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 SearleWe often attribute 'understanding' and other cognitive predicates by metaphor and analogy to cars, adding machines, and other artifacts, but nothing is proved by such attributions.
John SearleThe ascription of an unconscious intentional phenomenon to a system implies that the phenomenon is in principle accessible to consciousness.
John SearleDualism makes the problem insoluble; materialism denies the existence of any phenomenon to study, and hence of any problem.
John SearleDarwin'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
John Searle