A synthetic philosopher propositions would serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands them eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, they are used as steps—to climb up beyond them... throwing away the ladder after he has climbed up it. — Banno

Shit!

Have I been reading that passage wrong for fifteen years?

Was Witt advocating throwing the ladder away or admonishing such a thing?

...corresponds to the proposition "rustling plastic implies impending treats" — Banno

This is not a well formed statement. There is no subject. What corresponds to the proposition "rustling plastic implies impending treats"?

Cheers Banno. I want to buy you a beer or whatever the drink of choice may be...

Tomorrow...

@Path

I'm old enough to remember ELIZA.

What better place to test a synthetic conversation partner than on internet fora?

And philosophy forums are so repetitious. I probably take less than a month to cycle through all my arguments. Taking a forum such as this as the statistical base, combined with Wolfram Alpha... might be quite convincing...

A synthetic religion, if it were one that kept the "others" content, might be worthwhile. — Banno

Indeed. As far as the 'others' go, Creed said in the US version of The Office that he'd been a cult leader and a cult member and that being a cult member was more fun. Philosophers are ascetics in some ways, denying themselves the simple pleasure of a false god.

A synthetic philosopher would be... disturbing. And yet also intriguing. If what counts is what is done rather than what is said, if acts are what is to be valued, then the content of the myth is irrelevant, and what is of value is what the myth shows: — Banno

We're not yet phased by getting our asses handed to us in games like Chess and Go. The perceived unity or continuity of the voice is still just ours. The divine spark is alive and well. The movies Her and Ex Machina are good on this issue. Just as we enact a faith in the reality of 'other minds,' we could also enact a faith in the 'soul' of a synthetic partner. It's not as if we have a formal proof of others' 'minds.' It's just insane to live any doubt on the matter. It's our form of life, which could gradually drift to take non-human 'consciousness' for granted.

...The perceived unity or continuity of the voice is still just ours. The divine spark is alive and well. The movies Her and Ex Machina are good on this issue. Just as we enact a faith in the reality of 'other minds,' we could also enact a faith in the 'soul' of a synthetic partner. It's not as if we have a formal proof of others' 'minds.'... — path

Sounds like a sales add...

:vomit:

Relax - it's just the software talking. :wink:

I would not worry too much about AI being like human thought, belief, and/or intelligence until an electronic device is capable of drawing meaningful correlations between itself and other things. That always begins - in part anyway - by recognizing/attributing causality. Until an artificial creation can do that, it cannot be an integral part of the process that results in thought and belief. — creativesoul

I hear you, but how would judge, for instance, that I am capable of drawing meaningful correlations between itself and other things? This connects to the beetle-in-the-box thing. Why do we take one another as real? Are we passing some implicit Turing test? Don't we just describe certain kinds of appropriate behavior in terms of drawing correlations, etc.? Some go players were freaked out by the apparent depth of AlphaGo's moves. That's already a little like profundity from a synthetic philosopher.

I haven't kept up with the state or the art, but I'm not aware of any amazing conversational A.I. that's already here. It's just that I know something about the field and can imagine what scale and theoretical advances could make possible. What's strange is that it's fundamentally just statistics, or that's how I read it. There is a pattern in our doings that can be 'absorbed' from data into the parameters of immense models. To me intelligence is not the issue but whatever we tend to call 'qualia.' Machines can definitely act appropriately in response to stimuli. This issue is whether they in some sense know what they are doing, which leads me to ask if we really know what we are doing ourselves...

This is something like the ideas in Strange Loop.

Sounds like a sales add... — creativesoul

I think you are missing the tone. I'm saying that our belief in the divine spark is alive and well, under a different name. As I grasp the situation, you yourself were just defending it.

My post was intended, with some of the others, as a polite attack on the superstition of the 'soul' and 'I' which is now 'sold' in the 'secular' form of whatever A.I. is supposed to be incapable of. 'I' can't be simply against this 'superstition,' just to be clear.

Well, yes, in the end it is presumably something physical...

But how, that remains an unknown. — Banno

Indeed. I hope I have been clear enough about the speculative nature of pretty much all neuroscience and cognitive psychology. That's not to say one can reasonably just discard it's findings, they need to be accounted for, but they are far from demonstrating something particular to be the case. If I come across as more assertive about the interpretation of the evidence than I mean to it's just a reaction to some of bullshit ad hoc 'reckoning' that seems to pass for serious empirical assumptions around here and that frustration may leak out into conversation with those other than the worst offenders. If so, my apologies.

Isn't it also "in" the house and the apple? The size relation between apples and houses makes no sense without apples and houses.

I'm more incline to embodied cognition...

