A reader
asks me to comment on novelist Scott Bakker’s recent Scientia Salon article “Back to Square One: toward a post-intentional
future.” “Intentional” is a reference to intentionality, the philosopher’s
technical term for the meaningfulness or “aboutness” of our thoughts -- the way
they are “directed toward,” “point to,” or are about something. A “post-intentional” future is one in which
we’ve given up trying to explain intentionality in scientific terms and instead
abandon it altogether in favor of radically re-describing human nature exclusively
in terms drawn from neuroscience, physics, chemistry, and the like. In short, it is a future in which we embrace
the eliminative
materialist position associated with philosophers like Alex Rosenberg and
Paul and Patricia Churchland.
