If/when/as AI (such a broad term, no?) can be used in the mode you
describe here somewhat transparently I would likely be open to an
"augmented intuition" mode of use....
and as a point of gratuitous contention, how *does* one tell the
difference between "stupid nonsense" and "an abductive candidate for
experimental research"? Is there truly a qualitative difference (in
the world) or is that an artifact of our own judgement(s) based on some
quantitative threshold(s)?
Your description of "T" Truth as a spanning kernel for a plurality of
theories and models feels quite apt and the way I took the name of the
Docuseries "Closer to Truth", very assiduously avoiding the specific
"the Truth"... and implying an "asymptotic" approach not a collision
course.
As I look at the (near) decomposable systems and map it onto (near)
spanning trees within process-relation networks of those systems I
imagine these LLM training exercises building/finding highly connected
clusters (like ganglia in vertebrate neural systems) which fundamentally
reflect what KellyAnne Conway so naively claimed as "alternate realities".
If there is a singular capital T Truth (or capital R Reality) then it is
probably at most apprehended by finite beings (who have not achieved
Satori, nod to DaveW) as the superposition of many sub-complete T' (or
R') descriptions?
- Steve
On 6/5/23 10:18 AM, glen wrote:
But this misses the point, I think. And, in fact, I think it's a
mistake to focus too much on (natural) language models at all, even
for things that *seem* to be all about language, like philosophy. I'm
most interested in the concept of an embedding
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded>. Ideally, I'd like to be able
to query a modeling system (e.g. decoding/encoding transformers) for a
(vector) space that (accurately) encodes *both* James and Husserl.
Then that would help satisfy Marcus' and EricS' task to see if there
are gaps between them, or not.
The problem has nothing to do, really, with how much one might have to
read/think in order to understand anything. Understanding is a
delusion. What matters is the differences and similarities between any
2 or more things (processes, devices, systems, whatever 'thing' might
mean).
These automatic modelers (like the transformers) might help us do
that. As for some kind of "ground truth", something that might provide
a foundation like the physicists seem to think they have, if our
automatic modeling device is capable of embedding all (or most) of all
the models surrounding us (over time, space, and individual theorists
or collections of theorists), then we can experimentally test for
kernels/bases that can span *most* of those theories/models. If such a
kernel exists, then it is a candidate for the capital T truth, and any
theory/model that is not spanned by that kernel is either stupid
nonsense or an abductive candidate for experimental research.
On 6/4/23 18:48, Frank Wimberly wrote:
As one of the few, if not the only, person who has been a full time
employee of a philosophy department for multiple years, I am quick to
defend my former colleagues. Read "Actual Causation and Thought
Experiments" by Glymour and Wimberly in J. K. Campbell, M. O'Rourke &
H. S. Silverstein (eds.), Causation and Explanation. MIT Press
You don't have to read thousands, or even hundreds, of pages to be
able to grok that paper.
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM
On Sun, Jun 4, 2023, 7:30 PM David Eric Smith <desm...@santafe.edu
<mailto:desm...@santafe.edu>> wrote:
So there’s a rather concrete way in which one can imagine
ChatGPT’s being particularly useful as a time-saver.
I have heard it said (and find it persuasive), that philosophy is
different from physics because what philosophers want to do and
settle for being is different from that for physicists.
A physicist can pick up F = ma and start from there to get
something done.
Each philosopher is, in a sense, a new beginning of the universe,
and you are expected to read thousands of pages of his composition to
be permitted to engage with him. That is a good barrier to exclude
pretty-much-everbody from most conversations.
But there are specific topics on which engaging with this group
is a game of whack-a-mole, and it would be _so_ satisfying to catch
that damned mole far enough out of the hole to pin him down to the
board for once.
It is on this point:
Summarizing what, as Marcus rightly says, as been repeated 10^n
times before, CGTP quotes:
At the core of radical empiricism is the concept of "pure
experience." According to James, pure experience refers to the
immediate, unmediated apprehension of reality, devoid of any
conceptual or interpretative filters. It involves experiencing the
world as it is, without imposing preconceived notions or theories
onto the experience.
What the HELL does anyone think this is supposed to refer to? I
am not asking whether it actually does refer to anything, but rather
what anyone believes he is saying by it.
And I can ask that in a rather concrete way. Were James to
engage with Husserl, would he claim that the access to the “immediate
apprehension” is by way of the same portal as Husserl’s epoche?
I ask because they set themselves up to make a particular style
of assertion.
By analogy, we have seen that human bodies can do things like
Amanars and any of the 4 Bileses (which should have been 5, and would
have been were it not for COVID). But that doesn’t mean every human
body can do any of them. There is rather a lot of specific training
that goes into becoming one of the bodies that can do any of this.
The various “internal” experience-focused philosophers present
these things as doable, but technical and particular and requiring
training.
But if you then ask what that is about, you get either a demand
to follow several thousand pages in each person’s formulation, or the
kind of cloudy motivational life-coach speech that almost all of the
CGPT summary is composed of. (Reminds me of something I once heard
said of chimp speech: if you aren’t there working with them, you
cannot anticipate how mind-numbingly repetitive it is).
So rather than asking “what it is” (the skill or whatever), I can
ask “If they were arguing with each other, would they even assert to
each other, each with his supposed privileged appreciation of the
mysteries, assert or deny that they are referring to the same thing.
This might allow us to not have to approach the full body of
philosophical literature as if each corpus were Sui generis.
Eric
On Jun 5, 2023, at 2:43 AM, Jochen Fromm <j...@cas-group.net
<mailto:j...@cas-group.net>> wrote:
ChatGPT now allows sharing conversations. I've asked it about
William James book "Essays in Radical Empiricism"
https://chat.openai.com/share/375aef4e-a8d6-467e-8061-bd85b341c46b
<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fchat.openai.com%2fshare%2f375aef4e-a8d6-467e-8061-bd85b341c46b&c=E,1,SrWav4ypspeJiXxANsU84IqWFKy5OPWIx-qHp0YLHpEHLinoe3Q3aAeuo_0eErOe6fnJYosh3T6fflwMl7CsxV2wKAIIwCbBlleeoZM8db1fEE4,&typo=1&ancr_add=1>
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