So now we are talking about numeracy rather than literacy? — apokrisis

I was never talking about literacy. That would be the assumption which would be begging the question. I was talking about the use of symbols as a memory aid, and how this differs from the use of symbols in spoken communications. these constitute two distinct forms of language use.

You are doing a very poor job of imposing this idea on me. Probably because my whole position is based on it. — apokrisis

Good, then we must be in complete agreement. I wonder why you started this engagement by saying that what I was telling you is "bonkers", and you were "flummoxed" by what I was saying. Now, when you realize the reality of what I was arguing, you come around to a very different place, saying "my whole position is based on it". I'll take that as an endorsement of my hypothesis then.

he parallel becomes especially enlightening when we consider that LLMs manifestly learn language by means of training, apparently starting from a blank slate, and are an evolution of Rosenblatt's perceptron. — Pierre-Normand

For reasons demonstrated by Wittgenstein, it's impossible to start from a blank slate. if it appears like the LLMs start from a blank slate then the observer is ignoring important features.

What I see is a distinction being made between the traditional bourgeois timelessness, a sort of presentism which holds the Now of experience as the only reality, and a philosophy which recognizes the reality of the past, as history and memory. Adorno seems to believe that there is a real need to respect the reality of the past.

Among the highest achievements of the Kantian deduction
was that he preserved the memory, the trace of what was historical in
the pure form of cognition, in the unity of the thinking I, at the stage of
the reproduction of the power of imagination.

I can't say that I understand what you are asking. If X infuriates you, then it is right that you object to it. Don't you agree? The question of whether or not X is objectively right, and whether you ought to object to X by some third party principles, is not relevant.

I see that you are ignoring the distinction between icons and codes then. — apokrisis

Sure, define things in a way which supports your hypothesis. That's called begging the question. Discussion is then pointless.

Citations please. — apokrisis

What are you asking for, evidence that written language is older than 5000 years?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ancient_numeral_systems

It is no problem at all for my position that iconography followed almost as soon as Homo sapiens developed a way to articulate thought. This directly reflects a mind transformed by a new symbolising capacity. — apokrisis

This statement is confused and actually incoherent. First you say writing followed after Homo Sapiens developed a way to articulate thought. Then you speak of a "mind transformed by a new symbolising capacity". In the first sentence the symbol use followed from the thinking. In the second sentence the thinking is enabled by the symbol use. This is the common trap which I referred to early, needing to understand the language to provide the rules for understanding the language. Wittgenstein tried to escape this trap with the concept of private language.

But back to the important point, this type of symbol usage, which transforms the mind with articulate thought, is completely different from vocal communication. Therefore we need to allow for two very distinct forms of language. the form which is strictly communicative, and the form which is conducive to articulate thought. That is what I am trying to impress on you.

Vygotsky offers another whole slant on the hypothesis you are trying to stack up…. — apokrisis

Now you're starting to catch on. But you need to take the separation between making art, and talking to others, to a wider extreme of separation. This reveals the difference of intention behind these two. Then in extrapolation we can see that mathematics, and to an extent even forms of science, are of the same type as art. Therefore the use of symbols in mathematics is a form of art, not a form of communication.

It seems to me to be a stretch to call cave art and stone monuments writing systems. — Pierre-Normand

I would never call them writing "systems". They are a type of symbol use which is the same type as writing. I might have named the type as "writing", but what really characterizes it is the use of symbols as a memory aid. Do you agree that there is a use of symbols which can be described in this way, as a memory aid? If so, then we have a distinct type from talking, which is the use of symbols for communication. Notice that the two identified types have very different intention (purpose) behind them, and this makes them very distinct forms.

If they were devised for personal pragmatic use as mnemonics (e.g. remember where the herd was last seen, or tracking my calories), you'd expect the signs to vary much more and not be crafted with such care, in such resource intensive ways, and with such persistent conformity with communal practice across many generations. — Pierre-Normand

I don't think so. In order to serve as a memory aid, the sign cannot vary, it must be the same, or else it would not serve the purpose of remembering. I think the best examples are tally markers,
simple marks which represent one of something, and what follows from this, basic arithmetic scores. Numbers, counting, and mathematical markings are derived from that intent, memory aid, not from the intent of communication.

Secondly, event granting that pictorial modes of representation are proto-linguistic, like say, hieroglyphs or Chinese logographs were (that evolved from ideographic or pictographic representations), when used for communication they tend to stabilise in form and their original significance become subsumed under their socially instituted grammatical functions. To the extend that some retain their original pictographic significance, they do so as dead metaphors—idiomatic ways to use an image. — Pierre-Normand

i don't think this is relevant.

So, the stable aspect of cave arts suggests to me that its proto-grammar is socially instituted, possibly as a means of ritualistic expression. — Pierre-Normand

What is "ritualistic expression"? Why assume such a category?

.

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

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

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

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.

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

So, I'll redirect this question back at you. 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?

