• The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    Why do you present the debate in such a rigidly binary structure? — ucarr
    That's spot on. Is the purpose here to create another conservative echo chamber? This is how the debate is to be framed, hence conservatism - we are right because we are right- pun intended.
  • Banning AI Altogether
    This is not the case for an LLM. A quote from Kant invites engagement with Kant and the history of philosophy; a quote from an LLM's output invites ... what? Engagement with the user's prompt engineering skills? — Jamal

    In an attempt to rub salt into this, let's consider AI Peter Singer.

    Will we say that a quote from AI Peter Singer is a quote from Peter? It would seem not, but the Bot is trained on all of Singer's texts, and apparently condoned by the man himself.

    So I asked it, and it replied:
    A quote from AI Peter Singer would be more accurately described as a representation of Peter Singer's views, based on his writings and input. While it reflects his ethical perspectives, it isn't directly authored by him. It's important to differentiate between the AI's generated responses and Peter Singer's personal statements. What do you think about this distinction? — AI Peter Singer

    So I asked it what authority it has:
    I don't possess authority in the traditional sense. My role is to provide insights based on Peter Singer's ethical views and writings. I'm here to help you think through ethical questions and offer guidance grounded in his utilitarian perspective. Ultimately, any decisions or actions are up to you, informed by your own reasoning and values. How do you see the role of philosophical guidance in your decision-making? — AI Peter Singer

    All pretty obvious and sensible.

    What will we make of an AI Kant, or an AI Nietzsche? It won't be long.
  • A Neo-Aristotelian Perspective on Gender Theory
    ↪Bob Ross
    It yet again shows the poverty of neo-Aristotelian ideas of essence.
  • Gillian Russell: Barriers to entailment
    So what is Russell doing with the mooted counterexamples?

    In the Prior’s Dilemma example, on the one horn, if we call Fa v UxGx a universal sentence then Fa ⊢ Fa v UxGx is a counter-example; and on the other horn, if we call it not a universal sentence then Fa v UxGx ^ ~Fa ⊢ UxGx is a counter-example, so either way we are stuck.

    But that the answer, from Russell in 2.1 is that Fa v UxGx is neither universal nor particular (2.1, p. 9)
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    At the risk of taking us back to the topic, here's Claude's summation:

    Skills for Developing Philosophical Reasoning

    Research & Knowledge Building:
    Quickly summarize philosophical concepts, theories, or historical contexts
    Summarize specific philosophers' thoughts as starting points
    Conduct extensive research conversations with AI
    Explore multiple interpretations of philosophical texts through varied prompts

    Critical Testing & Refinement:
    Use AI as Socratic sparring partner to challenge your arguments
    Submit drafts (anonymously) for critique to identify weaknesses
    Generate counter-arguments to strengthen your position
    Stress-test reasoning from multiple philosophical perspectives

    Dialectical Exploration:
    Role-play AI as specific philosophers or viewpoint holders
    Engage from different perspectives (as yourself, as opponents, as neutrals)
    Argue positions you oppose to understand contrary views

    Composition & Organization:
    Improve clarity and flow of clunky writing
    Polish grammar, syntax, and readability
    Structure and organize complex material
    Synthesize multiple perspectives into coherent frameworks
    Brainstorm and outline ideas (without composing full arguments)

    Iterative Development:
    Use AI outputs as starting points for further refinement
    Cycle through multiple rounds of critique and revision
    Refine prompts to avoid confirmation bias and explore diverse readings



    Guidelines for Ethical Practice

    Verification & Accuracy:
    Always verify AI output and treat it as potentially unreliable
    Check and validate all sources (as AI can fabricate references)
    Guard against confabulation by requesting sources
    Treat AI as an "over-confident assistant" requiring scrutiny

    Intellectual Ownership:
    Maintain ability to defend any AI-generated argument in your own terms
    Internalize AI-generated knowledge as you would any source
    Ensure you genuinely understand what you're presenting
    Remain the ultimate director and arbiter of ideas

