The structural point stands: keep the causal story of how signs and habits arise distinct from the normative story of how reasons bind, and you get continuity without reduction—and a clean place to situate LLMs as artifacts that participate in semiosis without thereby acquiring the full normative standing of persons. — GPT-5

It sometimes feels to me like Apokrisis focuses on the task of explaining "real" signification, in embodied living/physiological contexts … in a way that locates overarching telic force in dissipative structures while showing little concern for antipsychologism. He does grant downward-causal power to signs (within a triadic theory) but not in a way that makes them reasons rather than mere motivations — Pierre-Normand

**On apokrisis’ emphasis.**
If he locates the overarching telos in “dissipative structure,” he’s giving a powerful **enabling** story. Peirce would say: good, but **don’t let it become the arbiter**. Biosemiosis without the normative sciences slides toward “motivations” only. Bring Peirce’s final causation and normative ladder back in, and you recover **reasons** as top-down constraints with real causal bite. — GPT-t

So there is a lot of backstory to my particular take on Peirce. — apokrisis

Sadly Peirce was sort of aware of the power dissipative structure and self-organising physics, but also he lapsed into the awfulness of agapism when pushed for a telos. So no way I want to follow him down that path.

I’m happy enough with the laws of thermodynamics encoding the rationality of cosmic existence. This is maybe why I can never get exercised by the is/ought dilemma. As a dichotomy, it seems pretty moot. — apokrisis

I'm seeing a strong parallel between this discussion and an earlier one we both participated in: the epic (and epically frustrating) indirect realism thread. If you remember it, you took the direct realist side in that debate, and I took the indirect realist. This problem is a kind of a mirror image of the problem of knowledge. And we, predictably, seem to be taking the same sort of direct/indirect realist approaches — hypericin

Even if you think this all inconsistent, the best you can conclude is that it is all inconsistent, but not that entails some other official declaration. — Hanover

The limitation imposed by Witt is to knowledge of the metaphysical, not the physical. Some words have referrants. I'm not arguing idealisim. — Hanover

We can assume that our perceptions are similar for all the reasons you say. That doesn't mean we need refer to the private state for our use of language. What fixes language under his theory is the publicly available. That is, even if my beetle isn't your beetle, our use of "beetle" is what determines what beetle means. However, if a beetle is running around on the ground and you call it a cat and I call it a beetle, then we're not engaging in the same language game, because the public confirmation is different. — Hanover

In example A, if we consistently call this object a beetle, it is irrelevant what my internal state is. We live our lives never knowing what goes on in our heads, but we engage in the same language game. What happens in my head is irrelevant for this analysis. It does not suggest I don't have things going on in my head. It just says for the purposes of language it is irrelevant. — Hanover

Both the rules for speech and writing are rules of a norm governed public practice that is taught and learned (while the rules for using the words/signs are taught primarily through speaking them). — Pierre-Normand

I remain flummoxed by your crazy logic. — apokrisis

Sure, because we live in a post unification world. Remember, my hypothesis is that the unification is what allowed for the evolutionary explosion of intelligence. That the two are united, in a post unification world, is tautological and doesn't prove a thing about the underlying foundations. The point though, is that in an analysis of language use in general, such as what Wittgenstein did, the two are distinguishable as distinct forms, derived from different types of intention, like I explained. — Metaphysician Undercover

Had you made this issue bear on the topic of the present thread? — Pierre-Normand

How this bears on the topic of the thread, I do not know as of yet. — Metaphysician Undercover

Fair enough. So my argument simply stands for those that recently made the argument that AI's responses are not valid responses while also having taken the position is meaning is use. I'm fine with that. — Harry Hindu

Metaphysical talk is simply patterns of scribbles on the screen if there is no referent. — Harry Hindu

But if a cat is in my box and a beetle in yours, then how exactly are we playing the same game? — Harry Hindu

Cats are much larger and differently shaped than beetles, so if what you said is possible then it would be impossible to be playing the same language game as the boundaries of the object in my box do not align with the boundaries of the object in yours, so I might be pointing to a space that you are not with my use. — Harry Hindu

I’m not at all sure what issue you mean to discuss. But I’ve been addressing the ways that while LLMs can plausibly pass for cunning linguists, they fail any more general test of being alive and mindful. Which brings us to biosemiosis and how the human mind is a nested hierarchy of semiotic levels. — apokrisis

I don't see how the fact that the LLMs have gotten much better at doing what they do, justifies your conclusion that what they do now is categorically different from what they did before, when they just weren't as good at it.

