<Without self-consciousness, there can be no intentionality, for there
can never be an "I" which intends....>
While I understand what you are saying, I question that (generic) "effects" are any more "intentional" with the additional requirement that there is an individual who confirms them.
<The modification of natural objects to more efficiently perform such
intended functions is the beginning of technology...>
I think you have STILL failed to explain why a thing can be said to
START only at the point of "intention" (and not before), nor how the
process which precedes "intention" is different (nor in what way it
might be different).
<As far as we have been able to ascertain, there is no nonhuman
terrestrial life form (with the bare and marginal exception of the great
apes) which possesses the degree of self-reference necessary to form and
carry out the intention to design and manufacture such tools.>
How do you define "tools" so that "such tools" (as you describe) are only THEREBY *tools*-- though are not so otherwise (seems you define tool use by tool users and tool users by tool use such that tools are only those things which humans use as such... quite circular).
Who is this "we" which "ascertains" what is and isn't "intentional" (surely, not I); and, by what reasoning do "they" say that such intention is related to (what you call) "self reference" (though which seems defined such that it is *self-willed*-- that is, which might require consciously directed "force"*)?
*Being "self aware" doesn't, in my mind, necessitate having an intention which requires a "will to power"-- or a PERSONAL "purpose" which is defined solely by the fact of its being contrary to prior necessity... nor is intent that which might ONLY be true if self-justified by ones "awareness" of it.
Brett Lane Robertson
Indiana, USA
http://www.window.to/mindrec
MindRecreation Metaphysical Assn.
BIO: http://members.theglobe.com/bretthay
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