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The peril is to act on the assumption that purposes/intentions are not based in the mind/brain of an individual and subject to their personal history. There would be neither leaders or followers and no meaningful social discourse if that were the case. Scientific evidence confirms that if the executive function of the brain is impaired the mental capacity to make decisions can be destroyed. That is why intentionality remains relevant . We are only beginning to understand how "thought" guides "behavior" or desires inform action. (Perhaps "purposeful thought" is not so loaded as "intentional thought" seems to be.) The philosopher Daniel Dennett has elaborated the concept of an "intentional stance" that offers a useful approach to the issues we are concerned with. An intentional design stance assumes that "an entity is designed as i suppose it to be and that it will operate according to that design". Given the cues it affords one does not have to know the physics of how an alarm clock works to interpret what it is intended to do . Similarly "Long before the physics and chemistry of plant growth and reproduction were understood, our ancestors quite literally bet their lives on the reliability of their design stance knowledge of what seeds were supposed to do when planted." We need a more operative understanding of intentional thought not its dismissal. Chuck Daniel C. Dennett, 1996 "Kinds of Minds"Basic Books, NY On Aug 17, 2009, at 10:41 PM, jeremy hunsinger wrote: > No, sorry, don't see it. cognition we can have, that's fine. > people think, animals think, machines think, etc. a necessary > differentiation, it isn't. > > there isn't any peril there. perhaps you could explain where the > peril is? > On Aug 17, 2009, at 10:27 PM, Charles Burnette wrote: > >> On Aug 16, 2009, at 10:51 AM, jeremy hunsinger wrote: >> >>> What we mean when we say x intends, is merely to say that person >>> will act or person will not act according to what he knows and >>> desires, there is no special faculty of intention that separates >>> persons from non-persons, etc. In short, i don't think intention >>> or intentionality exists as anything other than shorthand for >>> knowing our own desires and realizing them in the world. And >>> really, that is all we need, we don't need 'intend' anymore than >>> we need 'will', except as literary constructs. To design then, >>> does not require to intend, it merely requires knowledge/thought/ >>> desire+action which is equivalent to planning+action. >> >> Jeremy: I think Ken got it right. There is a faculty that separates >> persons from non-persons, animals from objects. It is the executive >> function of the frontal cortex in humans. You can't dismiss it with >> sophistries like "knowledge/thought/desire+action which is >> equivalent to planning+action." It is the mind/brain that >> implements such things. Intention is a single word that >> encompasses and integrates the cognition involved in desire/ >> knowledge/attentional selection/conceptual thought/interpretation/ >> potential actions/evaluation of results/ adaptive assimilation and >> reuse. Purposeful thought and design is "intentionally" guided >> based on needs and desires perceived within the situations we >> confront. We dismiss intentionality and the cognition it directs at >> our peril. >> Chuck >