From: mongo@PDaXcess.techbook.com (Mongo)
Subject: The intentionality of corpsicles
Organization: Portland Public Access sponsored by TECHbooks Bookstore
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 20:30:27 GMT

              A Thought Experiment (Realized).
 
Suppose off in the future we were aware that the earth would
be  beset  by  a  variety  of  disasters. We respond to this
threat by going into hibernation  in  shelters.  Some  might
gamble  their  safety  on heavily armored immobile shelters,
others on mobile shelters, capable of relocating  to  escape
floods and the like, and gathering new fuel.
 
So far, those of you who deny the possibility (of a  machine
having  intentionality) feel, I am sure, comfortable denying
these mobile shelters purpose. Anything they do has  meaning
only,  you  would  say, only because it preserves that which
created it to that end, the `corpsicles' inside.
 
Suppose the  mobile  shelters  are  enhanced  to  build  new
shelters so that a corpsicles can be moved to safety in case
of a hardware failure. No problem, you say. Still a  formal,
syntactically specified behavior, with merely DERIVED inten-
tionality.
 
OK, suppose we enhance them to build sophisticated  internal
models  of  the world around them (and themselves!), and the
ability to transfer such models from shelter to shelter.  No
problem,  you say, still a formal, externally specified sys-
tem. Only intentional with respect to the intentions of  the
designer  -  _derived_ intentionality.  In fact, no enhance-
ment of function, you might claim, can ever give it anything
but _derived_ intentionality.
 
If any of you agree  with  that,  then  you  deny  your  own
intrinsic intentionality, because we are an evolved species.
We evolved because we protect and carry forward our  genome.
Every  drive  we  have, we have because it enhances the sur-
vival of our genome. Every ability we have is the result  of
a genetic algorithm computing over millenia. We, it could be
argued, cannot even  claim  the  _derived_  purpose  of  the
mobile shelters above, for we are not the engineered product
of an  acknowledged  intelligence,  but  the  product  of  a
thoroughly syntactic algorithm (genetic) interacting with an
environment.
 
To  carry  this  thought  experiment  beyond  it's  original
instantiation  in Dennet's 'The Intentional Stance', suppose
that the mobile shelters, developing  their  models  of  the
world  without  our supervision, discover by accident that a
rock smashed through a porthole significantly  raises  their
available  energy  (by  killing  the  corpsicle  inside, and
turning off the refrigerator). Soon, all of  the  corpsicles
are  dead, (though still carried about, due to a programming
atavism) and the shelters continue merrily along,  replicat-
ing themselves, and improving their models of the world.
 
Do they have intrinsic purpose now? Not that  this  argument
will convince anyone, but I would like to hear the  replies.
 
Max G. Webb

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