I finished the Principle of Intentionality. Its a quick read and is mostly speculative, but i found thr paper valuable for the way the author approached the problem in a true scientific fashion.
He also articulated the HP in a new way, kind of. (
@smcder )
Imagine the following:
"Mike runs downstairs. He has a baseball game. An american tradition. His grandfather had played in the big leagues. Mike hoped to play in the big leagues some day as well. He was dedicated to the sport and approached it with vigor and dedication. He also loved it. His family loved it too, and especially loved watching him play. They often took time off work to travel to his games. Just before running out the door, mike remembered he had left his lucky batting glove on his bed. He turned around and ran back up the stairs. He was so happy he remebered it; it had been his grnadfathers and was his good luck charm. He went out the door and jumped in his parents car. They left for the game. A very special game. The last of his high school career."
So whats so special about that story? The only model that mainstream science has to explain the above is the principle of causation; according to it, the above story was nothing but trillions of billiard balls bouncing into one another.
Yes, people actually believe the principle of causation mirrors reality. However, the principle of causation cannot explain meaning or value. Meaning and value are invisible to it. (exactly like consciousness being invisible to materialist models.)
Now, people like @ufology might claim that consciousness, meaning, and value fit into the principle of causation and materialism, but they dont. No, they dont.
So you either believe the above story some how results from trillions of billiard balls bouncing into each other, or you consider the fact that the principle of causation is indeed a principle.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5295140/pdf/fpsyg-08-00137.pdf
"One powerful approach to theorizing about how things go in the world is by model-building. A model is a representation of something real, and includes hypothetical entities such as influences, constructs, and relations. The model predicts how things will go in some aspect of reality, and provides one explanation of it. There is not necessarily any assertion that its hypothetical entities mirror real entities. Model-building in the area of folk psychology is discussed in Maibom (2003) and Godfrey-Smith (2005).
Any scientific explanation of change is likely to invoke non-physical entities such as forces and causal relations. Although they might seem manifest, they are in some sense inferred, and thus hypothetical. In that sense, virtually all scientific explanation of change occurs in the form of models. Prediction, too, is largely model-based, although scientific observation such as Tycho Brahe’s records of astronomical movement allows prediction in the absence of any model.
In some scientific explanation, hypothetical entities are believed to mirror actual entities. A particularly obvious example is that space-time is non-physical, but is taken to be an aspect of reality. Still, there is value in the notion that even space-time is a hypothetical entity, subject to being modified or replaced as understanding grows. Famously, Einstein transformed scientific beliefs about space and time. And Kant suggested that space and time were simply a priori categories of the understanding, rather than aspects of ultimate (noumenal) reality. Even when there is substantial reason to believe that a certain hypothetical structure precisely mirrors how things actually are (as with the relation E = mc2), hypothetical structures are invented models1, and the evidence that confirms their power in prediction and explanation draws broadly from other, often implicit hypothetical entities, such as the principle of causality.
The science of psychology can especially benefit by treating influences on change as mere hypothetical entities that are model- dependent. The mind is intuitively modeled as an intentional system, whereas the brain is modeled as a causal system. These might both be valid models, even if intentionality is inconsistent with the principle of causality. And allowing intentional models to stand on their own might open the door to there being various human sciences that revolve around models that are inconsistent with the wholly causal models of the physical sciences.
All mainstream scientific models seem to be causal models, treating any consistencies in physical events as somehow conforming to the principle of causality.2 Roughly, there is a causal relation wherever, apart from randomness, physical event B always immediately follows a spatially and temporally contiguous physical event A, such that event B will not occur if event A is blocked. The principle of causality asserts that, apart from randomness, every physical event can be traced to one or more causes, and thus through causal chains into the past (quickly muddied by randomness). There is enormous value in finding ways to model all physical change as consistent with the principle of causality. For example, when quantum events turned out not to follow the principle of causality, a small adaptation of the principle solved the problem. By treating event A as a large number of repetitions of a certain cause, the reliable effect is a fixed statistical distribution that can be treated as event B. Said differently, each single event A causes a certain wave function as event B. Quantum physics conflicts slightly with the principle of causality in other ways. Bell’s theorem describes causal relationships that violate the requirement of contiguity, and there are theoretical approaches in which a quantum effect occurs slightly prior to its cause. As with any hypothetical entity, the principle of causality is subject to modification with new evidence of these sorts.3 ...
The third approach assumes that the structure of reality is more complex than can be represented in any wholly causal model. Think of ultimate reality as having two interconnected dimensions, one causal and the other intentional. The intentional relation is real, where the intentions of an agent actually influence physical events, and where the agent is free to change her mind. But, by hypothesis, there might be no way to confirm this direct influence experimentally, because the intentional and causal dimensions are inextricably connected and fully in harmony. Neural processes and external influences that can be traced in causal chains into the past are integral in the formation of intentions, such that, in principle, a wholly causal model could powerfully predict what the agent will intend. The agent’s intentions directly influence physical events, but there is an epiphenomenal causal link alongside that influence, so that there is no scientific basis for choosing between the two explanations. It is, of course, conceivable that there will eventually be some experimental means that we cannot yet imagine for sorting out whether it is actually the intention that is efficacious. A two- dimensioned universe of this sort is independent of the dualistic claim that conscious experiences (qualia) are real but non- physical. A dualist cites the evidence of subjective experience to justify the reality of qualia. But a proponent of the two- dimensioned universe might, instead, cite the utter inadequacy of any wholly causal model for making sense of anything about minds and mattering. And it might further be argued, consistent with the dualist argument, that the experience of free will and things mattering is more primitive and certain than any causal model of the environment."
