I have wondered for the longest time if there's a word for a process in which a non-human, mechanical, chemical, etc, factor or process seems to have a purpose. What reminded me was this FRDB post (You have to however be a member to read this thread, one of the mysteries of FRDB with its massively complex algorithm)

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=267086

Another example might be God's or (if you're a pantheist) the World's purpose using disease and starvation to counter overpopulation. In fact I recall this an assertion of the Church as a preferable alternative to birth control

Another--in view of screen sucking and humans' attachment to devices such as the iPod and cellphone--is the apparent purpose of the digital world to enslave us

Do you mean that the process has a purpose (as in a use) or that it has its own agenda and seems to be doing something deliberately.

The latter, a kind of rudimentary purpose. Of course humanoids exhibit largely conscious design and the lower animals act from mostly evolutionary instinct, while even the behavior of compounds at the threshold between microorganism and molecule appears vaguely purposeful. Atoms or molecules grouping to become a crystal no doubt has some kind of survival value as with other instances of reaction, attraction and repulsion at the atomic level.

Thus nothing is entirely anything and everything is partly something else. The neutron is conscious

So there's no distinct dividing line where a being or object undergoing a process can be called totally aimless or lacking conscious purpose. As an ordinary concept the digital world at present can hardly be called deliberate. Again, though, there's no fundamental distinction between today's digital complex monopolizing our spare time and the day when Star-Trek Data-like androids enslave us

We think it's exclusively under our control while it acts to bolster that assumption til we're happy doing its bidding, convinced it is we who are still in control

You might reply, but Data isn't conscious. Yet no doubt you've heard the argument where every cell of a human body is replaced, one at a time, by its submicroscopic semiconductor equivalent until it is technically a machine, like Data. Surely it will claim it still possesses feeling and is under its own conscious control just as we do now in our denial that the digital world is surely but slowly taking over

Gees, I just glanced at the time; I've been at this longer than I had intended

Teleology? Intentionality?

It is unlikely in the extreme that neutrons are conscious.

What we see in nature is the illusion of design.

Thus Leonard Susskind, one of the developers of String Theory," titled his book, "The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design."

Thus Richard Dawkins wrote his book, "The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design."

This apparent design arises from a process called emergence, which is to say that it is very complex and we do not understand it - and may never be able to understand it thoroughly. (Which is not to say that "It must have been magic" is ever a legitimate scientific response.)

And, yes, Data, if he existed would be conscious.

Sort of illustrates my point, no distinct dividing line therebetween

Do androids dream of electric sheep?

Would they count them when they can't sleep?

If they did, they would likely see things we wouldn't believe, like Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion or C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.

If androids someday DO dream of electric sheep, don't forget to declare sheepCount as a long int.

>declare sheepCount as a long int.

heh.
- R. Deckard

>declare sheepCount as a long int.

That should just be a bignum (link). All replicants are programmed in Lisp.

(Also: link.)

Cute cartoon, but int. Bignum Lisp. high tectalk?