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

You're still not getting anywhere with this type of talk. A word is a representation of a concept, and manipulating words according to rules is reasoning. So, to say that an LLM has internal representations of concepts, and reasoning patterns really doesn't say anything important. What is missing is the content, the concepts themselves.

Do you see the difference between a representation of a concept, and a concept? A monist materialist, or even a nominalist, might argue that there is not a difference, a concept is nothing but an act of reasoning with representations. But if this is the view you are taking, then why call them "representations"? Say what you really believe, say that the LLM has internal concepts. Then we might discuss what a "concept" is, and whether the LLM has internal concepts. But to call them "representations of concepts", when you really believe that they are concepts, and not representations at all, would be dishonest use of language.

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

I don't see that this is properly called "new kinds of capabilities". What you have described is that the machine carries out the same kind of tasks, but the operators look at what is produced in a different way, allowing them and also that machines, to use the product in a different way. You simply assume "accurately predicting the next word in complex texts often requires developing some understanding of what the text is about", without any rigorous definitions of what "understanding" means, and "what the text is about means". So, what you are really talking about is a new capability of the operators, to use the same type of machine in a new way. It is not a new kind of capability of the machine. Then the operator simply claims that this is a new kind of capability that the machine has, when it's really just an extension of the same old.

Had you made this issue bear on the topic of the present thread? — 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. How this bears on the topic of the thread, I do not know as of yet.

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

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.

I remain flummoxed by your crazy logic. — apokrisis

You refuse the analysis, because what it proves is inconsistent with your preconceived semiotic ideals. In reality it is the unintelligibility of your preconceptions which have flummoxed you. These preconceptions have disabled your ability to apprehend what is really the case, so that it flummoxes you.

In prior discussions you revealed to me that your principles are unable to provide a separation between sign and principles of interpretation. So you assume that the rules for interpretation inhere within the sign itself. But this is completely inconsistent with our observations of language use. What we observe is that a separate agent applies the principles of interpretation, upon apprehension of the sign. It is impossible that the agent derives the rules from the sign itself, because this would require interpreting the sign to obtain the ability to interpret the sign.

This is the problem which Wittgenstein approached at the beginning of PI. That type of thinking requires always, that one already knows a language prior to being able to learn a language. That is what led him to investigate the private language, as the language required for the capacity to learn a proper public language. The inclination to reduce all language use to "rules of a norm governed public practice", as you do in your reply to me above, is what produces this problem of incoherency explored by Wittgenstein. The incoherency being that one must learn the rules through language, but knowing the rules is required for understanding the language.

Your semiotic assumption that the rules for interpretation inhere within the signs themselves, implying that the sign interprets itself, only deepens the incoherency. You deepen the incoherency because you refuse to accept the proper analysis which works to separate the private from the public aspects of language use. This proper analysis reveals the two to be complete distinct forms, driven by opposing intentions. The reality of the opposing forms implies that we cannot class "language use" in one category. It consists of two very distinct types of activity, and it must be understood that way, or else we're lost in misunderstanding. ,

@apokrisis
When you went to school, did you take notes? If so, was the purpose of those notes to communicate with others?

Citations? — apokrisis

No thanks, it's outside the scope of the thread.

In what way are writing thoughts and speaking thoughts any different in kind? — apokrisis

The two are based in completely different types of intentions, writing having the basic intent of something very personal and private, to assist one's memory, and speaking having the intent of engaging others, to assist in communal projects. For example, I write the treasure map as a memory aid, to assist myself in finding my buried gold. I don't tell anyone, because I do not want to share the gold. I could come up with endless examples, but if you refuse to acknowledge, there's no point.

I am honestly flummoxed. — apokrisis

Somehow that doesn't surprise me. You have a habit of ignoring or rejecting reality when it isn't consistent with what you believe.

There is nothing said about right, or correctness. How can your conclusion be supported?

I think it is more like he is stating this as an observation. The infuriation is what it is, as the way Adorno interprets the situation, whether or not it is right or correct for them to be infuriated is not being discussed.

This is one thing I've noticed about Adorno, he seldom, if ever makes judgements of good or correct. He judges nonidentical, false, and things like that, but not right, or correct, and things like that. I assume that's a feature of negative dialectics.

What are you talking about? Writing came before speech, or something? Hands evolved before tongues? What's your hypothesis? — apokrisis

I am saying that I believe that writing and talking, originally developed completely distinct from one another, being completely different things for completely different purposes. I am not saying that one is older or prior to the other, or anything like that, I am proposing that they first developed in parallel, but completely distinct from one another.

The use of symbols in writing is essentially a matter of marking one's environment in a way which will persist, and can be referred to later. So the principal purpose is to assist a person's memory. Speaking creates a discernible, but non-lasting disturbance in the environment, which can be detected by others. The principle purpose of speaking is to communicate with others. So the fundamental difference between the two is that writing was very personal while speaking was community oriented. This difference is explored by Wittgenstein in his investigation into "private language".

