An undergraduate philosophy paper, revisited.
I wrote this in December 2009 and was very enthusiastic about Daniel Dennett’s intentional stance. The paper distinguishes folk psychology, theory of mind, and Dennett’s more technical proposal: treat a system as a rational agent with beliefs and desires, then predict what it will do. I argued that critics who wanted something more were usually bringing dualism back under another name.
The essay takes a notably combative tone toward mystery-mongering in philosophy of mind. I wrote in the introduction: “at least a portion of the following examination will be colored by disdain for attempts to build unnecessary mystery into consciousness; consciousness is quite fascinating all by itself without the influence of wishful thinking.” Reading that back now: I still agree with the last clause. I’m less confident about the first.
The intentional stance still seems useful. Its value does not depend on settling whether a crow, robot, or language model “really” has beliefs. Treating the system as if it does may help predict its behaviour.
I am less certain about the rest. Saying that consciousness is supernatural is one thing. Saying that the gap between physical processes and subjective experience remains unexplained is another. Dennett largely declares that gap unimportant. I used to treat that declaration as a solution.
The robot section has become stranger. I speculated about a robot that could bluff a human at poker and asked whether it had “original intentionality.” The example no longer feels hypothetical. Treating an AI as an intentional agent changes how people interact with it, whether or not the attribution is philosophically defensible. That concern appears in Digital priesthood and Interface friction.
The prose is also an example of what I now ask students to revise: dense hedging, passive voice, and the main idea arriving late. I knew the material. I was still writing as though difficulty proved that I knew it.