A Mind Seeks Itself, Part 5: The War Against Agents

The war against self and intentionality was part of the subject of the last “Mind” post. It was shown there that there is an easy conclusion to the radical claims that there is no “self” and that there is no intentionality that exists, empirically in the human mind and therefore, they do not exist.

The conclusion necessarily is that, given those radical, exclusionary conditions, then the “intent” of the papers making the claim cannot exist, and the papers then are without meaning, being the object of random processes without the benefit of intentional direction oversight. So the entire business is self-refuting, paradoxical: a logical failure of internal incoherence.

But what if a claim is made for, say, partial intentionality, or restricted free will? Angus Menuge takes on these claims in his book, The War on Agents, and provides an example of what philosophy would look like if it were logic-based.

What follows is a summary of Menuge’s analysis of Reductivity, Folk Psychology, Agency Reductivity, as it applies to intentionality and human agency - aka free will - necessarily truncated for fit into this article.

As a preliminary aside, consider the dense prose of Metzinger, the attacker of the self, a style which is opaque at best, obscurant at its worst. Then consider the prose of Angus Menuge. The logic Menuge wields is not only a clear, linear presentation; the writing is styled with a clarity that suggests a complete understanding of the subject matter by an author who is thoroughly familiar with the necessary logic principles, allowing him to present his concepts with transparency and ease.


The Problem of Original Vs Derivative Intentionality

According to Menuge, Daniel Dennett claims that we do not have original intentionality, i.e. intentionality that originates within ourselves. According to Dennett, our intentionality derives from natural selection, or as Dennett says, "Mother Nature".

Menuge points out the insufficiency of such an explanation, starting with,

“Not only our material states but also our intentional ones come into existence, although previously they did not exist; so they certainly cannot be self-explanatory Nor are they explained as simply the effects of current physical processes in the brain since blind materialistic causes are insufficient to account for the teleology and foresight in the effects.

Deterministic, entropic natural laws do not in any way accommodate the intentionality which is easily observed in humans and higher forms of life.

Menuge continues,

”Haugeland is right to ask where this leads:

‘Derivative intentionality, like an image in a photocopy, must derive eventually from something that is not similarly derivative; that is, at least some intentionality must be original, (non-derivative). And clearly then, this original intentionality is the real metaphysical problem; for the possibility of delegating content, once there is some to delegate, is surely less puzzling than how there can be any in the first place.’

“The materialist assumes that this search for ultimate explanation must lead to a reduction of the intentional to the nonintentional. But my second point is that even a reductionist is wrong to exclude the possibility that intentionality is irreducible. For if explanation is ever to come to an end, it cannot be that every property is explained only by reducing it to something else. Indeed, the goal of reduction is to identify some basic set of properties from which all the phenomena can be reconstructed. All other properties may be reducible to the basic properties, but the basic properties do not reduce to anything else. What, but a materialist bias, precludes the possibility that intentionality is one of the these basic properties?”

The idea that everything about humans is reducible to evolution is at the base of the denial of intentionality, and/or the idea that our intentionality is "natural" despite its anentropicity and lack of predecessor in natural laws.

The reason for the materialist assault on intentionality is plain and clear: indivisible intentionality, whether of original or metaphysical origin, leads to the idea of uncaused causers, which leads to the idea of a “special” characteristic within life and mind which is outside the purview of strict cause and effect, and which then demands an explanation outside the purview of science and Scientistic Naturalism (Philosophical Materialism). If that is the case then SN/PM are incorrect. But that is heresy to the SN/PM true believers. The issue is beyond scientific, the issue is one of the vigorous defense of a belief system that supports a worldview.

Menuge addresses Daniel Dennett:

”Following Richard Dawkins, Dennett suggests that we are simply survival machines, designed to preserve our genes. Suppose this is correct: if we say that the robotic survival machine has mere “as if” intentionality, we will have to say the same thing about ourselves. This is intolerable (and Dennett has agreed that we really do have some intentionality), so apparently we must conclude that real intentionality can be derived and that derived intentionality can transcend the intentions of the designer”

But wait, there is a Designer??