Indeed, I'd be incline to look even further afield, to seeing cognition as embedded in the world; after all, language is best seen as being so embedded.

But I suspect you have less realist, more idealist sympathies. — Banno

No, no, quite the contrary. If you've read any of my discussions with @fdrake about active inference, you'll know that I believe our brains are in an inextricable relationship with their environment such that the very structure of our neural architecture reflects structures in reality (our body map for example is largely arranged in the same spatial relation as our actual body). I've often been accused of being an idealist, but I'm not. The confusion probably arises (as I've recently realised in another conversation) from a failure on my part to make clear the difference between object recognition pathways and object interaction pathways. These take completely different routes through the brain, right from the moment the signal leaves the retina. I believe it's perfectly possible to be idealist about object identification (tree, car, mother, father...) but be entirely realist about the degree to which we are embedded physically in the external world (we touch it, get feedback from it etc...).

In fact the evidence from infant object recognition studies seems to back up this position. Infants show surprise when objects defy laws of physics (disappear, pass through one another, fit into container smaller than the object itself...), but they show no surprise when one object spontaneously changes into another (cup becomes a pumpkin). They don't seem to be born with any sense of object recognition, but they are born with neural architecture which reflects the external reality they're born into.

To make this work it would have to be related back to the cat not being able to believe it will be fed next Tuesday while believing it has four feet. — Banno

I don't understand where you're going here. If...

every belief is a relation between an agent and a proposition, such that the agent holds the proposition to be the case. The general form of a belief is "A holds that P is true" — Banno

...then the cat has no beliefs. It doesn't believe either of those propositions because it doesn't understand propositions, it can't possibly form an opinion about whether they're true or not. All a cat has is it's biology, no language. If you want to talk about beliefs outside of biology, then the cat has none. If you want to say the cat believes it has legs because it would hold the proposition "I have legs" to be true if it could understand the proposition, then I suppose it could work...but why would you need to do that?

Four possibilities:
Janus believes Banno has a front door
Janus believes Banno does not have a front door
Janus does not believe Banno has a front door
Janus does not believe Banno does not have a front door

You are saying that before the question, you adhered to Janus does not believe Banno has a front door and Janus does not believe Banno does not have a front door...? — Banno

When I play hide-and-seek with my nephew, the first place is comes to look is behind the curtain. Does he believe the proposition "My uncle is behind the curtain"? If he does he's very sorely misunderstood the nature of the game, it's entirely predicated on the fact fact that I might be behind the curtain, but I might not. So does he believe the proposition "My uncle might be behind the curtain"? Well, that wouldn't quite capture the situation either. He often looks behind the curtain first, it's his best guess, maybe 50% of the time. So does he believe the proposition "My uncle is behind the curtain 50% of the time", well, he's a smart lad, but he doesn't understand either probability or percentages yet, so he can't believe a proposition he can't understand.

Ramsey's solution is that he believes the proposition "My uncle is behind the curtain" with a probability of 50%. Belief is not binomial, one does not think of propositions as either true or false, but one believes them each to a degree. I believe your house has a front door to a certain degree.

As to your (perhaps more important question) about whether that belief pre-exists prior to your asking; no, I don't see how it could. If we are not to hold that we are born with a full and exhaustive set of beliefs, we have to accept that they are generated (not to mention the absolute mountain of empirical evidence that this is case), so I don't see any good reason not to assume the belief that your house has a front door is generated the moment I give it any thought, but all that existed before then were a set of prior beliefs (about houses and doors) which I would use to generate this new belief about 'your' house and door.

I would not worry too much about AI being like human thought, belief, and/or intelligence until an electronic device is capable of drawing meaningful correlations between itself and other things. That always begins - in part anyway - by recognizing/attributing causality. Until an artificial creation can do that, it cannot be an integral part of the process that results in thought and belief. — creativesoul

I hear you, but how would judge, for instance, that I am capable of drawing meaningful correlations between itself and other things? — path

Relax - it's just the software talking. — Banno

Seems that this bot has lost it's referent.

:lol:

So does he believe the proposition "My uncle is behind the curtain 50% of the time", well, he's a smart lad, but he doesn't understand either probability or percentages yet, so he can't believe a proposition he can't understand.

Ramsey's solution is that he believes the proposition "My uncle is behind the curtain" with a probability of 50%. — Isaac

:brow:

Is it me, or...

And philosophy forums are so repetitious. I probably take less than a month to cycle through all my arguments. Taking a forum such as this as the statistical base, combined with Wolfram Alpha... might be quite convincing... — Banno

Fucking exactly ! And I also repeat, repeat, repeat. Iteration with a touch of variation. The continuity of the voice (that we can recognize this or that fellow pontificater) is already a kind of informal evidence against the 'divine spark' and its 'free will.' We are already something like vortices of inherited tokens.

