When it comes to the specific terms, “intentional” isn’t what I would use to label System II. When meditating I can be focus my intention without being in analytic mode.
Wikipedia suggests that the terms explicit system, the rule-based system, the rational system, or the analytic system.
All of them are probably less misleading than “intentional”.
But that isn’t the biggest issue here. Jargon is often invented because the speaker thinks it’s useful. At the same time inventing new jargon makes it harder for outsiders to follow you. If you reuse the terms in another article an outsider doesn’t exactly know what they are referring to.
It also makes it harder for someone who read your introductory material to afterwards read the existing academic literature because he has to learn new concepts.
You make superficial arguments against jargon instead of addressing the existing arguments for inventing jargon to justify your project and then you go and invent new jargon that suggests you didn’t deeply engage into thinking about the issue.
The real problem here isn’t that inventing new jargon is bad. The problem is that you aren’t committing to any principles and follow them. You lack strategic commitment.
That’s a problem for the kind of organisation that you want to build that’s bigger than any specific mistake to be found in the few posts that you wrote till now.
In this case I’m not particularly happy with the terms System I and System II either. I think there a case for using more descriptive words. But if you want to do so, the proper thing would be to review the different terms that are in use in the literature and the arguments people make for using one term over another.
That takes research and is hard work but it would probably lead to a better blog post than going the lazy route and simply inventing your own terms. Going the lazy route for inventing jargon is why things got the way they are on LW.
Discussing the semantics by looking at advantages of different terminology also helps a lot to understand the underlying subject matter in more depth.
I’m curious what makes you believe we did not review the literature? System 1 and 2 are used by Kahneman and Stanovich and West, while Thaler and Sunstein use automatic and reflective, Goleman uses lower and higher, and others use different terms for dual process theory. A good summary of the literature and the wide variety of terms used is available here.
On our Board of Directors, we have a cognitive neuroscientist whose input on using the terms “intentional” and “autopilot” we used to inform our choice, as well as a licensed therapist who has a great sense of how to communicate complex ideas from psychology to broad audiences. For another example of how therapists use terms such as “intentional,” check out this blog post.
Of course, we can have a further discussion about the benefits of dual process theory and using metaphors such as elephant and rider. Your thoughts?
However, again, I appreciate the feedback, and we will consider our use of these terms in the future.
You don’t provide reasons in your article of why you prefer the term intentional over the other terms that are used.
I can see the motivation to avoid System I/System II. Why use “intentional” when Kahneman used “reflective”. Why do you think using “intentional” is more clear to a new audience than “reflective”?
Why doesn’t your article include those reasons, so that the reader knows why you choose your terms?
Carlos Cabrera, whose input on using the terms “intentional” and “automatic” we used to inform our choice.
Then where does “autopilot system” come from? If you used a different term that your board member advised you to use, you screwed up even more.
I believe that I did provide the reasons we preferred the term “intentional”—based on the feedback of the cognitive neuroscientist and licensed therapist on our Board of Directors, with the latter especially helpful for the perspective of someone who has wide experience with how complex psychological terms are explained to broad audiences. As I pointed out above, the term “intentional” is widely used by therapists to explain how our minds work, especially the System 2 part, to broad audiences not well educated in psychology. Since our goal is to explain complex ideas drawn from cognitive neuroscience and psychology to broad audiences, that is why we made the choice to go with “intentional.” We have an experimental attitude, of course, and will see how much this term is helpful for broad audiences, and revise our use of it if it seems to be suboptimal.
Thanks for pointing out the spelling error, I meant to write “autopilot” in the comment I made above. I edited the comment based on your noticing the error.
I believe that I did provide the reasons we preferred the term “intentional”—based on the feedback of the cognitive neuroscientist and licensed therapist on our Board of Directors, with the latter especially helpful for the perspective of someone who has wide experience with how complex psychological terms are explained to broad audiences.
That’s not a description of why you think the term is better. Especially sufficiently better that it warrants inventing new jargon.
If you simply use the term because other board members prefer that term, then why do those board members prefer it over the Kaheman term reflective?
To me reflective also seems like a word used by therapists.
If you (including your board) think some people would be confused by reflective and have a better idea upon the concept when they hear intentional that’s an interesting opinion. Explaining why that might be the case in your article that introduces the terminology would be useful because then your audience would understand a way to misunderstand the concept and more likely understand the concept in the right way.
If your arguments are good you even have the change to motivate other people to copy your newly invented jargon.
That’s not a description of why you think the term is better.
I notice I’m confused. In the comment I made above, I believe I provided clear reasons for why we preferred the term “intentional.” Just in case it was not clear, our use of the term is based on the feedback of the cognitive neuroscientist and licensed therapist on our Board of Directors, with the latter especially helpful for the perspective of someone who has wide experience with how complex psychological terms are explained to broad audiences. As I pointed out above, the term “intentional” is widely used by therapists to explain how our minds work, especially the System 2 part, to broad audiences not well educated in psychology. Since our goal is to explain complex ideas drawn from cognitive neuroscience and psychology to broad audiences, that is why we made the choice to go with “intentional.” Moreover, scholars use the term “intentional system” to refer to agency and agents, and also see this one. Since one of our goals is to promote greater agency, we decided to use the term intentional, and orient toward tying the two concepts together in our content targeted at broad audiences.
