>>
>
> While I agree with both Terry and Jeremy that much of the difficulty
> here
> relates to our concepts, I think it is a trap to view ordinary
> language as
> containing a rival, and potentially mistaken, theory of human
> beings. The
> terms that are in view here: intention, design, think, know etc. are
> not
> ordinarily used to address theoretical or philosophical problems,
> and these
> are not words that were invented by philosophers.
some may be... intention for instance from intentio which was said to
be translated from Avicenna's concept of ma'na which was a
translation of nous. now nous, is usually just translated as
mind.... in contemporary translation. Aristotle, nor Plato, nor
really any ancient uses the concept of intention, unless someone
translates it back into their text.
> They were used in ancient
> literature long before western philosophy got their hands on them.
>
> I would suggest ordinary language is not, and does not contain, a
> theory of
> persons.
I would say that it is based on a theory of persons and as such not
only contains several theories of people. It certainly has models of
subjects and subjectivity in it, which has deep implications for how
people can think about persons. so yeah, most human language in its
structure contains a theory of persons. I actually think that
linguistics shows this quite convincingly.
> It is not about the business of making empirical claims, or
> hypotheses about phenomena that we as yet have no way of testing.
umm? generally, tons of people speak about such things quite often.
we have a whole category of myth, supplemented with a category of
religion, etc.
> Ordinary
> language is useful, or not. It has uses, and in the ways that it is
> useful,
> it is meaningful. When it stops being useful, it can no longer do
> work for
> us.
>
> Words like 'intend' and 'know' are not concepts that solve particular
> theoretical problems, and they are not words that are in danger of
> being
> superseded.
and yes, they are, words like intend will likely eventually be
surpassed, but currently it is built into the models of law that we
have in the west. it is going to take years to break that tradition,
and the unfairnesses built into them, but i suspect intend and
intention will eventually become 'archaic'.
> 'Phlogiston' was a concept that was invented to solve a
> particular theoretical problem, and has since been superseded, but
> 'intention' is not an analogue here.
Actually it sort of is... intention solves a very clear theoretical
problem and that is why it was developed. it allows us to
differentiate two outcomes that have negative results, one of which is
an accident and the other of which is a crime. we use the model of
intention as a narrative precursor to differentiate the two.
Jeremy Hunsinger
Center for Digital Discourse and Culture
Virginia Tech
Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research,
School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
http://wiki.tmttlt.com
http://www.tmttlt.com
Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student.
-George Iles
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