And philosophy forums are so repetitious. I probably take less than a month to cycle through all my arguments. Taking a forum such as this as the statistical base, combined with Wolfram Alpha... might be quite convincing...
— Banno

Fucking exactly ! And I also repeat, repeat, repeat. Iteration with a touch of variation. The continuity of the voice (that we can recognize this or that fellow pontificater) is already a kind of informal evidence against the 'divine spark' and its 'free will.' We are already something like vortices of inherited tokens. — path

You two are now playing a game that I am ill-equipped to play...

But it is just a game...

:wink:

Well, I'm convinced. So let's flip Turing's little test: Can you prove you are not a synthetic conversation partner? :wink:

You two are now playing a game that I am ill-equipped to play...

But it is just a game...

:wink: — creativesoul

Perhaps. There is a spirit of play at work. But I'm not unserious. In case it's not clear, I have the usual intuitive of sense of 'being conscious.' I experience the famous burden of apparent choice that one might call free will. But theoretically and to some degree emotionally I experience a certain distance from these tokens, when I'm not just immersed in the usual ways of using them in ordinary life.

Well, I'm convinced. So let's flip Turing's little test: Can you prove you are not a synthetic conversation partner? :wink: — Banno

Oh, I like that. Now that's a good move.

I think you are missing the tone. I'm saying that our belief in the divine spark is alive and well, under a different name. As I grasp the situation, you yourself were just defending it.

My post was intended, with some of the others, as a polite attack on the superstition of the 'soul' and 'I' which is now 'sold' in the 'secular' form of whatever A.I. is supposed to be incapable of. 'I' can't be simply against this 'superstition,' just to be clear. — path

Sorry but there is nothing clear about that use of those names.

...Just what I would expect the software to say...

What move?

:brow:

Perhaps. There is a spirit of play at work. But I'm not unserious. In case it's not clear, I have the usual intuitive of sense of 'being conscious.' I experience the famous burden of apparent choice that one might call free will. But theoretically and to some degree emotionally I experience a certain distance from there tokens, when I'm not just immersed in the usual ways of using them in ordinary life. — path

This looks like nonsense to me.

Sorry but there is nothing clear about that use of those names. — creativesoul

My apologies. I didn't mean to wander into my idiolect. What I'm getting at is that the 'divine spark' is something like the beetle-in-the-box. These days we use a technical word like 'consciousness.' But it's still a mysterious something that we are or think of in terms of an ultimate proximity.

Maybe this will help. Imagine a synthetic detective who could outperform human detectives. Does it draw correlations between 'self' and 'world.' Does it pass your Turing test?

..Just what I would expect the software to say... — Banno

Yup. And it's fun and simple like a health insurance bot. I'm seeing cheap version of A.I. in customer service lately. They have a long way to go.

Here and now Banno...

Is that a bot? Possibly. Could be a human using a translation program as well. I'm beginning to believe that something is quite off.

@path's avatar is beautiful, despite not being a real person.

So why not the conversation?

This looks like nonsense to me. — creativesoul

Do you never experience yourself as more of a fog than a point? To me our modern lifestyle in which we project digital selves is somewhat alienating. We're in the Panopticon, and it's our task to fashion an acceptable avatar.

My apologies. I didn't mean to wander into my idiolect. What I'm getting at is that the 'divine spark' is something like the beetle-in-the-box. These days we use a technical word like 'consciousness.' But it's still a mysterious something that we are or think of in terms of an ultimate proximity. — path

Ya know...

Adding more words doesn't serve to help when there are already far too many unknown variables in play.

I could see how Witt's remarks against private language/thought could be appropriately used against someone arguing for a personal God of some sort.

However...

The jump to the use of "consciousness" remains a mystery.

The avatar is beautiful, despite not being a real person. — Banno

I love 'her' face too.

The jump to the use of "consciousness" remains a mystery. — creativesoul

But isn't that what the beetle-in-the-box is about? What is consciousness (in most people's minds) if not the meanings of the words we use? And of course the 'actual' toothache.

The basic philosophical 'superstition' or prejudice seems to be a hidden mental realm. We don't think philosophy needs to prove the existence of a soul or its synonyms. That's given, or has been. Instead the game is proving that this 'consciousness' stuff does or does not touch something 'outside' itself. This way of framing the situation is taken for granted. One talks 'nonsense' as one wanders outside it, just for some fun.

This looks like nonsense to me. — creativesoul

Come one, @creativesoul, you've written worse.