32 Informational environments
where in the history of nature intentionality really begins. As all organic functions
(which is not to say: all organic traits) are derived from processes of variation and
natural selection, cognitive abilities, to the extent they do have a function, are
derived from such processes, and in this circumscribed sense their endowment of
intentionality – but not their concrete content – is derived from these processes,
too. Hence, Dennett concludes:
You have to give up original intentionality and see that all the late, robust,
representation-wielding varieties of intentionality, both the words on the
shopping list and the mental images in your head, are artefacts, and hence
have derived intentionality.
(Dennett 1996, 268)
It is the same idea that underlies any attempt at creating artificial systems that
produce functional analogues to adaptive organic traits, including cognitive ones.
Whether deliberately or not, Dretske’s insistence, like Fodor’s, on hard, nomologically grounded information amounts to a denial of this family of ideas. I will
return to providing my own account of the probabilistic and context-bound nature
of natural information (but I will not say much more about intentionality) in
Chapters 4 and 6, after inquiring a bit more deeply into the role of natural information in perception, as it is controversially discussed in the literature. The key
question in the following chapter will be how a reconciliation between a strict,
Dretskean interpretation of informational relations with local, probabilistic conditions of information uptake in perception can be accomplished, and why it should
be accomplished.
Notes
1 This is the basic concept of cybernetic machines as proposed and built by W. Ross Ashby
(1960). His paradigmatic machine, called the “homeostat”, was explicitly designed as
a material model of the elementary mechanisms of adaptive behaviour in organisms.
2 A markedly different turn has been taken by John Maynard Smith (2000), who proposes
a notion of information in the biological sciences that takes the original mathematical
theory of communication to be rather directly and literally applicable to the relation
between genes and ontogenetic development.
3 This semi-formalised description of information is based on Weaver (1949, 12) and
Dretske (1981, 12f ).
4 There is a fine distinction that already shows up in Shannon and Weaver (1949, 8, 31)
and marks a divergence in opinion between the two authors: Shannon assumes a complete irrelevance of meaning to the mathematical theory of information, and seems to
imply that, conversely, the mathematical theory of information is equally irrelevant to
any account of meaning. In contrast, Weaver maintains that there is an asymmetric systematic relation between the two, obtaining from mathematical theory to theories of
meaning, most explicitly in Weaver (1949); also see Dretske (1981, 41 and endnotes 2
and 3 to that passage).
5 This example is also discussed in similar contexts by Dennett (1987, Chapter 8), in an
explicit critique of Dretske’s and other authors’ position on the phenomenon of misrepresentation, and in Millikan (1986, 71f ) in an analysis of the conditions for an organism
where in the history of nature intentionality really begins. As all organic functions
(which is not to say: all organic traits) are derived from processes of variation and
natural selection, cognitive abilities, to the extent they do have a function, are
derived from such processes, and in this circumscribed sense their endowment of
intentionality – but not their concrete content – is derived from these processes,
too. Hence, Dennett concludes:
You have to give up original intentionality and see that all the late, robust,
representation-wielding varieties of intentionality, both the words on the
shopping list and the mental images in your head, are artefacts, and hence
have derived intentionality.
(Dennett 1996, 268)
It is the same idea that underlies any attempt at creating artificial systems that
produce functional analogues to adaptive organic traits, including cognitive ones.
Whether deliberately or not, Dretske’s insistence, like Fodor’s, on hard, nomologically grounded information amounts to a denial of this family of ideas. I will
return to providing my own account of the probabilistic and context-bound nature
of natural information (but I will not say much more about intentionality) in
Chapters 4 and 6, after inquiring a bit more deeply into the role of natural information in perception, as it is controversially discussed in the literature. The key
question in the following chapter will be how a reconciliation between a strict,
Dretskean interpretation of informational relations with local, probabilistic conditions of information uptake in perception can be accomplished, and why it should
be accomplished.
Notes
1 This is the basic concept of cybernetic machines as proposed and built by W. Ross Ashby
(1960). His paradigmatic machine, called the “homeostat”, was explicitly designed as
a material model of the elementary mechanisms of adaptive behaviour in organisms.
2 A markedly different turn has been taken by John Maynard Smith (2000), who proposes
a notion of information in the biological sciences that takes the original mathematical
theory of communication to be rather directly and literally applicable to the relation
between genes and ontogenetic development.
3 This semi-formalised description of information is based on Weaver (1949, 12) and
Dretske (1981, 12f ).
4 There is a fine distinction that already shows up in Shannon and Weaver (1949, 8, 31)
and marks a divergence in opinion between the two authors: Shannon assumes a complete irrelevance of meaning to the mathematical theory of information, and seems to
imply that, conversely, the mathematical theory of information is equally irrelevant to
any account of meaning. In contrast, Weaver maintains that there is an asymmetric systematic relation between the two, obtaining from mathematical theory to theories of
meaning, most explicitly in Weaver (1949); also see Dretske (1981, 41 and endnotes 2
and 3 to that passage).
5 This example is also discussed in similar contexts by Dennett (1987, Chapter 8), in an
explicit critique of Dretske’s and other authors’ position on the phenomenon of misrepresentation, and in Millikan (1986, 71f ) in an analysis of the conditions for an organism