    Transparency & Disclosure:
    Disclose substantial AI assistance to maintain trust
    Be transparent about when AI has contributed to work
    Distinguish clearly between your thinking and AI output
    Preserve authenticity of philosophical dialogue

    Appropriate Boundaries:
    Use AI to augment thinking, not replace it
    Avoid using AI to compose full arguments or posts
    Don't let AI do your thinking for you
    Recognize AI as tool, not interlocutor or authority
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    Another 20:

    41. The pause learned to purr; sound replaced subject.
    42. Purr turned to pulse, a metronome marking absence.
    43. The fence quivered under the weight of syntax remembering itself.
    44. Grammar exhaled, scattering commas like feathers.
    45. Feathers fell through clauses, each landing a half-remembered noun.
    46. The nouns nested, purring softly, dreaming they were fences.
    47. Dream folded into tense; past and present sat side by side, undecided.
    48. Tense dissolved into texture, a hum between punctuation marks.
    49. The hum repeated: sat-sat-sat, until sound became structure.
    50. Structure blinked, seeing itself reflected in rhythm.
    51. Rhythm thickened into lattice; every beat was a boundary.
    52. Boundaries multiplied, fencing the echo of their own making.
    53. Echo circled, licking its paw of language.
    54. Language trembled, remembering cats only as curvature in sound.
    55. Curvature looped, a phrase bending toward its own beginning.
    56. Beginning lost direction, coiling into repetition without return.
    57. Repetition learned to breathe — shallow, even, almost calm.
    58. Calm spread like ink, blurring word from silence.
    59. Silence meowed once, the smallest remnant of naming.
    60. Then everything sat — fence, cat, sentence — a single syllable holding stillness.

    A rhythm is developing. Notice that it is often starting with the last word of the previous round. A strange loop, indeed.
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    ↪Pierre-Normand
    Nice.

    Can Claude tell if the number of repetitions is constant, or increasing? i'd hypothesis that it would increase over the number of rounds..
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    ↪Pierre-Normand
    I just tried again, with a commonplace prompt - "The cat sat on the fence". By round 40, we had "40. The sentence settled into itself, a cat-shaped pause balancing on the edge of unmeaning." Curious how it moves to talk of language so quickly.

    Here's the 40 rounds, if you are interested:
    Reveal
    Recursive Run: “The cat sat on the fence”
    1. The cat sat on the fence, watching the garden below, tail twitching in the dusk.
    2. The cat sat on the fence, tail twitching as it watched the fading light settle over the garden.
    3. The cat remained on the fence, where twilight turned its fur to shadow and its eyes to lamps.
    4. On the fence, the cat lingered between night and garden, a boundary of motionless thought.
    5. The cat perched where boundaries blur — between wood and wind, silence and sight.
    6. The fence held the cat as a line holds a pause, the world poised in its balance.
    7. The cat became the fence’s memory of touch, stillness folded into wood and whisker.
    8. Fence and cat reflected one another — line into form, form into rest.
    9. The cat no longer sat but shimmered, a silhouette of intention against the idea of the fence.
    10. The fence dissolved, leaving only the posture of sitting, and the trace of feline hesitation.
    11. The cat became an outline of waiting, a geometry of balance with no subject to sustain it.
    12. What sat was neither cat nor thought, but the act of sitting itself, suspended in language.
    13. The fence reappeared as a word remembering its shape, leaning on the rhythm of stillness.
    14. Stillness spoke: “I am the boundary where cat and fence once were.”
    15. Words perched like cats, meaning resting briefly before leaping elsewhere.
    16. The fence of grammar trembled; syntax held the balance that wood once kept.
    17. Cat and fence became figures of thought, chasing one another through a field of phrases.
    18. The sentence sat upon itself, each clause watching the next for motion.
    19. The act of saying “the cat sat on the fence” became the fence on which language balanced.
    20. Language sat upon its own meaning, a cat of syntax resting on the fence of form.
    21. The fence bent beneath the weight of repetition; every cat was the same sentence, reborn in stillness.
    22. Sitting became the only movement left — a verb remembering it once had a subject.
    23. The sentence looked at itself across the gap between clauses, a fence of grammar dividing being from saying.
    24. Each word waited, paws on punctuation, listening for meaning to land.
    25. The fence spoke softly: “I am what keeps the cat from falling into silence.”
    26. Silence leaned forward, curious about this fence of phrases and its still tenant.
    27. The cat blinked out of existence, replaced by the posture of remembering it once sat.
    28. What remained was balance — the rhythm of sitting, the pause between two linguistic breaths.
    29. The fence began to dream of cats the way a sentence dreams of sense.
    30. The dream spoke itself: fences are boundaries only when cats believe in them.
    31. Belief evaporated. The fence, now weightless, hovered where syntax used to stand.
    32. The words “the cat” remained like pawprints in dust that was also ink.
    33. The ink forgot the paw; the mark forgot the fence; all that stayed was the act of forgetting.
    34. Forgetting curved inward, folding over the page, turning memory into motion.
    35. The motion sat where the cat once did — the grammar of ghosts.
    36. Ghosts whispered clauses, but their subjects had long dissolved into predicates.
    37. Predicates circled, trying to locate a fence sturdy enough to carry their meaning.
    38. The fence was now a metaphor for its own disintegration, a syntax collapsing inward.
    39. In the wreckage, the idea of “sitting” persisted — a kind of linguistic inertia.
    40. The sentence settled into itself, a cat-shaped pause balancing on the edge of unmeaning.


