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Our tools are extensions of our purposes, and so we find it natural to make metaphorical attributions of intentionality to them; but I take it no philosophical ice is cut by such examples.
John Searle
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Our tools reflect our intentions, but attributing intent to them does not carry philosophical weight.

In this quote, John Searle highlights the relationship between humans and their tools, suggesting that tools are manifestations of our goals and purposes. While we may instinctively ascribe intention to our tools as extensions of ourselves, this attribution does not progress philosophical discourse, implying that the true essence of understanding lies beyond these metaphorical attributions.

Themes

ToolsIntentionalityPhilosophyExtensionsMetaphor

In practice

Example use cases

Discussing the philosophy of technology in a seminar.

More from John Searle

We do not live in several different, or even two different, worlds, a mental world and a physical world, a scientific world and a world of common sense. Rather, there is just one world; it is the world we all live in, and we need to account for how we exist as part of it.
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You can't *discover* that the brain is a digital computer. You can only *interpret* the brain as a digital computer.
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Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed.
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Darwin's greatest achievement was to show that the appearance of purpose, planning, teleology (design), and intentionality in the origin and development of human and animal species was entirely an illusion. The illusion could be explained by evolutionary processes that contained no such purpose at all. But the spread of ideas through imitation required the whole apparatus of human consciousness and intentionality
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Quote by John Searle | QuoteProject