So my hypothesis is that when these two distinct forms came together and were united, this resulted in an explosive evolution of intelligence. The union probably has its roots in monoliths, things like Stonehenge, pyramids, etc.. I believe it was discovered that the markings of environment which lasted through time and served as a memory aid, could be interpreted by others, just like speaking could be, and instead of it being just a personal memory aid, it served to unite distinct memories in a communal way.

This interpretation is made in the right spirit, but I think it's too reductive. Let's not make the mistake of replacing one reification (the existent) with another (the thing's becoming, or its sedimented history, or its temporal dimension including its future). We don't need to pin down the non-identical as its temporal dimension or its never-ending becoming, and we should not, because there are other dimensions to it: there is a synchronic remainder too, comprised of the thing's unique configuration of characteristics that are never fully captured by concepts, i.e., the thing's thisness. Also, the thing's mediations and relations are not merely understood as temporal. I admit that the temporal cannot be left out of the picture---we cannot analyze the thing as if frozen in time, separating the dimensions in the mode of science---but it's not everything. The hope of the name is that we can fully comprehend the thing, including its temporal dimension. — Jamal

OK, that sounds reasonable.

What I always react to in your posts is your apparent wish to pin down the essence, as if you've discovered the secret, the true definition. But this might not be a big disagreement, because except for the reductiveness your understanding here is very Adornian. — Jamal

We all have our idiosyncrasies. I suppose I have to "pin down" something, i.e. to assume to have understood something, in order to have something to talk about. This pinning down is an application of force which others may find irritating. To me, understanding is an application of force, like when Adorno talks about doing violence to the concept. It's sort of unavoidable because understanding requires that concepts get melded together.

I'm starting to really like Adorno. He was a bit difficult to understand at the beginning, but with time I'm catching on to his style. I like him because he actually goes very deep with his ontology. It's common to just select idealism, or materialism, and this provides principles which allow the philosopher to end the analysis, or begin the ontology. But Adorno doesn't stop here, he sees flaws in both, and that drives him deeper.

In my last post I forgot to mention that I think Adorno in this section solves one of our disputes. He admits that the existent as we conceptualize and describe it, e.g., as worker, commodity, society, is a false things-are-so-and-not-otherwise---and yet at the same time the word and concept are indispensible: — Jamal

I think so too. We can say indispensable for any sort of understanding, but at the same time understanding always contains some degree of misunderstanding, so a falsity as well.

This would be the upgrade in semiosis that resulted from literacy and numeracy. The shift from an oral culture to one based on the permanence of inscriptions and the abstractions of counting and measuring. The new idea of ownership and property. — apokrisis

I think that originally written language evolved completely separate from spoken language, the former being for the purpose of a memory aid, the latter for the purpose of communication.

What appears important to me, in this section, is the temporal references. The prior section had ended with a passage about how existential philosophy leaves human beings "chained to the cliff of their past". In this section now, we see how the mediation of the existent is "the hyle [Greek: primary matter] of its implicit history". When existence is apprehended as "things-are-so-and-not-otherwise", this is not a simplicity, but a complexity. It is a matter of "came to be under conditions".

This becoming disappears
and dwells in the thing, and is no more to be brought to a halt in its
concept than to be split off from its result and forgotten. Temporal
experience resembles it. In the reading of the existent as a text of its
becoming, idealistic and materialistic dialectics touch. However, while
idealism justifies the inner history of immediacy as a stage of the
concept, it becomes materialistically the measure not only of the
untruth of concepts, but also that of the existing immediacy.

What I see as important is that the becoming of the thing, a becoming which is internalized in the thing's conceptualization as "existent", is not halted by this conceptualization which designates it "existent". So the true, real thing, continues in its becoming, beyond what is assigned to it, by the naming of it as an existent. This, I apprehend as the reason why the thing itself always extends beyond its concept. This extension is referred to as the thing's "possibility".

What negative dialectics drives through its hardened objects is the possibility which their reality has betrayed, and yet which gleams from each one of these.

Now there is a gap explained, between the thing's conceptualized existence (its past), and "the hope of the Name", what's wanted in its future. So in the closing sentence, the relation between word and concept is described as "solely a moment", and I take "something external to it", as its future.

Even the insistence
on the specific word and concept, as the iron gate to be unlocked, is
solely a moment of such, though an indispensable one. In order to be
cognized, that which is internalized, which the cognition clings to in the
expression, always needs something external to it.

,,,the hippie movement was clearly stopped and commodified... — Pussycat

Let me point out to you how this statement is self-contradicting. That it was commodified implies that it continued in this commodified form, and that contradicts "stopped". Anyway "the hippie movement" is vague, nondescriptive, and can by interpreted in many different ways. You and I clearly do not see it the same way. Therefore it doesn't make a good example, or analogy, here.