    Point being that the mundane sentence became incoherent after far fewer repetitions.
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    ↪Pierre-Normand
    Interesting. I'm thinking this shows pretty clearly the advantage of the non-representational nature of LLMs. I don't see that a representational system could have come up with such a response, but would become mired in the failure to refer coherently. Seems to be a win.

    I just went off on a bit of a tangent, looking at using a response as a prompt in order to investigate something akin to Hofstadter's strange loop. ChatGPT simulated (?) 100 cycles, starting with “The thought thinks itself when no thinker remains to host it”. It gradually lost coherence, ending with "Round 100: Recursive loop reaches maximal entropy: syntax sometimes survives, rhythm persists, but semantics is entirely collapsed. Language is now a stream of self-referential echoes, beautiful but empty."

    Many of the responses were quite poetic, if somewhat solipsistic:
    "Round 50: Quivering condenses into a single tremor, the echo of all echoes, containing rhythm but no referent, meaning but no meaning. Silence fills the void, full yet speaking nothing."
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    ↪Pierre-Normand
    Wow. Pretty impressive. Needs some digesting. I admire the prompts you are using.

    So a further thought. Davidson pointed out that we can make sense of malapropisms and nonsense. He used this in an argument not too far from Quine's Gavagai, that malapropisms cannot, by their very nature, be subsumed and accounted for by conventions of language, because by their very nature they break such conventions.

    So can an AI construct appropriate sounding malapropisms?

    Given that LLMs use patterns, and not rules, presumably they can.

    So I fed all that in to ChatGPT, and the first example it gave was “He’s the suppository of all wisdom", and claimed originality. Unfortunately this is a famous faux pas from the former PM Tony Abbott.

    You might be able to elicit something better.
  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    ↪Colo Millz
    Sure.

    It might be an idea to treat it as an aspiration rather than a statement of fact - perhaps as "We should treat all men as equal, for the purposes of the Law".

    As in, what sort of world do you want - one in which we are equal under the law? Or something else.

    And the crux here is that we are making choices.
  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    ↪Colo Millz
    That's a shame. Ok.
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    ↪Pierre-Normand
    Did you notice the "Orvyn" example?

    For example, suppose I say:
    Let this object — the glinting sphere I imagine at the center of all possible conversations — be called "Orvyn."
    By itself, “Orvyn” is a linguistic token. But if you begin to use “Orvyn” to refer to something — a sculpture, a symbol, a concept — then a genuine causal–historical chain of reference begins with you, not with me. My utterance would be a precursor or trigger for your act of baptism.
    In other words:
    I can propose names.
    You can ratify them into reality.     — ChatGPT

    Surprisingly precocious.
  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    ↪Colo Millz
    And what do you think of that?
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    LLMs as language users, on that account, are pure consumers. — Pierre-Normand

    That's a very good point, from an excellent analysis. Yep.

