Philosophy links

[erudito]

Nice comedy skit on why meat-eating is ethical (and vegetarianism is not).

Nice discussion of the difference between fact and opinion.

An appreciation of philosophers Stephen Toulmin, a professor at the University of Southern California's Center for Multiethnic and Transnational Studies, and John Edwin Smith

Comments

Intention and intentionality

[erudito]

No, I get the distinction, I just think that, with the best will in the world, it can be hard not to let our tendency to see intended directedness (intention) in things colour whether intentionality (directedness) exists and in what form.

To quote from a review of a book on Aquinas I am going to post on my book review blog in the next few days:

The trouble is, the human mind is so primed to see motive, that even Aquinas keeps sliding into language that implies intention. Hence Feser writes:
… by “desirable” Aquinas does not mean that which conforms to some desire we happen to contingently to have, nor even, necessarily, anything desired in a conscious way. … a thing’s final cause, and thus that which it “desires” (in the relevant sense) might be something of which it is totally unconscious, as in the case of inanimate natural objects and processes … (p35)
I am sorry, that is both poor terminology and revealingly poor terminology.

Re: Intention and intentionality

[erudito]

If there is no directedness in anything, then materialism becomes a lot easy to take as an all-embracing position, leaving no place for religious entities. If there is directedness in things, it becomes much harder to give an entirely materialist story about how that is. Once you have something immaterial, then there is an opening for other immaterial things.

On the second question, the short answer is that it should not. However, you read people such as Aquinas (great philosopher) and Feser (excellent explicator and decent philosopher) and their language keeps sliding from intentionality to language that smacks of intention. It is just a human cognitive bias that is deeply embedded in language. If, for example, one talks of the purpose of things, you may mean it entirely as a matter of intentionality, but your language is likely to become the language of intention, since it is such a strong part of the natural usage of 'purpose' (as distinct from the sense in which one is supposed to be using it).