Tuesday, October 15, 2019
6:00-7:30pm
with Sarah Barnaby & Amy Matthews
“The intentional stance,” a term coined by philosopher Daniel Dennett, is a tool for predicting the behavior of semi-autonomous, interactive agents.
This simple theory of intentional systems is a theory about how and why we are able to make sense of the behaviors of so many complicated things by considering them to be agents. It is not directly a theory of the internal mechanisms that somehow achieve the rational guidance thereby predicted. The intentional stance gives you the “specs,” the job description, of an intentional system — what it should discriminate, remember, and do, for instance – and leaves the implementation of those specs to the engineers (or evolution and development, in the case of an intentional system that is an organism.)
— Daniel Dennett, Intuition Pumps, and Other Tools for Thinking, p. 84
The intentional stance can be applied to vending machines, computer systems, proteins, and living organisms. How does an intentional stance help us predict the behavior of agents such as cells and babies? How might it get in the way of our understanding?
Join us as Sarah and Amy lay out the context and related questions. No prior experience or knowledge necessary.
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