[ExI] Linguistic shifts

[natasha at natasha.cc]

Thanks for your comemnts.  Hope your evening is a lot of fun.

I am still waiting for Ander's reply on this thread please!

Quoting Darren Greer <darren.greer3 at gmail.com>:

> Natasha wrote:
>
>> once said to me to be careful about intentionality<
>
> I'm not sure if this is how your thesis advisor meant it, but the brilliant
> (in my opinion) scientist and social activist Canadian David Suzuki was once
> talking about scientific research grants, and how the phenomenon of focussed
> intentionality based on predetermined objectives often required for
> preliminary funding can blind us to the serendipitous, which was once, and
> still should be, the heart and soul of scientific discovery.  Scientific
> method aside, it is often the failure of a hypothesis in an experiment that
> leads to the billion dollar insights.  No? I can't see anyone funding
> Einstein's initial insight -- that if if he were on a tram that was in turn
> riding a light beam away from the town clock, that at no point during his
> journey would the second hand ever advance a single iota. Intentionality
> requires an outcome, and the best ideas don't presuppose an outcome, but
> just deal in circumstance and let the outcome take care itself.
>
> Just a thought. I'm also a little drunk. I rarely drink but just came back
> from a Christmas party. So I may wake up tomorrow and regret this post. :)
>
> Darren
>
> On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 6:26 PM, <natasha at natasha.cc> wrote:
>
>> Quoting Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se>:
>>
>>  I like the idea of developing useful subsets of languages. The problem
>>> is figuring out when you are encountering them. Philosophese often
>>> sounds like slightly stilted English, but some words are entire rabbit
>>> holes of strangeness (case in point: intentionality). Maybe we should
>>> have markers indicating when we get into a special domain.
>>>
>>
>> Let's talk about intentionality. [Roy Ascott, my PhD advisor (who you will
>> meet at the upcoming neuro/media-arts conference at the University of
>> Plymouth), once said to me to be careful about intentionality.  I still
>> don't really know what he meant. Husserl, Bretano, Dennett, etc. ... ?]
>>
>> I wasn't sure if Roy was criticizing my view about life extension being a
>> result of human survival instinct, as if I was making an "aboutness" about
>> human nature and purpose, or if he was saying criticizing my transhumanist
>> views in reference to the mind as a construct of the brain.
>>
>> In your view, how would intentionality come into play in the philosophy of
>> transhumanism and also in the domain of human enhancement / life
>> prolongation?
>>
>> Natasha
>>
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>>
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>
>
>
> --
> *"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines."
> *
>