I know this conversation has drifted quite a bit but I wanted to point
out that if I was a weary lecturer teaching 6 classes a semester, who was
thrilled to get anything with complete sentences and a vague semblance of
thought, the chat bot gets an A on its responses.
If it is in one of the advanced seminars I used to teach, where there were
a manageable number of students, and I'm was really reading the papers to
grade them well... the chat bot's responses might still garner a
passing grade, but not much better than that. This is clearly a "I quickly
scanned the internet" level of response. Odds are that if I was in a cranky
mood, and fed those responses into a plagiarism catcher, large chunks of it
would be flagged. I wish I still had access to one, so I could check.
And that assumes I asked the types of questions used as prompts here (which
I typically wouldn't), instead of questions that required demonstration of
deeper analysis/engagement with the text.
The big problem with these bots, from the perspective of a professor, is
that they provide poor students access to the same type of help that was
always available to rich students via their peers, and which have been
available to the upper-middle class for a while now via various websites
(namely, having someone else improvise a passable essay for you to turn
in). Because the profession has long discounted making students do real
intellectual work, and then grading that work seriously, the chat bots pose
a serious problem.
On Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 5:23 PM Jochen Fromm wrote:
> I enjoy talking with ChatGPT about famous scientists, thinkers, writers
> and philosophers. Because it is trained on vast amounts of data it knows
> them all: Pascal, Cervantes, Dante, Hugo, Goethe, Leibniz, Newton,
> Humboldt, Shakespeare,... It can summarize almost any book which is
> remarkable. Today I have asked it about William James and Anil Seth
>
> Me: You certainly have heard of William James, one of the fathers of
> Psychology?
>
> ChatGPT: Yes, I'm familiar with William James. He was an American
> philosopher and psychologist who is often referred to as the "father of
> American psychology." He made significant contributions to the development
> of psychology as a scientific discipline, and his ideas and writings
> continue to influence psychology and related fields to this day.
>
> Some of James' most influential contributions to psychology include his
> theory of functionalism, which emphasized the study of the purpose and
> function of behavior and mental processes, rather than their underlying
> structures; his work on consciousness, which he famously described as a
> "stream" of continuously changing thoughts and perceptions; and his
> exploration of the relationship between the mind and the body, which he
> called the "mind-body problem."
>
> James also wrote extensively on a wide range of topics, including
> religion, philosophy, and human nature. His most famous book, "The
> Principles of Psychology," was published in 1890 and is still considered a
> classic in the field.
>
> Me: Can you summarize his book "The Principles of Psychology"?
>
> ChatGPT: Certainly! "The Principles of Psychology" is a comprehensive and
> influential textbook that William James published in 1890. It aimed to
> provide a broad overview of the field of psychology at the time, covering
> topics such as perception, emotion, thought, consciousness, and the nature
> of the self.
>
> The book is organized into two main sections. The first section focuses on
> the lower-level processes of sensation and perception, including topics
> such as attention, memory, and learning. The second section focuses on
> higher-level mental processes, such as reasoning, judgment, and emotion.
>
> Throughout the book, James emphasized the importance of studying mental
> processes in their natural context and stressed the need for psychology to
> be closely linked to biology and other natural sciences. He also developed
> the theory of functionalism, which argued that the purpose and function of
> mental processes are more important to understanding them than their
> underlying structures.
>
> Overall, "The Principles of Psychology" was a landmark work that helped
> establish psychology as a distinct scientific discipline and influenced
> generations of psychologists and other scientists.
>
> Me: William James said: "Thoughts themselves are the thinkers". What does
> he mean?
>
> ChatGPT: When William James said "thoughts themselves are the thinkers,"
> he was expressing his belief in what is often called the "stream of
> consciousness" view of the mind. James believed that the mind is not a
> fixed entity or substance, but rather a constantly changing stream of
> thoughts, feelings, and sensations.
>
> According to James, our thoughts are not the products of a separate entity
> or "thinker" within us, but rather they are the result of the ongoing
> activity of the mind itself. In other
