning...
>

  This is analogous to the computer expressing meaning debate.  The issue
here that I keep raising is that there must be an intensional agent SOMEWHERE.
The act itself may not be intensional; however the interpretation must be.
In this way, we can derive the expressive meaning.

>-- 
>Harry Erwin
>Internet: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com
>
BCnya,
  Charles O. Onstott, III

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles O. Onstott, III                  P.O. Box 2386
Undergraduate in Philosophy              Stillwater, Ok  74076
Oklahoma State University                onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu


"The most abstract system of philosophy is, in its method and purpose, 
nothing more than an extremely ingenious combination of natural sounds."
                                              -- Carl G. Jung
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