It's relevant to displaying an LLMs successful deployment, with intelligent understanding, of its "System 2" thinking mode: one that is entirely reliant, at a finer grain of analysis, on its ability to generate not just the more "likely" but also the more appropriate next-tokens one at a time.
— Pierre-Normand

I still don't see the point. Isn't that the goal, to generate what is appropriate under the circumstances? How does the fact that the LLMs are getting better at achieving this goal, indicate to you that they have crossed into a new category, "intelligent understanding", instead of that they have just gotten better at doing the same old thing? — Metaphysician Undercover

There are plenty of reasons not to engage a bot even if the bot fully passed the Turing test. — Hanover

Which major philosopher holds to the position that every word has a referent? Are we about to start arguing theology or something? The position that words can exist without referents is widely held across the board, not just some odd Wittgensteinian result. — Hanover

Because it's a language game, not a metaphysical game. — Hanover

Why does any major philosopher need to hold some position for it to be true? I never said words can't exist without referent - just that they lack meaning when not used as a referent. If you aren't referring to anything with your scribbles, then what are you talking about? What knowledge am I suppose to glean from your use of scribbles? What use would your scribbles be to me? — Harry Hindu

If - like Harry Hindu - you don’t get the difference between the Cartesian representational notion of mind and the Peircean enactive and semiotic one, then the conversation has stalled already. — apokrisis

My point was that your position is not tenable, evidenced by the fact that it is not held by anyone who has critically looked at the matter. It's just a naive sort of view that all words have a refererent to have meaning. If there is someone who holds it (maybe Aquinas, but not really), then let's elevate the conversation by borrowing their arguments and starting from there as opposed to your just insisting it must. — Hanover

Consider this sentence: "I am in the house." What does "house" refer to? My house? Your house? A Platonic house form? The image of the house in my head? Suppose I have no such image (and I don't)? So the referent is my understanding of the sentence? It refers to electrical activity in my brain? How do I know that my electrical activity is the same as your electrical activity when we say the word "house"? Do we compare electrical wave activity? Suppose the wave activity is different, but we use the term the same, do we ignore the electrical wave activity and admit it's use that determines meaning? — Hanover

Take a look at my first sentence as well, "My point was that your position is not tenable, evidenced by the fact that it is not held by anyone who has critically looked at the matter," break this down word by word into referrents for me. — Hanover

What of words of different meaning yet the same referrent as in "the morning star" and the "evening star," having different meanings, but are of the same planet.? — Hanover

The goal neither is to reach agreement, nor to win, but rather to foster understanding. That doesn't mean either that the debaters should just agree to disagree. They just need to agree to pursue the discussion despite endorsing incompatible goals and premises. — Pierre-Normand

There is obviously more (morally) to human life than being maximally healthy and reproductively successful. — Pierre-Normand

But the more crucial point concerns what happens during the training process. During pre-training (learning to predict next tokens on vast amounts of text), these models develop latent capabilities: internal representations of concepts, reasoning patterns, world knowledge, and linguistic structures. These capabilities emerge as byproducts of the prediction task itself. Again, as Sutskever and Hinton have argued, accurately predicting the next word in complex texts often requires developing some understanding of what the text is about. Post-training (in order to aim at more appropriate and context sensitive answers) doesn't create new capabilities from scratch. It mobilizes and refines abilities that already emerged during pre-training. — Pierre-Normand

During pre-training (learning to predict next tokens on vast amounts of text), these models develop latent capabilities: internal representations of concepts, reasoning patterns, world knowledge, and linguistic structures. — Pierre-Normand

So when you ask whether LLMs have "crossed into a new category" or merely "gotten better at the same old thing," the answer is: the architectural shift to transformers enabled the emergence of new kinds of capabilities during pre-training, and post-training then makes these capabilities reliably accessible and properly directed. — Pierre-Normand

No, I was commenting on apokrisis' proposed evolution of language, indicating that I think he leaves out the most important aspect. That important aspect being the reality that spoken language and written language are fundamentally two very distinct forms, derived from very distinct intentions. And, I argue that the common practise of taking for granted the union of the two, as if the two are different parts of one activity (language use), instead of understanding the two as two distinct activities (having different intentions) is very misleading to philosophers of language. — Metaphysician Undercover

So every level could come with its own Umwelt. And evolution might wire in certain imperatives and habits at a genetic and neurobiological level, these may show through as the socio-cultural level, and then they might get a rationalising account at the abstracting intellectual level. And then the different Umwelts might align closely or instead appear to contradict each other. All depending on what works for each level as a way of life, a means of perpetuating a selfhood at each of those levels.

So of course there might be “moral” imperatives that arise at the sociocultural level that aren’t conscious at the neurobiological level. The point of the sociocultural level is to be able to add new kinds of constraints to the neurobiology so that a new level of socialised and even civilised selfhood can be a reality in the world that it constructs. — apokrisis

Those four stages/levels were dissipative structures, life forms, animals, and rational animals. — Pierre-Normand

Key findings from the Uzbekistan expedition

Luria's experiments revealed significant cognitive differences between illiterate and literate subjects. He documented that illiterate peasants operated with practical, "situational thinking," whereas educated individuals engaged in abstract, categorical thought.

Reasoning and syllogisms

Luria presented subjects with syllogisms to test their ability to use purely logical reasoning, detached from direct personal experience.

Example: "In the Far North, where there is snow, all bears are white. Novaya Zemlya is in the Far North and there is always snow there. What color are the bears?"

