Why indulge in this “sorta” talk? Because when we analyze—or synthesize—this stack of ever-more competent levels, we need to keep track of two facts about each level: what it is and what it does. What it is can be described in terms of the structural organization of the parts from which it is made— so long as we can assume that the parts function as they are supposed to function. What it does is some (cognitive) function that it (sorta) performs—well enough so that at the next level up, we can make the assumption that we have in our inventory a competent building block that performs just that function—sorta, good enough to use.
Source:
Philosopher Daniel Dennett’s Book Intuition Pumps
