<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Feb 4, 2010, The Avantguardian wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">a bacterium is the simplest concievable object that I am confident is capable of intentionality.</span></blockquote><br></div><div>Stripped to its essentials intentionality means someone or something that can change its internal state, a state that predisposes it to do one thing rather than another; or at least that's what I mean by the word. I like it because it lacks circularity. So I would say that a punch card reader is simpler than a bacterium and it has intentionality. A Turing Machine is even simpler and it has intentionality too. Granted this underlying mechanism may seem a bit mundane and inglorious, but that's in the very nature of explanations; presenting complex and mysterious things in the smallest possible chunks in a way that is easily understood. </div><div><br></div><div>Gordon would disagree with me because for him intentionality means having consciousness, and having consciousness means having intentionality. A circle has no end so that may be why his thread has been going on for so long with no end in sight.</div><div><br></div><div> John K Clark </div><br></body></html>