Sorry Andres!
I did not realise that "intention" or "determinism" was such terrible thing
that needs to be corrected.
The saving grace with Chaos (kant believed in it) is that is it the negative
side of Cosmos. The two face of nature. In every instance of chaos there
exist a signature, the germ of order and in every instance of cosmos there
is
the germ of chaos. Beautifull isn't it.
It wasn't my intention to generate a "reductio ad absurdum" situation. I'm
not sure whether electrons qualify in the genetics class.
I meant the "intention" expressed by humans every day in the course of their
living. There may be humans who can exist with no intention at all. I don't
know how and I have no intention to pursue the matter.
Even if one wants to escape intention,  an intention to do so must first
exist.

I hope that explains my point. If not I'll return with more detail.

I doubt whether anyone would say that Systems do not exist. Some like them,
some don't.
The problem as I see is. Are Systems a product of intention.?
If I may I put "The great unmoved mover"  aside (no offence to believers)
for the sake of the demonstration.

Navigation is the example I'll use to demonstrate my point.

If  I am on an ocean, far from visible land, my destination a thousand miles
distant, I may employ the "Idea" of a reference point, given that the
traditional reference point, a coast line is no longer visible.
The question remains which reference point is the "Ideal" one to use?
The coast, the North pole, North-South migrating birds, position of the Sun,
or a star. One could use God I suppose. Too risky.
Ancient people have always known that the larger the distance to the
reference point the more reliable the calculation of the shorter distance to
the destination.
Nobody would suggest that the destination was the star itself or the
coastline, or by clicking an icon it was the icon itself was was sought
after.
They are all mere Ideas reason uses whilst providing for the understanding.
The fact that the faculty of reason errs in transcending these mere ideas,
treats these Ideas as concepts of the understanding, means something needs
to be corrected.
Intelligent humans have always believed in nature, the comos as an ordered
law
governed universe. Nothing was merely accidental. For every effect there was
a definate cause. The very relationship between cause and effect implied
necessity: law.
Mostly the cause was unknown owing to the enormous time gaps between events.
The Aboriginals mapped over 60,000 years of events, knew ice ages, changes
in polarity, solar eclipse etc. The are the most intent and determined
people
I know of. No sign of chaos.
So intention like determination is a device, a tool, used by the  faculty of
reason to get a handle on the environment. Like virus , bacteria  and
catastrophe it is natural.
Even the Idea of God as absolute, as totality, as unconditioned, is required
by reason to begin its process. This categorical imperative is the basis of
meta-physics from whence all systems derive. Meta-physics is merely a
survival mechanism. A device
It would be nice if we (well intentioned) had a way of programming our
intentions into smalltalk. Reliably that is.
Jon Hyland  demonstrates a determined use of Squeak at the control level and
PIC/ Smalltalk at the real-time level. His seems to work and will just so
long as he doesn't try tinkering with his first principles. Like so many
Squeakers like to do.
Cheers
PS
metaphysics; that branch of philosophy which treats of first principles,
including the sciences of being (ontology) and of the origin and structure
of the universe (cosmology). It is always intimately connected with a theory
of knowledge (epistemology).
Hamlyn Encyclopedic World Dictionary.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andres Valloud" <sqrmax at prodigy.net>
To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2001 9:32 AM
Subject: Re: Message oriented genetics


> Hi.
>
> > > It would be best to spell out the behavior which we can attribute
> > > to intention.  Implementation details will get better over time as
> > > more intention is discovered.
> > Good reply! But, would it not be better to discover the (rational)
> > behavior behind intention first? Might it not save us a lot wasted
> > detail?
>
> I was thinking that, eventually, we will get to a point where we will
> ask the question "what's the intention of an electron?"... or, if
> gravity is the effect of an intention, what's that intention in the
> first place?  There are certain things we will never know.
>
> However, as you say, yes.  The idea behind Message Oriented Genetics or
> Message Oriented Quantum Mechanics would be to come up with a
> (¡¡¡SIMPLE!!!) set of intentions that explains the behavior of genes,
> quarks, or whatever.
>
> As a result, we would "nthropomorphisize" everything (give human
> attributes to things).  While this is fine for object design, it's also
> something that in some languages (eg Spanish) is described as incorrect.
>
> Right now, it seems to me that we deal with the consequences of
> intentions.  So, because of our previous discussion, the physical
> objects don't talk to each other so it's inherently more difficult for
> us to figure things out --- we put ourselves in the place of The Creator
> writing the scriptures for the universe.  Maybe there's no other way,
> anyway...
>
> Andres.
>
>

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