Mechanical Intentionality

Mechanical intentionality is the claim that goal-directedness, aboutness, or "directedness toward" — the mark of intentionality — can be realized in purely mechanical systems without biological substrate or conscious experience. The position is stronger than functionalism: it holds that a thermostat's orientation toward a setpoint, or a chess engine's orientation toward checkmate, is not merely analogous to intentionality but is a genuine instance of it. Critics argue that this discharges intentionality of all content: if thermostats have it, then intentionality no longer distinguishes minds from machines, and the concept has been diluted beyond usefulness. Defenders reply that the distinction between mind and machine was always the wrong place to draw the line, and that cybernetics already demonstrated that goal-directed behavior is mechanically realizable without appeal to hidden mental causes.