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Article 4672 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: How can you get teleology?
Message-ID: <1992Mar23.175842.4015@spss.com>
Date: 23 Mar 92 17:58:42 GMT
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In article <1992Mar21.030511.21269@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU 
(Bill Skaggs) writes:
>  Here is something I've been puzzling about:  One of the
>defining characteristics of intelligence, or indeed of life
>in general, is activity that is apparently oriented toward
>achieving goals.  (I use the word "apparently" to avoid
>starting arguments about things that don't interest me.)

Maybe this is precisely the argument that doesn't interest you, but I think
it's worth pointing out that a characteristic of human actions, according
to Searle, is that a description of them in terms of goals is essential,
not optional or metaphorical.  

If an apple falls to the earth, you could say that it has a goal of minimizing
its gravitational potential energy; but of course this is only a metaphor;
nothing really has that as a conscious goal.

But humans don't just behave "as if" they had goals; they really have them.
As Searle says, human actions thus have "preferred descriptions."  Thus,
if I decide to walk to the Art Institute, my action could be described
in various ways: walking to the Art Institute, walking south, walking along
Michigan Avenue, wearing out my shoes, displacing a bunch of air molecules.
However, the description "walking to the Art Institute" is the preferred
description, because it matches a goal I have, while the others don't.

Human goals can not only cause actions, but be an intrinsic part of actions.
For instance, a marriage ceremony is a marriage ceremony in part because
its participants intend it to be one.  

In other words, it's not just that the humans in the ceremony act "as if" 
they have an intention to be married; or that they "apparently" have this goal.
It's that the intention is an intrinsic part of the event, and no analysis
of the event which omits the intention is coherent.

Neil Rickert comments:
>  It may often be the case that the "goal oriented behavior" begins
>first, and the "goal" is invented later as a rationalization for
>this behavior.

I think it's Searle's point that this is *not* the case with at least
certain human actions.

(The positions I am paraphrasing, perhaps badly, are from chapter 4 of
_Minds, Brains and Science_.  I find them much more solid than 
chapter 2, which contains a breezy exposition of the infamous Chinese Room.)