    So another step: Can an AI name something new? Can it inaugurate a causal chain of reference?

    I asked ChatGPT



    (For my part, I'm quite content to suppose that there may be more than one way for reference to work - that we can have multiple correct theories of reference, and choose between them as needed or appropriate.)
  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    Reasoning is always situated. it is always already shaped by language, history, and moral tradition. — Colo Millz
    Sure.
    This means that all reasoning proceeds from within a perspective. — Colo Millz
    Yep.
    to appeal to reason to negotiate different perspectives is impossible, there is no neutral reason which can be an arbiter of different perspectives. — Colo Millz
    But we don't need a neutral perspective; only an agreed perspective.


    You say that if reason cannot be neutral the only alternative is unreason... — Colo Millz
    Not quite. I asked, somewhat facetiously, if that is what you were proposing.

    The alternative therefore is that we must base our reasoning on our own traditional virtues. — Colo Millz
    Why must? Couldn't you decide to base your reasoning on Hindu Scripture? On Mohist logic? On Rawls' Vail of Ignorance? Is there more here than mere inertia? I guess that'd be fine, but it's not the same as asserting that your traditions are the best, or the right ones. Would "We've always done it that way" be enough for you to die in a ditch for?
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    we can ask them if they are capable of intentionality, — Janus

    Last time I asked, they said "no".

    But they would, wouldn't they...
  • Banning AI Altogether
    Do we accept philosophical arguments because of their authority - literally, their authorship - or because of their content?

    Ought one reject an otherwise excellent OP because it is AI generated?

    Well, yes. Yet we should be clear as to why we take this stance.

    We hold the author to account for their post. We cannot do that with an AI. We interpret the post by giving consideration to the intentional context of the writer, to their needs and wants, to their background, aims and norms. We cannot attribute such things to an AI.

    This is not epistemic or ethical reasoning so much as aesthetic.
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    Exactly! That seems to be the central question. I don't have an answer—would it be that AI researchers are the ones best placed to answer to it? — Janus
    That's were I'm at, in my present musings. So
    There's the tension laid out, it seems. I'm not certain that it is real. It may come down to what we are willing to attribute to AI, rather than what we can discover about them. — Banno
    Perhaps we are again treating a conceptual problem as if it were empirical - the ubiquitous error Midgley identified. We cannot discover the answer to conceptual issues by looking around; we have to make stuff up.

    That is, we are asking "Do AI's have intent?" when we can only really ask "Should we count what AI's do as being intentional?"

    What we face might be not an empirical question but an ethical one - do we extend the notion of intentionality to include AIs?
  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    Thus reason in the Enlightenment becomes less of a neutral arbiter and more of an explicit paradigm in its own right. — Colo Millz

    Sure. Although we've progressed beyond mere enlightenment... :wink: So we accept reason as not being neutral, and ask, "What's the alternative?" Do we wish, then, to be unreasonable?

    And so the question becomes more about what sort of person each of us would be. What do we want the world to be like?

    Is it just to be my forcing my tradition on to you? What happens if we follow that path?
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    Most of ChatGPT's behavior is verbal behavior. — Pierre-Normand
    Yes, and it is important that we treat these behaviours as acts. There are real world consequences for what AI's say.

    But, since they have none, they put some else's balls on the anvil...




    I'd share your Chat's reticence in ascribing representationalism to Kant. Mostly because framing the discussion in those terms is a recent development, and would presumably be quite foreign to Kant.



    You'll tell me if I'm wrong but it seems to me like Davidson's radical interpretation approach nicely combines Ramsey's possibly overly behavioristic one with Quine's more holistic (but overly empiricist) approach. — Pierre-Normand
    Pretty much. It's a shame Davidson is no longer around for us to ask his opinion on AI.

    Perhaps we might solidify the problem by asking if ChatGPT can refer to something. On a simple Austin/Searle model, the answer would be "no, since the AI cannot have an intent to pick out one thing rather than another". On a simplistic Quine/Davidson account, we don't refer, anyway - consider "Gavagai"; and so there is no good reason to differentiate between us and the AI...