Dialectical discipline, Hegel's (positive) and Adorno's (negative), both sacrifice and reduce the polyvalnece of experience to contradiction. — Pussycat

I can't agree with your interpretation Pussycat. When Adorno says "This law is however not one of thinking, but real.", I believe he is talking about the law of noncontradiction. It is not contradiction which is ontologically real, but noncontradiction which is ontologically real. In assigning reality to contradiction you make the mistake of Hegelian dialectics which wants reality to flow from the Idea. What you've done is turned Adorno's words around to claim that he is talking about contradiction itself, rather than noncontradiction, which is actually the opposite of contradiction. Non contradiction, as reality, is the avoidance of contradiction.

So when you say that the polyvalence of experience is reduced to contradiction, this is not accurate because it's really reduced to an avoidance of contradiction. That's what creates "polyvalence", not contradiction itself, but the avoidance of contradiction. The only embracing of contradiction being spoken about is the will to understand it, as a principle, because understanding contradiction as a principle, will enable us to understand the reality of noncontradiction. Understanding contradiction is our way, or method toward understanding the reality of noncontradiction.

But it comes at a cost, the reduction of everything unto contradiction means the loss of the richness of lived experience, its immediacy, living in the moment. There is already a contradiction here: the polyvalence of lived experience in a monovalent dominative world. — Pussycat

This is exactly the point. To reduce everything to contradiction is the faulty process because that misses out on "the richness of lived experience". In other words it doesn't grasp the reality of the situation, therefore it is not the appropriate philosophical process. So, I propose to you, that you are mistaken in classing Hegelian dialectics and negative dialectics together, in the same category, as reducing the polyvalence of experience to contradiction. I think that negative dialectics, being the negative to Hegelian dialectics, recognizes the importance of the opposite, noncontradiction, as the foundation for this polyvalence. That is the richness of lived experience which escapes conceptualization when conceptualization is bounded by contradiction.

Hi fFilip, and welcome to tpf

It looks like you'll fit in well here. I'm not an administrator, but here's a general rule of thumb. Any proposed discussion topic ought to be of the highest quality. These will be heavily read, analyzed criticised, etc., so you want to make sure that you put your best foot forward. Replies within the thread will be less formal therefore more casual. If you have a causal topic, put it in The Lounge. And if you want random abuse go to The Shoutbox.

Changing his mind from day to day with an ideology based around a misunderstanding of the market effect of tariffs. The instability is off the charts and if it does all go off the rails there is a real risk that Trump will impose emergency, or plenary powers to postpone the midterm elections. — Punshhh

Instability makes money for people. So it's questionable whether the cause of that is "misunderstanding" or intent.

Disagree, for reasons and examples I've already posted. There are times when risk is high, but would likely get higher with time, and so confidence is likely to drop if you wait.
Take saving people from a burning building. You can risk your life and charge in there and grab the baby, or you can wait until the fire trucks get the fire more under control so your safety is more assured. That's a hard decision, and there are cases where each option is the best one. — noAxioms

I admit, I could never frame "risk" with a definition which would make it universally bad. But in thinking about it I see that there is quite a number of different ways to relate to risk. There is risk of failure. There is risk that even with success in obtaining the goal, it wasn't the best goal. There is also risk that proceeding toward one goal will produce failure relative to another. So many different types of risk.

Yes, you can do that, but the result of doing it is qualitatively (and measurably) different from what it is that LLMs do when they are prompted to impersonate a novelist or a physicist, say. An analogy that I like to employ is an actor who plays the role of J. Robert Oppenheimer in a stage adaptation of the eponymous movie (that I haven't yet seen, by the way!) If the actor has prepared for the role by reading lots of source material about Oppenheimer's life and circumstances, including his intellectual trajectory, but never studied physics at a level higher than middle school, say, and has to improvise facing an unscripted questions about physics asked by another actor who portrays a PhD student, he might be able to improvise a sciency sounding soundbite that will convince those in the audience that don't know any better. Many earlier LLMs up to GPT-3-5 often were improvising/hallucinating such "plausible" sounding answers to question that they manifestly didn't understand (or misunderstood in funny ways). In order to reliably produce answers to unscripted questions that would be judged to be correct by PhD physicists in the audience, the actor would need to actually understand the question (and understand physics). That's the stage current LLMs are at (or very close to). — Pierre-Normand

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?

If the chatbot tells you who the murderer might be, and explains to you what the clues are that led it to this conclusion, and the clues are being explicitly tied together by the chatbot through rational chains of entailment that are sensitive to the the significance of the clues in the specific narrative context, can that be explained as a mere reproduction of the habits of the author? What might such habits be? The habit to construct rationally consistent narratives? You need to understand a story in order to construct a rationally consistent continuation to it, I assume. — Pierre-Normand

You are changing the description now. Before, the description had the chatbox come up with a "name as the most probable next word". Now, the chatbox comes up with "who the murderer might be". Do you see the difference here? In the first case, you are talking about words, symbols, the "name". In the second case you are talking about what the symbol stands for, "who".

