Anthony Waterman wrote: > Individual football players 'really exist', and they have > 'desires, interests and passions' that may be gratified by > the victory of their team over another. The team does not > 'really exist', which is why I called it an abstraction. > Useful, but dangerous when used anthropomorphically. I try to imagine some arguing that while the individual planks really exist, the ship does not, and while speaking of this abstraction "ship" can be useful, it is dangerous when used plankomorphically. If your point were just that we should not confuse the category 'team' with the category 'player' (or the category 'ship' with the category 'plank'), nobody would object of course. But you are asking for *much* more. Anthony Waterman wrote: > If, in order to make my (Paley's) point I have to concede > 'rationality' to dogs, so be it. What I do not want to do > is to ascribe it to the pack. I was about to retort that your wants are really beside the point, but then I realized that you may disagree. ;-) You clearly consider the postulate of some conscious experience, like "want", to be prerequisite to any ascription of "intent". (Economists are so in love with metaphysics!) An aggregate of cells can, for mysterious reasons, produce qualia. You apparently want to restrict the use of the language of intentionality to cases where certain qualia are present. For example, I deduce from your discomfort with the idea of a deer-seeking wolf pack that you must be very uncomfortable with the idea of a heat- *seeking* missile, for example---regardless of whether I might find that a useful description when trying to escape it. And whether I am allowed to observe that a frog tried to catch a fly but failed, I suppose, must depend on whether there was hidden within that froggy bundle some consciousness experience, however dim, of "trying". And the neoclassical theory of the firm must be a great puzzle: will you let may speak of this abstraction *choosing* an appropriate input mix, or is all such talk "dangerous"? Cheers, Alan Isaac