One way to patch/augment the distinction between original and derived intentionality is to allow for viewing phenomena with derived intentionality as doing some optimization/selection decohered from the purpose of the original intentional phenomenon (inner/mesa-optimizer-like).
For example, Process 1 with original intentionality (“intentionally”) spawns Process 2 with derived intentionality, which (“non-intentionally”) spawns Subprocess 2a, which then (again, “intentionally”) spawns Process 3.
If we draw a phylogenetic tree messy, directed mycelium of optimization processes, some “children” will be “legitimate” (“intentionally spawned”), whereas other “children” will be “illegitimate” (“non-intentionally spawned”).
It’s not as much about giving something “special status”, as rather about qualifying the type of parent-children relationship between two processes/artifacts. (It’s probably also possible to fold the cases where there’s no distinction between the optimizer and the optimizee.)
My own feeling is that this original/derived idea is somewhat chasing a ghost, like needing there to be something special which elevates the goals of a human above the purposes of a hammer. Granted, there are differences between how humans have goals and how a hammer has a purpose. Original vs derived just seems to me like the wrong frame for that.
One way to patch/augment the distinction between original and derived intentionality is to allow for viewing phenomena with derived intentionality as doing some optimization/selection decohered from the purpose of the original intentional phenomenon (inner/mesa-optimizer-like).
For example, Process 1 with original intentionality (“intentionally”) spawns Process 2 with derived intentionality, which (“non-intentionally”) spawns Subprocess 2a, which then (again, “intentionally”) spawns Process 3.
If we draw a
phylogenetic treemessy, directed mycelium of optimization processes, some “children” will be “legitimate” (“intentionally spawned”), whereas other “children” will be “illegitimate” (“non-intentionally spawned”).It’s not as much about giving something “special status”, as rather about qualifying the type of parent-children relationship between two processes/artifacts. (It’s probably also possible to fold the cases where there’s no distinction between the optimizer and the optimizee.)
I would like to hear you elaborate on that.