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C.S. Peirce, who is known for characterizing abductive reasoning and had a considerable on John Sowa’s old school AI work, had an interesting take on this. I ca

by User23 2y ago

C.S. Peirce, who is known for characterizing abductive reasoning and had a considerable on John Sowa’s old school AI work, had an interesting take on this. I can’t fully do it justice, but essentially he held that both matter and mind are real, but aren’t dual. Rather, there is a smooth and continuous transition between the two. However, whatever the nature of mind and matter really is, we have convincing evidence of human beings creating meaning in symbols by a process Peirce called semiosis. We lack a properly formally described semiotic, although much interesting mathematical applied philosophy has been done in the space (and frankly a ton of bullshit in the academy calls itself semiotic too). Until we can do that, we will probably have great difficulty producing an automaton that can perform semiosis. So, for now, there certainly remains a qualitative difference between the capabilities of humans and LLMs.

wrs 2y ago
I don’t know the technical philosophy terms for this, but my simplistic way of thinking about it is that when I’m “seriously” talking (not just emitting thoughtless cliché phrases), I’m talking about something. And this is observable because sometimes I have an idea that I have trouble expressing in words, where I know that the words I’m saying are not properly expressing the idea that I have. (I mean — that’s happening right now!) I don’t see how that could ever happen for an LLM, because all it does is express things in words, and all it knows is the words that people expressed things with. We know for sure, that’s just what the code does; there’s no question about the underlying mechanism, like there is with humans.
- User23 2y ago
  > I have an idea that I have trouble expressing in words, where I know that the words I’m saying are not properly expressing the idea that I have. (I mean — that’s happening right now!) That's a quality insight. Which, come to think of it, is an interestingly constructed word given what you just said.
- gradus_ad 2y ago
  Producing text is only the visible end product. The LLM is doing a whole lot behind the scenes, which is conceivably analogous to the thought space from which our own words flow.
  - smokedetector1 2y ago
    You can simulate a NAND gate using balls rolling down a specially designed wood board. In theory you could construct a giant wood board with billions and billions of balls that would implement the inference step of an LLM. Do you see these balls rolling down a wood board as a form of interiority/subjective experience? If not, then why do you give it to electric currents in silicon? Just because it's faster?
    - User23 2y ago
      Tangentially, Peirce has a diagrammatic logical system that's built entirely on conjunction and negation which is isomorphic to propositional logic. He also defined extensions for what we now call predicate logic and modal logic. John Sowa annotated Peirce's tutorial and it's quite interesting[1]. [1] https://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/egtut.pdf https://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/egtut.pdf
    - RealityVoid 2y ago
      Your point of disagreement is the _medium_ of computation? The same point can be made about neurons. Do you think you could have the same kind of cognitive processes you have now if you were thinking 1000x slower than you do? Speed of processing matters, especially when you have time bounds on reaction, such in real life. Another problem with balls would be the necessity of perception, that you can't really do with balls alone, you need different kind of medium for perception and interaction, that humans, (and comuputers) do have.
      - User23 2y ago
        Are you familiar with Searle's work[1] on the subject? It's fun how topical it is here. Anyhow maybe the medium doesn't matter, but the burden of proof for that claim is on you, because it's contrary to experience, intuition, and thought experiment. [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/

by User23 2y ago

wrs 2y ago

I don’t know the technical philosophy terms for this, but my simplistic way of thinking about it is that when I’m “seriously” talking (not just emitting thoughtless cliché phrases), I’m talking about something. And this is observable because sometimes I have an idea that I have trouble expressing in words, where I know that the words I’m saying are not properly expressing the idea that I have. (I mean — that’s happening right now!) I don’t see how that could ever happen for an LLM, because all it does is express things in words, and all it knows is the words that people expressed things with. We know for sure, that’s just what the code does; there’s no question about the underlying mechanism, like there is with humans.

User23 2y ago
> I have an idea that I have trouble expressing in words, where I know that the words I’m saying are not properly expressing the idea that I have. (I mean — that’s happening right now!) That's a quality insight. Which, come to think of it, is an interestingly constructed word given what you just said.
gradus_ad 2y ago
Producing text is only the visible end product. The LLM is doing a whole lot behind the scenes, which is conceivably analogous to the thought space from which our own words flow.
- smokedetector1 2y ago
  You can simulate a NAND gate using balls rolling down a specially designed wood board. In theory you could construct a giant wood board with billions and billions of balls that would implement the inference step of an LLM. Do you see these balls rolling down a wood board as a form of interiority/subjective experience? If not, then why do you give it to electric currents in silicon? Just because it's faster?
  - User23 2y ago
    Tangentially, Peirce has a diagrammatic logical system that's built entirely on conjunction and negation which is isomorphic to propositional logic. He also defined extensions for what we now call predicate logic and modal logic. John Sowa annotated Peirce's tutorial and it's quite interesting[1]. [1] https://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/egtut.pdf https://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/egtut.pdf
  - RealityVoid 2y ago
    Your point of disagreement is the _medium_ of computation? The same point can be made about neurons. Do you think you could have the same kind of cognitive processes you have now if you were thinking 1000x slower than you do? Speed of processing matters, especially when you have time bounds on reaction, such in real life. Another problem with balls would be the necessity of perception, that you can't really do with balls alone, you need different kind of medium for perception and interaction, that humans, (and comuputers) do have.
    - User23 2y ago
      Are you familiar with Searle's work[1] on the subject? It's fun how topical it is here. Anyhow maybe the medium doesn't matter, but the burden of proof for that claim is on you, because it's contrary to experience, intuition, and thought experiment. [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/