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Towards a Theory of the Intentional
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The mark of the intentional clearly has to do with these interplay between mind and meaning, syntax and semantics. Computers seem to be first class intentional artifacts!
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Many ways to construe computing: dynamics, agents, rule-following, digitality, and so on. Smith is working on evaluating all of them.
- Note that I am not claiming that the mathematical models of computing are wrong, I think the Church-Turing thesis is correct.
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However, the intuitions that underlie it are radically different among disciplines, and exploring these intuitions allow us to understand the intuitions behind these models, not just the reigning myths.
- This understanding allows us to understand computation in the wild better, and so possibly evaluate the tempting computation claim on the mind
- I am interested in how syntax and semantics cohere in an abstract way - through mathematical modeling (formal semantics), philosophic approaches (such as the Frame Problem), and in real-world problems (such as the Web and data-intensive linguistics). Approaching with a view about syntax and semantics makes this work make more sense.
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To see how Brian Cantwell Smith eventually tries to solve the problem, read his On the Origin of Objects (MIT Press, 1996).