We have an experimental attitude, of course, and we will see how much this term is helpful for broad audiences. We will update out beliefs and revise our use of this notion if it seems to be suboptimal for the target audience we’re going for. Appreciate your helpful comments on this, it’s always great to get such thoughtful engagement and helpful consideration on the benefits of using different terms.
Thanks for providing an actual motivation this time around.
Moreover, scholars use the term “intentional system” to refer to agency and agents,
I think that’s the core problem with the term. You suggest that doing things via system I isn’t agency. I think that’s a Straw Vulcan position. There’s no reason why intuition can’t be agency.
If I set the intention to meditate for 20 minutes and then meditate for 20 +-1 minutes without an external timekeeping device I have agency. There no reflective logical reasoning involved to get that timing. My understanding of Kahneman would be that’s using a System I process. Do you think that’s a System II process?
I am curious why you ascribe to me the position that “doing things via system I isn’t agency.” Can you please clarify to me where you believe I made that claim? I think I was pretty careful to avoid saying silly things like that.
You say that scholars use the term intentional system to refer to agency. You want to use the term intentional system to describe System II. That associates system II with agency.
If I set a “I meditate for 20 minutes intention” I would not call that a reflective, logical process. Maybe it’s reflective if I go through a process of thinking whether 15 or 20 minutes are better. I don’t think it’s reflective if I do have a habit of meditating for 20 minutes and just set up that intention at the beginning of meditating.
I think there are very intuitive processes that do have intentions and agency but my understanding of the terms System I and System II is that those intuitive processes are System I. System II suggests to me that I analyze what I have to do to make my intention become real. If I just trust my intuition to guide me and tell me when 20 minutes are over, I don’t understand that as System II.
Do you think that having an intention to meditate for 20 minutes and then trusting that everything will work by intuition is partly a system II process?
As I stated in the comment above, I do associate System 2 with agency, but in a very specific way. Namely, I stated that we can use our System 2 to train our System 1 to have more rational thinking and feeling patterns, ones better suited to achieving our long-term goals, and thus gaining agency.
In other words, I did not say that using System 1 is not being an agent. Being intentional about how one uses System 1, and training it, to be better suited to match one’s goals that we believe would actually fulfill our desires, is what I referred to as gaining greater agency.
Yup, I think that having an intention to meditate for 20 minutes and then trusting that everything will work by intuition is partly a System 2 process. It’s about framing oneself well, and training one’s intuition.
When it comes to the specific terms, “intentional” isn’t what I would use to label System II. When meditating I can be focus my intention without being in analytic mode. Wikipedia suggests that the terms explicit system, the rule-based system, the rational system, or the analytic system. All of them are probably less misleading than “intentional”.
But that isn’t the biggest issue here. Jargon is often invented because the speaker thinks it’s useful. At the same time inventing new jargon makes it harder for outsiders to follow you. If you reuse the terms in another article an outsider doesn’t exactly know what they are referring to.
It also makes it harder for someone who read your introductory material to afterwards read the existing academic literature because he has to learn new concepts.
You make superficial arguments against jargon instead of addressing the existing arguments for inventing jargon to justify your project and then you go and invent new jargon that suggests you didn’t deeply engage into thinking about the issue.
The real problem here isn’t that inventing new jargon is bad. The problem is that you aren’t committing to any principles and follow them. You lack strategic commitment. That’s a problem for the kind of organisation that you want to build that’s bigger than any specific mistake to be found in the few posts that you wrote till now.
In this case I’m not particularly happy with the terms System I and System II either. I think there a case for using more descriptive words. But if you want to do so, the proper thing would be to review the different terms that are in use in the literature and the arguments people make for using one term over another. That takes research and is hard work but it would probably lead to a better blog post than going the lazy route and simply inventing your own terms. Going the lazy route for inventing jargon is why things got the way they are on LW.
Discussing the semantics by looking at advantages of different terminology also helps a lot to understand the underlying subject matter in more depth.
Thanks for the feedback.
I’m curious what makes you believe we did not review the literature? System 1 and 2 are used by Kahneman and Stanovich and West, while Thaler and Sunstein use automatic and reflective, Goleman uses lower and higher, and others use different terms for dual process theory. A good summary of the literature and the wide variety of terms used is available here.
On our Board of Directors, we have a cognitive neuroscientist whose input on using the terms “intentional” and “autopilot” we used to inform our choice, as well as a licensed therapist who has a great sense of how to communicate complex ideas from psychology to broad audiences. For another example of how therapists use terms such as “intentional,” check out this blog post.
Of course, we can have a further discussion about the benefits of dual process theory and using metaphors such as elephant and rider. Your thoughts?
However, again, I appreciate the feedback, and we will consider our use of these terms in the future.
*Edited term “automatic” to “autopilot”
You don’t provide reasons in your article of why you prefer the term intentional over the other terms that are used.
I can see the motivation to avoid System I/System II. Why use “intentional” when Kahneman used “reflective”. Why do you think using “intentional” is more clear to a new audience than “reflective”?