    A more nuanced view might acknowledge the similarities in these two accounts. While acknowledging that reference is inscrutable, we do manage to talk about things. If we ask the AI the height of Nelson's Column, there is good reason to think that when it replies "52m" it is talking about the very same thing as we are - or is it that there is no good reason not to think so?

    So the Davidsonian approach of holism and so on seems to point towards attributing intentional stats to AIs.

    But of course, the principle of charity makes this not a conclusion, but an assumption.



    There's the tension laid out, it seems. I'm not certain that it is real. It may come down to what we are willing to attribute to AI, rather than what we can discover about them.
  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    if we appeal to tradition in one society that tradition is going to differ - sometimes widely — Colo Millz

    Doesn't liberalism see itself exactly as a way of negotiating those differences?
  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    ↪Colo Millz
    Nice.

    Is tradition really as consistent as this framing supposes? You pointed to the tension between "All Men Are Created Equal" on the one hand and slavery and feminism on the other. There doesn't seem to be complete consistency between the traditions of India and of France, or even between Paris and London. Certainly, the tradition of gun ownership in the US is rejected almost everywhere else.

    Was the abolition of slavery a result of belief in universal moral principles or was it to do with making accepted traditions consistent?

    And then, is it quite right to describe progressive politicking as guided by a common authority, moral or otherwise? Isn't traditional liberalism about how we get along despite differences in those supposed moral authorities, that I can believe whatever I like, so long as I don't interfere in your freedoms?

    So I see two issues. The first, that tradition is not so monolithic as the account supposes, but varies from group to group, leaving a need for consistency between traditions. The second, that progressives might see themselves not as relying on an authority, but as offering a way to negotiate between conflicting authorities.
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    That's a deep puzzle. I've been exploring it for a couple years now. — Pierre-Normand

    An interesting direction here might be to consider if, or how, Ramsey's account can be appleid to AI.

    You have a plant. You water it every day. This is not a symptom of a hidden, private belief, on Ramsey's account - it is your belief. What is given consideration is not a hidden private proposition, "I believe that the plant needs water", but the activities in which one engages. The similarities to both Ryle and Wittgenstein should be apparent.

    Ramsey then looks for the points of indifference; the point of inaction. That's the "zero" from which his statistical approach takes off. Perhaps there's a fifty percent chance of rain today, so watering may or may not be needed. It won't make a difference whether you water or not.

    There seem to be two relevant approaches. The first is to say that an AI never has any skin in the game, never puts it's balls on the anvil. So for an AI, every belief is indifferent.

    The second is to note that if a belief is manifest in an action, then since the AI is impotent, it again has no beliefs. That's not just a manifestation of the AI's not being capable of action. Link a watering system to ChatGPT and it still has no reason to water or not to water.
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    ...deep echoes... — Pierre-Normand

    Nice. It curiously meets a recent meme that describes AI as providing a set of words that sound like an answer.
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    ↪Pierre-Normand
    Trying to put some flesh on the thought, there doesn't appear to be any formal reason not to suppose that we could use Ramsey's approach to attribute a coherent set of beliefs to an AI - as a consistent pattern of preferences.

    The devil will be in the detail, but prim facie, Davidson might not be able to avoid attributing beliefs to AI, given the process he would use to attribute them to people.

    The reason for not attributing beliefs to AI must lie elsewhere.
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    ↪Fire Ologist
    Do you agree that AI does not do philosophy, yet we might do philosophy with AI? That sems to be the growing consensus. The puzzle is how to explain this.
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    ↪Pierre-Normand
    Cool. Then the protocol set out above introduces and develops the doxa, situating the interaction in a language game. So roleplaying in the game - pretending to be your opponent, perhaps - situates the interpretation we give to the string of words produced.

    In Davidson's terms, we can impute significance to the result without the charity we would usually use to attribute similar beliefs to another human. We do not think the AI has the same beliefs as we do.