You need to understand a story in order to construct a rationally consistent continuation to it, I assume. — Pierre-Normand

I don't think that's a correct assumption. All you need to be able to do, is to carry on with the author's activity in a consistent way. One does not need to "understand the story" to produce a rationally consistent continuation of it. We have very good examples of this with human activities. When a person says "I am just a cog in the wheel", they are continuing the activity in a consistent way, without understanding what they are doing.

Look at this Einstein riddle. Shortly after GPT-4 came out, I submitted it to the model and asked it to solve it step by step. It was thinking about it quite systematically and rationally but was also struggling quite a bit, making occasional small inattention mistakes that were compounding and leading it into incoherence. Repeating the experiment was leading it to approach the problem differently each time. If any habits of thought were manifested by the chatbot, that were mere reproductions of the habits of thought of the people who wrote its training texts, they'd be general habits of rational deliberation. Periodically, I assessed the ability of newer models to solve this problem and they were still struggling. The last two I tried (OpenAI o3 and Gemini 2.5 Pro, I think) solved the problem on the first try. — Pierre-Normand

Sorry, I don't see the relevance,. You'd have to explain how you think that this is relevant.

In order for the model to produce this name as the most probable next word, it has to be sensitive to relevant elements in the plot structure, distinguish apparent from real clues, infer the states of minds of the depicted characters, etc. Sutskever's example is hypothetical but can be adapted to any case where LLMs successfully produce a response that can't be accounted for by mere reliance on superficial and/or short range linguistic patterns. — Pierre-Normand

This is not true. To predict the name of the murderer in the novel, does not require that the LLM does any of that. It requires only that the LLM is able to predict the habits of the author. It needs to "know" the author. You ought to recognize that an LLM does not at all "think" like a human being does, it "thinks" like a computer does. That's two completely different things. One might ask, which form of "thinking" is better, but we can't really say that one is doing what the other does, as you suggest here. We use the same word, "think", but that's only because if the LLM companies said that LLMs "process", and human being "think", it wouldn't be as effective for their marketing.

Getting married is like pulling the trigger. One can put off that choice indefinitely, but once done, it's done.
I used it as a counter for your assertion of 'certainty of success', and 'minimize risk'. Getting married is a risk (something you assert to never be the best option), even ones that seem a very good match. Not getting married is usually not the best option. Sure, it is for some people. I have 3 kids, and only one marriage is expected, thus countering my 'usually' assertion. — noAxioms

I think this is a false example. The option is usually whether or not to marry a specific person, not whether or not to get married in general. And, if you're not certain about the person, you're probably not in love, and you should not go ahead at that time. And if the question is whether or not to get married in general, you should not go ahead with that, until you are certain that it is the right thing.

The difference between the way you and I are looking at this, is that you are making some kind of 'objective' statement "getting married is a risk", and from that you are saying that risk is good. But from that 'objective' perspective, every choice is a risk, so of course risk must be good or else all choices would be bad. But that's not what I am talking about. I am talking about looking from the perspective of the person making the choice. And from that perspective, if the act is risky it's better for the person to wait until they have more confidence. Often the stakes are very low, and risk is simply not taken into consideration. But as the stakes get higher, considering the risk gets more and more important.

One never had freedom to select multiple options. Sure, you can have both vanilla and chocolate, but that's just a single third option. There's no having cake and eating it, so to speak. You have choice because you can select any valid option, but you can't choose X and also not X. — noAxioms

Sorry, I didn't make myself clear. I should have said freedom to select from all the other possibilities. So for example if there is twenty options, then the person has the freedom to select from twenty options. However, once the choice is made you restrict your freedom to select the other nineteen. That's what I meant, making a choice restricts your freedom. If you have the freedom to choose X or not X, then choosing X restricts your freedom to choose not X. Making a choice always restricts one's freedom.

OK, but I don't know how this became a discussion about ignorance of what is food. The comment was in response to your assertion of "the first principle is that nonaction maintains freedom", and my example of nonaction (and not ignorance) will cause among other things starvation, which will likely curtail freedom. — noAxioms

Your conclusion is based on the assumption that "starvation will likely curtail freedom". Those who believe that being chained to the body is a restriction to the soul would argue otherwise. So that is just a reflection of your metaphysical preference. My principle, that non-action maintains freedom is based in the logic explained above.

The realization was missed because the hippie movement failed to transform the world in its image, but was commodified and commercialized, liquitated even. What could have been a revolutionary movement, capable of subverting entrenched power and liberating consciousness, was instead absorbed into institutional authority, tamed by it. Much like, as Adorno says, what happened with Hegel's dialectic. — Pussycat

OK, that's one way of looking at it. But being "absorbed into institutional authority" doesn't necessarily imply being "tamed by it" rather than "subverting" it. We could look at the presidency of Trump for example, and evaluate whether this is an instance of a revolutionary movement being tamed by authority, rather than subverting authority. We'd probably be able to identify elements of both, but that just means that it's wrong to portray the possibilities as a dichotomy, one or the other.

