That’s not a description of why you think the term is better.
I notice I’m confused. In the comment I made above, I believe I provided clear reasons for why we preferred the term “intentional.” Just in case it was not clear, our use of the term is based on the feedback of the cognitive neuroscientist and licensed therapist on our Board of Directors, with the latter especially helpful for the perspective of someone who has wide experience with how complex psychological terms are explained to broad audiences. As I pointed out above, the term “intentional” is widely used by therapists to explain how our minds work, especially the System 2 part, to broad audiences not well educated in psychology. Since our goal is to explain complex ideas drawn from cognitive neuroscience and psychology to broad audiences, that is why we made the choice to go with “intentional.” Moreover, scholars use the term “intentional system” to refer to agency and agents, and also see this one. Since one of our goals is to promote greater agency, we decided to use the term intentional, and orient toward tying the two concepts together in our content targeted at broad audiences.
We have an experimental attitude, of course, and we will see how much this term is helpful for broad audiences. We will update out beliefs and revise our use of this notion if it seems to be suboptimal for the target audience we’re going for. Appreciate your helpful comments on this, it’s always great to get such thoughtful engagement and helpful consideration on the benefits of using different terms.
Thanks for providing an actual motivation this time around.
Moreover, scholars use the term “intentional system” to refer to agency and agents,
I think that’s the core problem with the term. You suggest that doing things via system I isn’t agency. I think that’s a Straw Vulcan position. There’s no reason why intuition can’t be agency.
If I set the intention to meditate for 20 minutes and then meditate for 20 +-1 minutes without an external timekeeping device I have agency. There no reflective logical reasoning involved to get that timing. My understanding of Kahneman would be that’s using a System I process. Do you think that’s a System II process?
I am curious why you ascribe to me the position that “doing things via system I isn’t agency.” Can you please clarify to me where you believe I made that claim? I think I was pretty careful to avoid saying silly things like that.
You say that scholars use the term intentional system to refer to agency. You want to use the term intentional system to describe System II. That associates system II with agency.
If I set a “I meditate for 20 minutes intention” I would not call that a reflective, logical process. Maybe it’s reflective if I go through a process of thinking whether 15 or 20 minutes are better. I don’t think it’s reflective if I do have a habit of meditating for 20 minutes and just set up that intention at the beginning of meditating.
I think there are very intuitive processes that do have intentions and agency but my understanding of the terms System I and System II is that those intuitive processes are System I. System II suggests to me that I analyze what I have to do to make my intention become real. If I just trust my intuition to guide me and tell me when 20 minutes are over, I don’t understand that as System II.
Do you think that having an intention to meditate for 20 minutes and then trusting that everything will work by intuition is partly a system II process?
As I stated in the comment above, I do associate System 2 with agency, but in a very specific way. Namely, I stated that we can use our System 2 to train our System 1 to have more rational thinking and feeling patterns, ones better suited to achieving our long-term goals, and thus gaining agency.
In other words, I did not say that using System 1 is not being an agent. Being intentional about how one uses System 1, and training it, to be better suited to match one’s goals that we believe would actually fulfill our desires, is what I referred to as gaining greater agency.
Yup, I think that having an intention to meditate for 20 minutes and then trusting that everything will work by intuition is partly a System 2 process. It’s about framing oneself well, and training one’s intuition.
I notice I’m confused. In the comment I made above, I believe I provided clear reasons for why we preferred the term “intentional.” Just in case it was not clear, our use of the term is based on the feedback of the cognitive neuroscientist and licensed therapist on our Board of Directors, with the latter especially helpful for the perspective of someone who has wide experience with how complex psychological terms are explained to broad audiences. As I pointed out above, the term “intentional” is widely used by therapists to explain how our minds work, especially the System 2 part, to broad audiences not well educated in psychology. Since our goal is to explain complex ideas drawn from cognitive neuroscience and psychology to broad audiences, that is why we made the choice to go with “intentional.” Moreover, scholars use the term “intentional system” to refer to agency and agents, and also see this one. Since one of our goals is to promote greater agency, we decided to use the term intentional, and orient toward tying the two concepts together in our content targeted at broad audiences.
We have an experimental attitude, of course, and we will see how much this term is helpful for broad audiences. We will update out beliefs and revise our use of this notion if it seems to be suboptimal for the target audience we’re going for. Appreciate your helpful comments on this, it’s always great to get such thoughtful engagement and helpful consideration on the benefits of using different terms.
Thanks for providing an actual motivation this time around.
I think that’s the core problem with the term. You suggest that doing things via system I isn’t agency. I think that’s a Straw Vulcan position. There’s no reason why intuition can’t be agency.
If I set the intention to meditate for 20 minutes and then meditate for 20 +-1 minutes without an external timekeeping device I have agency. There no reflective logical reasoning involved to get that timing. My understanding of Kahneman would be that’s using a System I process. Do you think that’s a System II process?
I am curious why you ascribe to me the position that “doing things via system I isn’t agency.” Can you please clarify to me where you believe I made that claim? I think I was pretty careful to avoid saying silly things like that.
The claim I did make is that we can use our System 2 to train our System 1 to have more rational thinking and feeling patterns, ones better suited to achieving our long-term goals, and thus gaining agency. After all, agency is about achieving the goals that we believe would actually fulfill our desires. Certainly, doing things via System 1 can be used very effectively as an agentive move, if one trains one’s elephant well.
You say that scholars use the term intentional system to refer to agency. You want to use the term intentional system to describe System II. That associates system II with agency.
If I set a “I meditate for 20 minutes intention” I would not call that a reflective, logical process. Maybe it’s reflective if I go through a process of thinking whether 15 or 20 minutes are better. I don’t think it’s reflective if I do have a habit of meditating for 20 minutes and just set up that intention at the beginning of meditating.
I think there are very intuitive processes that do have intentions and agency but my understanding of the terms System I and System II is that those intuitive processes are System I. System II suggests to me that I analyze what I have to do to make my intention become real. If I just trust my intuition to guide me and tell me when 20 minutes are over, I don’t understand that as System II.
Do you think that having an intention to meditate for 20 minutes and then trusting that everything will work by intuition is partly a system II process?
As I stated in the comment above, I do associate System 2 with agency, but in a very specific way. Namely, I stated that we can use our System 2 to train our System 1 to have more rational thinking and feeling patterns, ones better suited to achieving our long-term goals, and thus gaining agency.
In other words, I did not say that using System 1 is not being an agent. Being intentional about how one uses System 1, and training it, to be better suited to match one’s goals that we believe would actually fulfill our desires, is what I referred to as gaining greater agency.
Yup, I think that having an intention to meditate for 20 minutes and then trusting that everything will work by intuition is partly a System 2 process. It’s about framing oneself well, and training one’s intuition.
Hope that clarifies things :-)