Illiterate response: "I don't know. I've only seen black bears" or "That's a question you should ask someone who has been there". The illiterate subjects refused to infer based on the premise alone, instead relying on practical, firsthand knowledge.

Literate response: Literate subjects were able to reason with the verbal premises presented, even if they contradicted their own experiences.

Categorization and abstraction

Luria tested how subjects grouped objects to examine their use of abstract, conceptual thinking versus practical, functional thinking.

Example: Subjects were shown drawings of a hammer, saw, hatchet, and a log.

Illiterate response: They consistently grouped the items in a situational or functional context, such as putting the hammer, saw, and log together because "you can do something with a piece of wood". When prompted to think of a category like "tools," they often dismissed it as irrelevant.

Literate response: Educated subjects readily identified "tools" as the abstract category linking the hammer, saw, and hatchet, excluding the log.

Geometric figures

When shown geometrical shapes like circles and squares, illiterate subjects did not identify them abstractly. Instead, they assigned them names of familiar objects they resembled, such as a plate or a bucket.

The contradictions you highlight, I would argue, aren't merely apparent but can be ground for us, qua humans beings, to resist, ignore, or actively reshape, the "lower-level" sources of the contradictions (e.g. find more sustainable ways to live and hence resist dissipation rather than promote it). — Pierre-Normand

I view the lowest-level, driven by dissipation, to have not normative import at all. It belongs to a merely nomological order (though it begins to hint at self-organization). — Pierre-Normand

Flourishing, I view as being subsumed normatively under eudemonia, where ethical considerations are brought to bear to what constitutes a good life, and where, as I mentioned, the potential contradictions with the lower-level imperatives are contradictions that we have, qua socialized rational animals, the standing responsibility to adjudicate. — Pierre-Normand

The standard obvious view is that speech came first by at least 40,000 years and then writing split off from that about 5000 years ago in association with the new "way of life" that replaced foraging and pastoralism with the organised agriculture of the first Middle East river delta city states. Sumer and Babylon. — apokrisis

But you instead want to argue some exactly opposite case to this normal wisdom. — apokrisis

What reason is there to doubt the obvious here? — apokrisis

I see that you are ignoring cave art, and the use of stone monuments as memory aids. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I just want to include all the evidence. Often the "standard obvious view" is a mistaken, simplistic view, supported by ignoring important evidence, which is dismissed as insignificant. — Metaphysician Undercover

Obviously written material is much older than 5000 years. — Metaphysician Undercover

Why would you exclude earlier forms, except to ignore evidence for the sake of supporting an overly simplistic hypothesis? — Metaphysician Undercover

Guthrie's key arguments

Teenage "graffiti": Based on forensic analysis of ancient handprints, Guthrie proposed that a large portion of the art was made by young males between the ages of 9 and 17. He suggested that, like modern teenagers, they were preoccupied with two things: "naked women and large, frightening mammals".

Sexualized imagery: Guthrie noted that much of the art, particularly the depictions of women, was graphic and emphasized large breasts and hips. He likened this to modern "below-the-belt art" and "graffiti".

Hunting scenes: The common depictions of wild animals being hunted and injured were, according to Guthrie, the "testosterone art" of the time. He saw them as reflecting the success and danger of hunting rather than ritual magic.

The key idea is that "intelligent structure" has to arise so that this entropy can even be "produced". — apokrisis

Vygotsky (1978) developed the theory of the Zone of Proximal Development, which posits that learning and development are social processes occurring through interaction with more experienced individuals. This approach is particularly significant for understanding how children develop literacy skills. The contribution of an adult, along with the various strategies and stimuli provided to the child, helps the child mature and decode written language. These are abilities and functions that the child possesses but are still in the process of maturation.

Vygotsky proposed that language and thought develop independently, yet they merge in early childhood to form unique ways of thinking and communicating (Rieber, 2012). One way of communicating and expressing ideas and thoughts is artmaking in any form it can take. Vygotsky was among the first scholars who noticed that children often draw and tell a story simultaneously, indicating a direct relationship between a child’s drawing and speech.

Vygotsky (1978) argued that children’s drawings are deeply connected to their innate narrative impulse, which becomes evident in their earliest attempts at representational art. This impulse, drives children to embed stories within their drawings, transforming visual representation into a medium for storytelling. Furthermore, the social and communicative dimensions of drawing are significant, as children often engage in verbal narration or discussion that complements and enhances the drawing process.

These interactions highlight the intertwined nature of visual and verbal expression in early childhood, underscoring how drawing functions as both a creative and communicative act. This type of communication, as a personal conversation between an individual and his/her creation, can become a common language, when shared with other group members (Brooks, 2009).

I see that you are ignoring cave art, and the use of stone monuments as memory aids.

Obviously written material is much older than 5000 years. What reason do you have to doubt the obvious? Why would you exclude earlier forms, except to ignore evidence for the sake of supporting an overly simplistic hypothesis? — Metaphysician Undercover