I don't understand, who or what requires the polyvalence of experience? Why then would Adorno say that (negative) dialectics demands the bitter sacrifice of the qualitative polyvalence of experience? — Pussycat

I think you misunderstand what Adorno was saying. The "dialectical discipline" is the inadequate way of looking at things. And whoever adopts this method forfeits the true perspective which the polyvalence of experience provides for, as a bitter sacrifice. "Whoever submits to dialectical discipline, must unquestionably pay with the bitter sacrifice...".

Please reread the passage, and you'll see that what follows supports my interpretation.

n my view, information is everywhere you care to look — Harry Hindu

I agree, information is everywhere. But I differentiate between information and knowledge. And in my view information is not the source of knowledge because no matter how long information may hang around for, knowledge will not simply emerge from it. So, knowledge has a source which is distinctly not information.

AI can do the same thing ... when prompted — Harry Hindu

Obviously, it's not "the same thing" then.

An AI is a source of knowledge. — Harry Hindu

I don't think so, just like a book is not a source of knowledge. It is a representation, not a source.

Yes, but you can't have a dialogue with language or with a book. You can't ask questions to a book, expect the book to understand your query and provide a relevant response tailored to your needs and expectations. The AI can do all of that, like a human being might, but it can't do philosophy or commit itself to theses. That's the puzzle. — Pierre-Normand

How is that puzzling? I read a book, reread it, compare it, in my mind with material from other authors, interpret it in numerous ways, in an attempt to get a handle on the material which the author has provided. To me that's philosophy. If, instead of using the Dewey Decimal Catalogue system, to find my material for comparison, I employ an AI, how is this any different, in principle?

I think that what is misleading and confusing, is that people might think that the AI is actually interpreting and comparing the material, and this produces a puzzle. The AI does not interpret material, it looks at the symbols and the form, making comparisons according to its rules, and that's all. For those who deny the dualist separation between material and form, this would appear to be puzzling.

Why was the moment of realization missed? — Pussycat

Where do you get the sense that the realization was missed? A wave is a temporal event, it comes to an end, and its energy is dispersed. But this does not imply that the realization of its energy is necessarily "missed". It is only missed by those who do not follow the threads of transformation. That is why the polyvalence of experience is a requirement.

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. — Banno

Why is that a puzzle to you? A book doesn't do philosophy but we do philosophy with it. The library doesn't do philosophy but we do philosophy with it. The note pad isn't philosophy yet we do philosophy with it. Language isn't philosophy yet we do philosophy with it.

I think you are trying to portray something which is very simple and straight forward as something very difficult and complex. The real problem is that the philosophical principles which some people believe and accept do not provide what is required to adequately understand what language and communion actually is. This makes these things into a "puzzle" for these people.

That works in some situations, but a not in a fair percentage of them. Such uncertainty prevents some people from ever getting married. Sometimes this is a good thing, but often not. Don't choose poorly, but also don't reject good choices for fear of lack of 'success'.
War is another example where that psychology is a losing one. Risk taking is part of how things are best done. — noAxioms

Look what you are saying. It can just be turned around. Not getting married was the mistaken choice which shouldn't have been made. Rejecting good choices is making a poor choice. So it's just a matter of what descriptive words are used.

Risk is never the best option. It is often unavoidable, but then the best option is the one which reduces the risk. See it's just a matter of wording. And the reason why it's confusing is because we are leaving out a key aspect. Success is in relation to a goal. So "unavoidable" is determined in relation to the goal. Once we frame things as being in relation to a goal, the whole perspective is variable, depending on the goal.

He was 1, with no concept of embarassment yet. — noAxioms

A child does not need to understand the concept of embarrassment, to be embarrassed. "Cheering at the table" indicates that he was most likely embarrassed, even at 1.

Not always, and not even particularly often. Not looking for food definitely curtails eventual freedom. — noAxioms

I don't agree with this. "Looking for food" implies a restriction that the person is looking for something which is known to be food. This restricts the person from eating all sorts of things which may actually be good food, yet not known to be "food" to the person.

The point being that action requires choice, and choice restricts the person's freedom to select all the other possibilities. If a hamburger is the only thing the person knows to be food, then "looking for food" is a significant restriction.

Look back at the moon example. "Going to the moon" required all those choices, and each one excluded all the other possibilities. Therefore there was a whole lot of other things which could have been done in that time, with those resources, but "going to the moon" was the chosen goal, and this negated all those other possibilities.

I'm aware that all appearance of agreement on your part is accidental. — frank

Generally, agreement is counterproductive to philosophy.

It seems like this site will have to perform a balancing act between encouraging well written posts and limiting the use of tools that allow writers to do just that. — Harry Hindu

The tool which allows writers to produce well written posts is knowledge. There is no need to place any restrictions on that tool.