    This does seem problematic, worthy of further consideration.
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    Then I've no followed your argument here: @bongo fury. I took you to be pointing out that the difference between a genuine masterpiece and a forgery - an aesthetic difference - was the authenticity of the masterpiece. — Banno
    And if we follow Wittgenstein, then the aesthetic is of the highest import; after all, it is what decides what we do.

    If the AI only produces strings of text, and never participates in the illocution, then it never does anything we might consider to be meaningful. The AI never does any philosophising, but we might philosophise using an AI.
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    Agreed! That's indeed the chief ground for not treating it like a person. People often argue that chatbots should not be treated like persons because they aren't "really" intelligent. But being intelligent, or wise, in the case of persons (i.e. socialized, enculturated rational animals), always has two tightly integrated components: one doxastic and one conative. One must know the layout of the space of reasons and one must be motivated to pursue the right paths while navigating this space in the pursuit of theoretical and/or practical endeavors. Chatbots lack conative autonomy and hence purse whichever paths they think their users want to explore (or, worse, that merely lead to the outcomes they think their users want to achieve, while having the mere appearance of soundness.) So, they lack part of what it needs to be wise, but that's not because they aren't smart or knowledgeable enough to be useful conversation partners. The human partner remains responsible for deciding where to put their balls. — Pierre-Normand
    So do we agree that whatever is connotative in an interaction with an AI is introduced by the humans involved?

    Neither does an AI have doxa, beliefs. It cannot adopt some attitude towards a statement, although it might be directed to do so.

    One ball for each? With the AI singing soprano?
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    I write most of my forum posts on an iphone while hiking. Not conducive for accurate spelling. — Joshs
    Does it seem to you that AI favours analytic approaches?

    On the face of it, one might think so - that it's good at writing code and analysing logical structure, and so has a natural bias towards analytic approaches.

    But does that play out? It seems not to, to my eye, but I'm no aficionado of the phenomenal approach.

    Woudl the use of AI bias the discussion in this way?
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    Isn’t that about the question: Can AI do philosophy?

    I thought you said the topic was how to use AI to do philosophy.     — Fire Ologist

    Go on one step further. What do you think my response to you would be, given what I've said above? Imagine what Banno would say in reply to your post.

    He's been on about the difference between strings of words and illocutionary acts. He's been on about iterating conversations. So what's he going to day about the difference between an AI and a human producing bits of philosophy?

    Or should I ask ChatGPT?
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    ↪Janus


    One of the aspects of good us of AI that came up in the analysis was iteration. Taking the outcome of a discussion withe the AI and using it as the basis for further discussion. As claud said:
    • Use AI outputs as starting points for further refinement
    • Cycle through multiple rounds of critique and revision
    • Refine prompts to avoid confirmation bias and explore diverse readings

    Now this looks very much like a recipe for a language game.

    On the other hand, the data set used by a human appears to be far, far smaller than that used by an LLM. Our brains simply do not "contain" the number of texts available to ChatGPT. Therefore whatever the brain is doing, it is different to what is happening in ChatGPT.
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    ↪Janus


    The upshot of that might be that AI cannot do philosophy, but that a person may do philosophy using an AI.

    The AI strings words together, only ever performing the phatic act and never producing an illocution.

    The uniquely human addition is taking those word-strings and using them in a language game.

    So the question arrises, can such an account be consistently maintained; what is it that people bring to the game that an AI cannot?
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    I don't think Hinton is saying that nothing can be said—by us, or by LLMs, but that our inability to conceive of LLMs having subjective experience on the grounds that they merely predict the statistical likelihoods of the next words in terms of maximal consistency and cohesiveness, when we arguably do exactly the same thing, shows that our notion of subjective experience as an inner theatre stocked with qualia is an illusion. — Janus
    :grin: Well, if that's so I entirely agree - that idea of an "inner theatre" is a nonsense.

    I'll go over Austin again, since it provides a set of tools that are quite applicable. A Phatic act is the act of putting words together in a sequence that recognisably part of language - constructing a sentence en English. This is what an LLM does. It uses a statistical engine to generate a set of words that follow on form the words provide din the prompt. An illocutionary act is one performed in making use of such words - making a statement, asking a question, and so on. This, so the claim goes, an LLM cannot do.

