I read a good portion of it many years ago when I had access to a theological library. — Leontiskos
They must have really small mountains where you live. They're just bumps. — frank
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
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
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
You sound like Banno now. — apokrisis
You seem to completely not see that I just said Peirce went well beyond language games to cover semiosis as logic itself and phenomenology itself. — apokrisis
The spirit of their enterprises may be at odds while their contributions aren't. Here is how I put it in a query to GPT-5 about your last response to apokrisis — Pierre-Normand
Semiosis hinges on counterfactuality. Once semiosis runs out of counterfactuals, it lapses back into the vagueness from which it was boot-strapping its own existence.
So Wittgenstein was pointing out something correct. But he had no idea of the more generic metaphysical claim that could make it correct in the limited domain he was operating in. The domain that is socio-semiosis.
Peirce came up with the generic metaphysical claim. The one we can usefully apply to all levels of semiotic endeavour. — apokrisis
My argument is that they cannot because they are different things, have different structures, and so act differently. — NOS4A2
Following your logic, suppose text on a screen results from X or Y, a machine and a human. We generate text on a screen by typing. Machines using AI generate text on a screen by using algorithms on user prompts, and performing a vast array of mechanical actions that results in legible text on a screen. Is the machine typing? — NOS4A2
I wasn't trying to disprove Witt here - just point at the contradiction of those on this forum that align with "meaning-is-use" and also claim that AI's responses are not as valid as a human's. AND if the forum's official position is that the output of AI is not valid content on the forums then the owners of the forum have officially taken a stance that meaning is not use. — Harry Hindu
Science starts with hypothesizing and theorizing. If we only ever start with a limited framework for explaining reality, then how is it that we humans have become the shaper of the landscape rather than just a fixture in it? — Harry Hindu
I think that such an argument just opens another can of worms because now you'd have to explain why our beetles would be so different given the similarities of our physiology and having developed within a similar culture. Similar causes lead to similar effects. There is no reason to believe that my beetle is different than yours given the similarities between us, just as there is no reason for me not to believe you have a mind because of our similarities, but is my beetle the same as my cat's or a bat's? — Harry Hindu
Either we hold that meaning is use, and therefore AI genuinely uses language meaningfully within our shared form of life (albeit as a new kind of participant) or we insist that meaning requires some inner mental correlate — in which case we’ve abandoned the pure Wittgensteinian stance and re-entered the metaphysical terrain of intentionality and private experience. — Harry Hindu
Your error is conflating behavior and consciousness. Your argument is that if a machine acts like a human, it thinks like a human. The pragmatic Turing argument. — apokrisis
The things involved and the movements they make are different. It’s like saying submarines swim. — NOS4A2
But we’ve been at AI for 70 years now and LLMs are as far as we have got. That should also tell you something. — apokrisis
So the AI community knows the architecture it would want to copy. — apokrisis
Switch to an anticipatory-processing architecture that lives in the world in real time. — apokrisis
For the simple reason that machines are not biological, they do not have similar structures, components, parts, or what have you, to any organism, let alone humans. If they do not have similar structures, they do not act in similar ways to humans. — NOS4A2
From the neurocognitive view, understanding means anticipation. Forming the right expectations. So if not meaning as demonstrated by use, then meaning demonstrated by preparedness.
I hear “apple”, I get ready to react accordingly. My attention is oriented in that particular direction. — apokrisis
"the [non-existent] present king of France," is a referent to an idea in your head. — Harry Hindu
"Public usage" as in using scribbles to point to objects and events in the world. If you are not pointing to anything with your scribbles that do not ultimately resolve down to things that are not scribbles (as in the case of "freedom" and "aboutness"), then it no longer qualifies as "public usage". It is "private usage". — Harry Hindu
Understanding is no more internal than eating. It depends on some biological processes that happen under the skin, among other things that don't, but this doesn't license your appeals to the internal that you make with reference to perception and meaning. Synaptic transmission is no more meaningful than peristalsis.
I came, I chimed, I conquered. — Jamal
It would seem to me that in order for one to understand the word, "cat" that they have an internal representation of the relationship between the scribble, "cat" and an image of the animal, cat. If they never used the scribble, "cat" but retained this mental relationship between the scribble and the animal, could it not be said they understand the word, "cat" even if they never used it themselves but have watched others use it to refer to the animal? I don't need to necessarily use the words to understand their use. — Harry Hindu
Exactly. It merely "uses" the scribble, "understanding" in certain patterns with other scribbles. That is the issue with meaning-is-use - the scribbles don't refer to anything. — Harry Hindu
So I don't understand how a proponent of the idea that meaning is use in language can say the AI does not understand when it is using the words. — Harry Hindu
So, I think the appropriate question to ask, if one wants to do so, is: Should what's being considered be legal rights? — Ciceronianus

Similarly, I have pointed out that if we don't understand why there is a difference between AI and humans, a rule against AI cannot stand. — Leontiskos
We quote Wittgenstein, not ChatGPT, because Wittgenstein is a human being, motivated to express his original insights, to say and write things that were meaningful, and to take part in a conversation (philosophy), and who has since taken his place in a tradition of discourse. The result is a legacy with a stable place in the culture, shared by everyone, and one that can be interpreted, because—since it was produced by a conscious and motivated agent—we know that he meant something. — Jamal
For the AI afficionado AI is to be treated like a black box, like a Ouija board or a Magic 8-Ball. They become impatient with those who ask the question, "How does it work?" They interrupt, exclaiming, "But look at what it can do!" — Leontiskos
This is the unwritten answer to the question, "Why should we treat something as if it were something that it is not?" "Why should we lie to ourselves in this way?" The answer is, "Because it will give us great power. No more need be said." — Leontiskos
They eat us and then they eat reality. — Baden
Rabbi Kushner is a Conservative (capital C) rabbi, not an Orthodox one, making his views more liberal and less mystical. It's like asking what the Christian view on homosexuality is and listening to an Anglican and then a Southern Baptist. It'd be inconsistent.it looks ambiguous — Astorre
Thus, as far as I could tell from the cited articles, there is no mention of the life (or any kind of existence) of a separate soul after death, until the resurrection of the entire body. — Astorre
