On Wed, 25 Jan 2006, Anthony Waterman wrote:
> How can an abstraction (a 'football team') have an
> 'intent' (which implies intentionality, and can therefore
> be properly attributed only to a rational agent)?
Even if we are to adopt a psychologistic understanding
of the denotation of 'intent', and it is far from obvious
that we should, I wager Anthony will have to count dogs
and cats among his "rational" agents. (I.e., I wager that
his explanations of e.g. dog behavior rely on attributions
of intentionality.) If we go beyond a simple psychologistic
understanding of intent to less "soul-full" stories about
actors, then we can begin to understand the attribution
of intent as a useful strategy in circumstances beyond
those in which we might suspect a ghost in the machine.
Alan Isaac