Menuge:

”but who is the designer in the case of human beings? Dennett admits that genes are too stupid to design anything.

‘they do not do the designing themselves; they are merely the beneficiaries of the design process. But then who or what does the designing? Mother Nature of course, or more literally, the long slow process of evolution by natural selection.’”

Dennett thinks that natural selection “mirrors the mind” by making decisions like weeding out bad ideas and keeping good ideas, a teleology with direction, yet “without any representations or foresight”. The Mother Nature designer somehow creates and implements what it does not have: intentionality.

Dennett creates a second fiction, the idea of levels of intentionality. But intentionality, like pregnancy does not lend itself to subdivisions: either intent exists or it does not. And as Menuge points out, “hagiographical Mother Nature does suffice for intentionality but only because she is endowed [by materialists] with powers of design incompatible with materialism.”

In other words: non-coherence due to self-contradiction.

Did you kill the sheriff?

Objection, your honor, self-incrimination…

Overruled.

Did you… intend to kill the sheriff?

Well, maybe a little.

Did you ‘intend a little’? Or mean to ‘kill him a little’?

(laughter)

Silence or I’ll clear the courtroom.

Well I had only a little intention, maybe 15%, to kill him.

That makes no sense. If only 15% of your intention was to kill him, what was the other 85% of your intention?

That part of my intention didn’t want to kill him. So mostly I didn’t want to, and that makes it an accident, right?

Suppose I have an intention that is divided 50/50. Half of the intent is to do A, while the other half of the intent is not to do A. The result is not merely one action canceling another action, it is inaction. In other words, non-intention. And worse, it is self-contradiction: a non-coherence. In fact, any division of intention into some sort of piecemeal structure results in self-contradiction, a contradiction that exists regardless of the percentage of each subdivision. The idea of a reductio explanation for intentionality is absurd.


Here are some things we can say about intentionality.

1. Intent is not divisible; it is a unity. Either it exists or it does not. This alone renders Dennett's attack on intentionality indefensible, because his case rests on a gradual development of intentionality from individual pieces, created from non-intentionality unintentionally.

2. Intent is anentropic. We intentionally make steel by removing iron from iron oxide; entropic processes return iron to iron oxide, blindly following natural laws in one direction only. We add other elements to iron to combat entropy, to make it more difficult to return iron to iron oxide.

3. Intent is not explained by means of determinate natural laws, and cannot be determined by the use of induction of such laws, or deduction from those laws. Also, intent is the opposite of randomness and cannot be explained by laws of indeterminancy.

4. Intent is non-derivative from material laws or entities. So it either originates within living things or it originates outside both living things and material things. But if it originates within living things, then it becomes an uncaused causer. Yet if it originates outside the living things and material things, the result still is that the living things are uncaused causers, only of a second degree, being derivative of a metaphysical source for intentionality, and with no discernible material cause.

”As Fodor says, ‘Mother Nature never rejects a trait because she can imagine a more desirable alternative, or ever selects for one because she can’t’”.

The apparent intentionality of Mother Nature is a fiction, just as is Mother Nature herself.

Menuge concludes,

”Once more the idea of constructing a fiction is thoroughly intentional since, by definition, fictions consist of intentionally inexistent states of affairs that the author understands and intends to communicate; so if we can construct fictions and understand that fact about ourselves, we have no need to think of ourselves as products of Mother Nature to understand our intentionality. What is more, if what is fictional about Mother Nature is her intentionality and if our intentionality derives from hers, then (in the absence of plausible cranes) [note 1] it follows that our intentionality is fictional. But it is incoherent to claim that a fictional intentionality is what enables us to construct a fiction of Mother Nature, since fictional entities do not exist – not even as abstracta."
[emphasis added]

Note 1. Dennett and Menuge use the idea of "cranes" as a material support mechanism for ideas that need support; "Skyhooks" are the alternative, giving ideas support from outside of materialism, a source which is not discernible or useful as a materialist explanation.