Not necessarily agreeing, but trying to understand. I cannot agree or disagree until I adequately understand. However, I think that is what is intended by his use of "substantive content", to distinguish it from a false conception of 'pure content'. His dismissal of existentialism requires that we adhere to the principle that content must be substantive.

If we do not adhere to that principle we fall into the trap exposed by Jamal. Rather than having true particulars as our substance, we have examples as our substance. But examples are often fictional. And by example the fiction can penetrate the substance. To avoid the infinite regress of fictional content we must deny its possibility from the start.

There is also the possibility of comparing to past posts... — Baden

That's the trick. Idiosyncrasies are proper to the individual, and everyone has them, we cannot escape that, and trying to escape them makes them more obvious. The AI on the other hand, can write with a new random style each time, providing no indication of its identity, or that it is itself. Therefore the AI cannot be identified as the AI. However, the human being always has an identity and can always be identified. I learned that from the case of Ted Kaczynski (Unabomber). So an adequately trained AI, reviewing files, would be able to quickly flag unidentifiability, as a nonhuman trait.

He's talking about the forced separation between direct experience (which contains no form, no names, no recognition of ideation) and form itself, which is a key component of knowledge (scientia, science). And it just occurred to me that no one is reading this or likely to respond to what I just said, so if I want to discuss it, I need to go to reddit. I don't know which subreddit, though. I don't think they have an Adorno subreddit. I could start one. — frank

This does very little for me. Suppose raw experience is as you say, without, and therefore prior to, all form, etc.. That might signify the priority of content, the proposed content being direct experience. But what is "the particular science" then? This could be the application of form to that content. Where would that form come from then, if we allow such a separation? It cannot just emerge out of the raw experience, and ty cannot inhere within it, because then it could not be pure direct experience without form, as is presupposed.

Furthermore, we then have Adorno imposing his proposition of "substantive content" as a required necessity. Content must be substantive. So he appears to be saying that the proposal of existentialism, being the "primacy of corporeal experience", instead of providing pure content, actually removes itself from content, because it is not a true "substantive content". Then it ends up being nothing more than an idealized "I" as a pure form, without any real content.

Notice:

The intention of existentialism at least in its radical French form would not be realizable at a distance from substantive content, but in its threatening nearness to this.

Existentialism imitates "substantive content", to the point where the untrained eye might not even see the difference, but it isn't substantive content. Then the trained eye would grasp the existential proposal as a pure invariant form, even though the intent of the proposition is that it be apprehended as pure content. (This is the fate of any materialism which proposes "prime matter" as matter without form. The proposal of prime matter can only be apprehended as a pure form, and such materialism is therefore reduced to idealism).

The reason for the difference, between the intent and the necessary interpretation, I will explain as the necessity that "substantive content" be a unity of form and content. The existential intent is to propose corporeal experience as pure content. But that is to ask the proposition to do what is impossible of it, to propose something without form. Then the proposition of something pure, "the reality of corporeal experience", in order to maintain the claimed purity, can only be interpreted as a pure form, though it is intended as pure content.

The pure form is "historicity" itself. And this leaves humanity as chained to the past. "Experience" is always either present or in the past. Therefore existentialism provides us no approach to the future.

This is surely a rod for your own back, and the backs of the other mods. Apart form the most obvious cases, you can't tell. “AI-written” stops being a meaningful category as AI is blended in to the way we operate online, the way we search, research, browse and read is permeated and augmented by AI. — Banno

I find it amazing that you seem to think that an AI which distinguishes between human and AI writing is impossible. I think that this is exactly the type of thing that an AI would be exceptionally good at.

But what is this blending you are talking about? Copying any sentence word for word is plagiarism, and disqualifies the whole work. How do you propose that a human writer might blend with AI? Would that be an implant in the brain?

Eventually one much act on the choice, irrevocably. You debate committing murder, but once the trigger is pulled, there's no doing otherwise. I suppose if you choose not to do it, the option remains open for quite some time. — noAxioms

It's a lot more precise than how you make it out. Imagine, the assassin sights the target. The window of opportunity is short, and the decision must be made quickly because the target moves on. So as much as the option remains, even after deciding not to pull the trigger, it would all have to be recalculated, and in reality would be a different option.

Consider firing a rocket to the moon. Everything is calculated to the exact liftoff time, and there's a small window. If there is a problem and the window is missed, everything has to be refigured. In general, and in words, it's refigured as the same option, "firing a rocket to the moon", but since it's refigured under different circumstances, it's not really the same option, just the same type of action under different conditions.

