Summary Of Dennett's Symbolic Disappearance

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There are three different stances that can be utilized to best represent the behavior of a particular system: the physical stance, the design stance, and the intentional stance. In Dennett’s True Believers, Dennett stands with the fact that in order to understand an objective system, such as a true believer, it is important to use the intentional stance as the language of thought. A physical stance is used to describe biological phenomenons and explains behavior through physical actions. A design stance is used to predict what the system was designed to do. Dennett argues that true believers utilize the intentional stance due to its rational and predictive aspects. The intentional stance is a good predictive strategy that perceives beliefs …show more content…

Obviously a thermostat differs greatly from that of a human but the thermostat has the “intention” of changing in accordance with the room or outside temperature. It makes the “choice” to change based on its “understanding.” This would be predictable based on its actions alone in response to the outside temperature stimuli, according to Dennett. Humans however, are not fake believers like that of a thermostat. Humans have internal intuition of our surroundings that require a change in the system in order to adapt to the ever changing environment. To develop into the human intentionality as a true believer, the thermostat would have had to gain more input and “senses” which would be taken into account when adapting to the stimuli. To be a true believer is to be able to be predicted by the intentional system. This can be done since humans are true believers due to the fact that we ourselves are models of a kind of adaptation to the environment around us. Dennett states that using the intentional stance for human individuals is possible since actions are predictable if they are rational and “do what they ought to do , and think the way they ought to think” (Dennett, ‘97). However, it is pretty

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