Response to Dennett's claim that the Democratean way of looking at nature, is more sophisticated than thinking it's the intentional stance all the way down...
Yes, DD, thinking that atoms cling tenaciously to their electrons is a mistaken anthropomorphization. Yes, there's a gradation between the full-blown agency and lower levels of causality. But that doesn't lead inexorably to the "sophisticated" opinion that nature, at its lower/lowest level, is Democratean changes that just happen.
To opine thus might not be more sophisticated, but to argue that this opinion about nature is true because its more sophisticated might be more sophistical.
Question to self: if there is at least some trace of agency-like effort at the lowest level, where is the individual-like entity to which you would attribute something like trying-to-push (or pull)? Given action/reaction equivalence, it might seem more proper to say that nature acts rather than say that the pusher/pushed-thing acts...
...worth pondering more.
To opine thus might not be more sophisticated, but to argue that this opinion about nature is true because its more sophisticated might be more sophistical.
Question to self: if there is at least some trace of agency-like effort at the lowest level, where is the individual-like entity to which you would attribute something like trying-to-push (or pull)? Given action/reaction equivalence, it might seem more proper to say that nature acts rather than say that the pusher/pushed-thing acts...
...worth pondering more.
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