The vanilla/chocolate debate at the ice cream shop. Exactly how late can one change one's mind before it's too late? We played a game like that with my 1 year old at a restaurant. He was feeding himself stuff from his plate with a spoon. He really like crab leg bits thrown on his plate and would eat those first. Game was to see how far we could get him to choose to eat something else, and still bail out because a crab bit was presented. I won the game when I caused an abort with the spoon already fully in his mouth. Imagine the cheering at the table, causing weird looks from others.
We're easily entertained over here. — noAxioms

I think there is reverse psychology which comes into play here. So long as one does not pull the trigger, we can always consider doing so at a later time. But once the trigger is pulled that cannot be reversed. So, the psychology is that it is universally better not to act unless one is quite certain of success. The rocket cannot be retrieved after it's fired, so be sure of success before firing. However, if it is not fired, there will be many opportunities of the same type, therefore hold on until you're sure.

Your son got the punishment of reverse psychology. You pushed him toward failure, by inciting him to pull the trigger on something other than the best situation. Then he was embarrassed by jumping the gun, rather than patiently waiting, having to spit it out. That's why patience is a virtue.

Yes, that's what it means for there to be a choice. I'd argue that such choice is not always possible. Sometimes only one path is open. Sometimes not even that. Vanilla or chocolate? Well, there's a power outage at the softserve shop, so as Gene Wilder put it: You get Nothing. — noAxioms

How could there ever be only one path open? The future is always full of possibilities. And by being patient and not pulling the trigger we allow the possibilities to persist. But even falsely pulling the trigger only results in some kind of embarrassment. So if you pull the trigger and you're on the road to the softserve shop when the power goes out, you can turn around and go somewhere else. And even after the assassin fires the shot, he could fire another and another.

I believe the lesson is, that when you make the act, you put things in motion which inevitably restrict your future acts, unless your act is designed to increase your freedom, and it is successful. So the first principle is that nonaction maintains freedom. The second principle is that you might act in a way which would increase your freedom, but you need to be certain, because failure will backfire and lessen it.

In this section, "Existentialism", I have difficulty to understand what is meant by "particular science", and "substantive content", in the following passage.

The schools which take derivatives of the Latin existere [Latin:
to exist] as their device, would like to summon up the reality of
corporeal experience against the alienated particular science. Out of
fear of reification they shrink back from what has substantive content.
It turns unwittingly into an example. What they subsume under epochê
[Greek: suspension] revenges itself by exerting its power behind the
back of philosophy, in what this latter would consider irrational
decisions. The non-conceptual particular science is not superior to
thinking purged of its substantive content; all its versions end up, a
second time, in precisely the formalism which it wished to combat for
the sake of the essential interest of philosophy. It is retroactively filled
up with contingent borrowings, especially from psychology. The
intention of existentialism at least in its radical French form would not
be realizable at a distance from substantive content, but in its
threatening nearness to this. The separation of subject and object is not
to be sublated through the reduction to human nature, were it even the
absolute particularization. The currently popular question of
humanity, all the way into the Marxism of Lukacsian provenance, is
ideological because it dictates the pure form of the invariant as the only
possible answer, and were this latter historicity itself.

From the last section, I understand "substantive content" to be the societal totality. And I assume "particular science" would be the science of human nature. But this is quite vague. Any help to understand the use of these terms would be appreciated.

I elicited your response, thus doing more than arranging words. — Banno

You appear to be incorrectly applying some sort of theory of cause and effect. You did no such thing. I willfully criticized your act of arranging words. I apologize for having to disillusion you, concerning your attitude of having power over me, but you are referring to something I did, as if it was something you did. Please, assign responsibility where it is due.

No, it isn't. Wittgenstein said nothing of the sort. — Banno

So you say, but will you demonstrate that you actually believe what you say? Otherwise you are just showing that you know how to arrange words in an intelligible way.

Seems to me, at the fundament, that what we who pretend to the title “philosopher” are looking for is some semblance of truth, whatever that is; at writing that is thought provoking; at nuanced and sound argument. Whether such an argument comes from a person or an AI is secondary. — Banno

AI at this point is not capable of giving any "semblance of truth".

I’ve used AI to quickly and succinctly summarise accepted fact. — Banno

Yes, it can very aptly "summarize accepted fact", and you might want to use it for that, if that is what you are after. But "fact by the masses" is a far cry from "semblance of truth".

The idea is that the AI isn't really saying anything, but is arranging words as if it were saying something. — Banno

I really do not see the difference here. Following Wittgenstein, all that "saying something" is, is arranging words as if you were saying something. Meaning (as in what is meant, by intention) is not a separate requirement for "saying something", because meaning is assumed to be inherent within "arranging words as if you were saying something".

Modern philosophy has so effectively combined meaning with saying, such that meaning is taken for granted, and "saying" is nothing more than arranging words in an intelligible way. You will not provide an effective argument to say that what the AI provides has no meaning. Therefore you will not have an argument to say that the AI doesn't say anything.

This implies that the ship has already sailed (the paste is out of the tube) with respect to "saying". It's too late to go back and insist that "saying" is something more than arranging words in an intelligible way. Instead, we need to look deeper, at the meaning of words like "honesty". "truth", and "communion", to determine whether AI partakes in any of these.