Seeing red

[Angrboda]

What encoding?  I don't know what you mean.  DNA strands are made up of chemicals, those chemicals in a given environment give rise to chemical reactions varying from the building of a single cell to the construction of entire living organisms.

Well, let's look at your definition of intentionality.  Wouldn't you say, by that definition, that DNA acts with intention over a very long time?  At least a lifetime, for sure, but maybe even over the evolution of a species?

According to my definition of intentionality, the intentional representation is part of a recurring, self-sustaining feedback loop in which the thing has behaviors triggered by the representation. In the sense that DNA triggers behaviors such as molecule building, its molecular chain would be about those molecules it is building. However there is no feedback involved, so the DNA molecule isn't properly a representation of the molecule it is building under my definition. But here, in which DNA gives rise to molecule building, is one area that shows the crossover between representation happening and "just stuff happening." In that sense, looking at DNA as 'encoding' the building of certain molecules is a case in which the interpretation of what is happening is firmly "in the eye of the beholder." It is a conceptualization of what is occurring, and that requires high level intentionality of a kind not available to the DNA molecule.