Terry and Klaus particularly
Terry first: Lack of an operative definition of intention that satisfies
everyone does not mark it as obsolete. Indeed its capacity to engage so many
views is evidence of its vitality. The same goes for "will" and "knowledge"
(and "design") which remain very active in the lexicon.
Klaus now: I totally agree with you (is this the first time?) that an
intention can have no social significance until it is expressed in some form
(behavior, language, an artifact, etc.) Regarding the intentions of termites
however: as Dennett has argued, humans can take an "intentional stance"
regarding the behavior of a termite in order to interpret and explain what
it is "trying" to do. They certainly don't know what the termite is
"thinking" (if that is what they do) but they impute its needs and goals
nevertheless. Intentional stances work just as well (or poorly) when applied
to interpret what a human might do in a given situation, social or other.
Best regards,
Chuck
On 8/10/05 11:48 PM, "Klaus Krippendorff" <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> very good post. this is precisely what i "intended" in my previous post.
> terry you stated it better than i could
> klaus
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and
> related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf
> Of Terence Love
> Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2005 11:33 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Dropping intention (was Re: design)
>
>
> Jan, Klaus, Chuck and all,
> Over time, concepts reach the limits of their usefulness. Times change and
> as human understanding becomes more sophisticated and subtle some concepts
> remain too broad, loose or inaccurate for the task. This discourse on
> 'intention' shows it has, like other dated concepts like 'will' and
> 'knowledge', gone past its use-by date.
> The time-tested strategy for addressing this issue is to separately review
> what was referred to under 'intention' in all the different situaitons in
> which it was applied (individual, psychological, social, biological,
> teleological etc) and to replace it by expressing the same ideas in better
> suited concepts from those situations.This enables us to move on, and to
> develop older ideas into more accurate and more sophisticated and integrated
> theory.
> Best wishes,
> Terry
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