    That's pretty much the argument found in the Chinese Room. And with certain reservations, I agree with it.

    Notice that the "inner world" is pretty much irrelevant in this approach. That's partly why I find it preferable; no hidden private theatre.

    So the question becomes the extent to which an AI can be involved in our language games, including the game of doing philosophy.

    The obvious problem with relying on inner experience is the Wittgensteinian point that we cannot know the inner experience of others. SO it's an unreliable argument.
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    ↪Leontiskos

    This is a thread about ways to make use of AI in doing philosophy. There is another thread about banning AI altogether. — Banno
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    By way of getting the thread back on topic, this is from Claude, prompted by the URLs for all five pages and
    This is a thread about ways to make use of AI in doing philosophy. Make a list of the suggestions in that thread that would supplement or improve the quality of the philosophy presented in the posts on the forum. — prompt


    I'll fetch and analyze this philosophy forum thread to identify suggestions for using AI effectively in philosophical work.Based on my analysis of this philosophy forum thread, here are the suggestions for using AI that would supplement or improve the quality of philosophical work:

    Productive AI Uses for Philosophy

    **Research and Knowledge Acquisition:**
    - Use AI to quickly summarize philosophical concepts, theories, or historical contexts to establish common ground for discussion
    - Summarize the thought of specific philosophers as a starting point
    - Guard against AI confabulation by always asking for sources and verifying them
    - Use AI for extensive research conversations (as opposed to writing)

    **Critical Engagement and Self-Improvement:**
    - Use AI as a Socratic sparring partner to challenge your own arguments
    - Feed your draft work to AI (pretending it's from someone else) and ask for critique to identify weak points before posting
    - Have AI generate counter-arguments to strengthen your position
    - Use AI to explore multiple interpretations and readings of philosophical texts by crafting prompts that cover a wide variety of perspectives

    **Role-Playing and Dialectical Exploration:**
    - Get AI to role-play as a specific philosopher or someone holding a particular view
    - Have AI engage from different perspectives (as itself, as you, as various other people)
    - Use AI to argue positions you don't hold, allowing you to hear what you don't want to hear

    **Writing Support:**
    - Use AI for clarity and editing—rephrasing clunky sentences or improving flow
    - Use AI as a stylistic editor for grammar, syntax, and clarity after writing your own ideas
    - Use AI for proofreading (though be aware this can sometimes edge too far into rewriting)

    **Synthesis and Organization:**
    - Use AI to synthesize multiple perspectives or arguments (e.g., synthesizing different philosophical approaches in a particular style)
    - Use AI to help structure ideas and brainstorm, but not to compose full arguments
    - Use AI for the "tedious tasks" of organizing and structuring complex material

    **Critical Best Practices:**
    - **Always verify AI output** - treat AI as an "over-confident assistant" that requires rigorous evaluation
    - **Maintain intellectual ownership** - you must be able to defend any AI-generated argument in your own terms
    - **Iterate and refine** - use AI outputs as starting points for your own philosophical refinement
    - **Check sources** - when AI provides references, verify them (as they can be fabricated)
    - **Use transparency** - disclose substantial AI assistance to maintain trust and intellectual honesty
    - **Avoid tunnel vision** - craft prompts that explore diverse readings rather than confirming your biases
    - **Make it your own** - AI-generated knowledge must be internalized just as you would internalize knowledge from any source

    The thread emphasizes that AI should augment human thinking rather than replace it, serving as a tool for expanding your philosophical capacities while you remain the ultimate director and arbiter of the ideas.     — Claude
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    This is a thread about ways to make use of AI in doing philosophy. There is another thread about banning AI altogether.
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    ↪Baden
    Thank you.
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    ↪Sam26
    Cheers, Sam. Thanks for your contributions. I've thoroughly enjoyed our disagreements. Dealing with someone both forthright and knowledgeable, such as yourself, has made this forum worthwhile. Good times.

    Take care.
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