Why doesn’t your article include those reasons, so that the reader knows why you choose your terms?
Then where does “autopilot system” come from? If you used a different term that your board member advised you to use, you screwed up even more.
I believe that I did provide the reasons we preferred the term “intentional”—based on the feedback of the cognitive neuroscientist and licensed therapist on our Board of Directors, with the latter especially helpful for the perspective of someone who has wide experience with how complex psychological terms are explained to broad audiences. As I pointed out above, the term “intentional” is widely used by therapists to explain how our minds work, especially the System 2 part, to broad audiences not well educated in psychology. Since our goal is to explain complex ideas drawn from cognitive neuroscience and psychology to broad audiences, that is why we made the choice to go with “intentional.” We have an experimental attitude, of course, and will see how much this term is helpful for broad audiences, and revise our use of it if it seems to be suboptimal.
Thanks for pointing out the spelling error, I meant to write “autopilot” in the comment I made above. I edited the comment based on your noticing the error.
That’s not a description of why you think the term is better. Especially sufficiently better that it warrants inventing new jargon.
If you simply use the term because other board members prefer that term, then why do those board members prefer it over the Kaheman term reflective? To me reflective also seems like a word used by therapists.
If you (including your board) think some people would be confused by reflective and have a better idea upon the concept when they hear intentional that’s an interesting opinion. Explaining why that might be the case in your article that introduces the terminology would be useful because then your audience would understand a way to misunderstand the concept and more likely understand the concept in the right way.
If your arguments are good you even have the change to motivate other people to copy your newly invented jargon.
I notice I’m confused. In the comment I made above, I believe I provided clear reasons for why we preferred the term “intentional.” Just in case it was not clear, our use of the term is based on the feedback of the cognitive neuroscientist and licensed therapist on our Board of Directors, with the latter especially helpful for the perspective of someone who has wide experience with how complex psychological terms are explained to broad audiences. As I pointed out above, the term “intentional” is widely used by therapists to explain how our minds work, especially the System 2 part, to broad audiences not well educated in psychology. Since our goal is to explain complex ideas drawn from cognitive neuroscience and psychology to broad audiences, that is why we made the choice to go with “intentional.” Moreover, scholars use the term “intentional system” to refer to agency and agents, and also see this one. Since one of our goals is to promote greater agency, we decided to use the term intentional, and orient toward tying the two concepts together in our content targeted at broad audiences.
We have an experimental attitude, of course, and we will see how much this term is helpful for broad audiences. We will update out beliefs and revise our use of this notion if it seems to be suboptimal for the target audience we’re going for. Appreciate your helpful comments on this, it’s always great to get such thoughtful engagement and helpful consideration on the benefits of using different terms.
Thanks for providing an actual motivation this time around.
I think that’s the core problem with the term. You suggest that doing things via system I isn’t agency. I think that’s a Straw Vulcan position. There’s no reason why intuition can’t be agency.
If I set the intention to meditate for 20 minutes and then meditate for 20 +-1 minutes without an external timekeeping device I have agency. There no reflective logical reasoning involved to get that timing. My understanding of Kahneman would be that’s using a System I process. Do you think that’s a System II process?
I am curious why you ascribe to me the position that “doing things via system I isn’t agency.” Can you please clarify to me where you believe I made that claim? I think I was pretty careful to avoid saying silly things like that.
The claim I did make is that we can use our System 2 to train our System 1 to have more rational thinking and feeling patterns, ones better suited to achieving our long-term goals, and thus gaining agency. After all, agency is about achieving the goals that we believe would actually fulfill our desires. Certainly, doing things via System 1 can be used very effectively as an agentive move, if one trains one’s elephant well.
You say that scholars use the term intentional system to refer to agency. You want to use the term intentional system to describe System II. That associates system II with agency.
If I set a “I meditate for 20 minutes intention” I would not call that a reflective, logical process. Maybe it’s reflective if I go through a process of thinking whether 15 or 20 minutes are better. I don’t think it’s reflective if I do have a habit of meditating for 20 minutes and just set up that intention at the beginning of meditating.
I think there are very intuitive processes that do have intentions and agency but my understanding of the terms System I and System II is that those intuitive processes are System I. System II suggests to me that I analyze what I have to do to make my intention become real. If I just trust my intuition to guide me and tell me when 20 minutes are over, I don’t understand that as System II.
Do you think that having an intention to meditate for 20 minutes and then trusting that everything will work by intuition is partly a system II process?
As I stated in the comment above, I do associate System 2 with agency, but in a very specific way. Namely, I stated that we can use our System 2 to train our System 1 to have more rational thinking and feeling patterns, ones better suited to achieving our long-term goals, and thus gaining agency.
In other words, I did not say that using System 1 is not being an agent. Being intentional about how one uses System 1, and training it, to be better suited to match one’s goals that we believe would actually fulfill our desires, is what I referred to as gaining greater agency.
Yup, I think that having an intention to meditate for 20 minutes and then trusting that everything will work by intuition is partly a System 2 process. It’s about framing oneself well, and training one’s intuition.
Hope that clarifies things :-)