This treatment allows causal knowledge of the world to be separated from the agent's subjective preferences. — sime

Sure. But both of those separated things are how things are. Causal knowledge of the world is in the state it's in, and the agent's subjective preferences are in the state they're in.

How is describing these or any other states of affairs supposed to determine how they ought to be?

The above is an explanation I made after completing the institutional argument to respond to Hume's dilemma. — panwei

What is the institutional argument?

In what sense did you complete it?

Translations provided by deepseek. — panwei

Which translations?

Traditional political philosophy often grounds its normative foundations in transcendent moral laws or abstract social contracts. — panwei

Is this your own observation?

However, the "must" argued for in this theory — panwei

Which theory? (Your OP's title?)

When you quote a published author you point to a node in a network of philosophical discourse, [...] The source in this case is accountable and interpretable. — Jamal

Exactly my point about Google search vs the AI summary that presumes to identify ideas instead of authored texts?

When I made the point (badly) I nearly said "nodes in a network". Dang!

Are you against all use of AI in every context? — Baden

No. Just the plagiarism.

“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

... if and only if "plagiarised" stops being a meaningful category, for corresponding reasons?

And yet, it seems entirely plausible to many of us that,

I use it to research not write the results of my research. I also use books to research and don't plagiarise from them. — Baden

I conclude that you and @Jamal are unduly defeatist. (Or playing devil's advocate?) Which I had put down to a corrupting effect of engaging with chatbots at all, but am now at a loss to explain.

"We encourage X," the X stands for "using LLMs as assistants for research, brainstorming, and editing," with the obvious emphasis on the "as". — Jamal

For editing, as in spell and (in the limit) grammar checking, yes? Or, I guess not, as these aren't LLM tasks?

@Jamal @Baden

Regarding the new policy, sometimes when I’ve written something that comes out clunky I run it through an AI for “clarity and flow” and it subtly rearranges what I’ve written. Is that a no-no now? — praxis

@praxis Did you get clarification on this?

I use it to research not write the results of my research. I also use books to research and don't plagiarise from them. — Baden

Yep :100:

And it's not like it's a rocket science distinction? Not a line that's hard to draw?

(Some of us draw it further back... I prefer not to interact with the man in the Chinese room if I don't think he understands; but I suppose that's a matter of taste, and I can imagine being persuaded. I guess I'm more likely to be persuaded by those not apparently desensitized to the more dire problem with plagiarism.)

Due as in obligatory?

It didn't occur to me that anyone would interpret those guidelines as suggesting that posts written by people who are usng AI tools are generally superior to those written by people who don't use AI, — Jamal

It hadn't occurred to me that I was ranting, until you showed that to be a plausible reading. I humbly (well, I hope not smugly) ask you to consider that many of your comments do indeed characterise the more proper use of AI as due diligence?

From what you and others have said, it's clear that the strongest objection is aesthetic. — Banno

I'm seeing the opposite. Google search is an unprepossessing but epistemically valuable (e.g. falsifiable) tool for connecting physically real and identifiable texts to their physically real and accountable authors and sources. The prettier AI summary presumes to cut out the middle man and connect up the ideas directly, as though they were physically real and identifiable.

Good stuff. — Banno

Cheers - I wrote it myself :wink:

Rejecting an argument because it is AI generated — Banno

Not quite. I reject the headlong conflation of a text, identifiable word for word, with the host of arguments, meanings, ideas, intentions, speech acts etc that we seek to discern and delineate by comparing texts. All of which are potentially noble and valuable things, but not reliably identifiable nor distinguishable from instance to instance.

Natural language games (arts and sciences) are typically indeterminate that way. As pointed out by many. Goodman, in particular, points out (in the usual place) that the discerning and discriminating, though frequently too fine-grained to achieve replicability, is usually valuable (cognitively) partly on account of the tradition of anchoring it in a comparison of physically identifiable artworks or literary works. (Or photos or musical recordings.)

Hence the potential importance of authenticity of a painting, and of identity of a text. And one way we often are able to benefit from the identification of texts and paintings, in our striving to discern meanings and arguments and intentions (e.g. hidden but implied premises or allusions) is by reference to historical facts about the authorship. A fallible way, sure. Fallacious, often. But certainly disrupted, and not necessarily for the better, by plagiarism of one kind or another.

We are not encouraging people to use it if they're not already. — Jamal

Good, thanks. Even better if you could retain:

AI LLMs may be used to proofread pre-written posts, but if this results in you being suspected of using them to write posts, that is a risk you run. We recommend that you do not use them at all.

Failing that, a clear statement of,

We are not encouraging people to use it if they're not already. — Jamal

?

Also helpful, perhaps, some routine and visible indication, one way or the other, of,

No AIs were consulted in the making of this post. — Pantagruel

? Or if that's too harsh, something like, that none (or some) were used for

generating a core [or subsidiary] argument, providing a structured [or unstructured] outline, or composing a lengthy [or short] explanation — Deepseek

[Depending on where lines got drawn?]

As the question is now (rather suddenly) tending to arise, when one starts to browse any post?

[*] We encourage using LLMs as assistants for research, brainstorming, and editing. — Deepseek

Does TPF now disparage as vanity or prejudice or laziness the preference of some posters to decline to engage with chatbots at all?

[*] We require the transparent disclosure of substantial AI assistance in your posts. — Deepseek

Which parts of "research, brainstorming, and editing" does that apply to?

Right now, we all always know you don’t take the first answer Google displays. You take ten answers from different internet sources, find some overlap, and then start deeper research in the overlap and eventually you might find some truth. Right? The internet can’t be trusted at all. Now with AI, we have photo and video fakes, voice fakes, that look as good as anything else, so we have a new layer of deception. We have the “hallucination” which is a cool euphemism for bullshit. — Fire Ologist

This is why I was shocked that philosophers, of all people, wouldn't be ignoring the "AI summary" invitation at the top of the search results?

I'd have thought the relevant job description, that of filtering the results for signs of trails leading to real accountable sources, would have to disqualify any tool known ever to actually invent false trails, let alone one apparently innately disposed to such behaviour?

its use should be banned altogether on this site. — Janus

Impractical. But, how about, its use should be discouraged altogether?

I mean, its use in composition or editing of English text in a post.

That's a cute dismissal. I just can't help hoping you are its author.

Not even like that. But indulging instead the fantasy that AI has dissolved the accountability of sources and authors, for what they say.

Unlike handing it to a human editor, which is what authors have been doing for yonks? — SophistiCat

Yes.

Very unlike handing your fully formed prose to a human proof reader, for correction before its honest submission as your own work.

Or handing fully formed prose to an editor or censor for fitting it to required standards.

Or handing fully formed prose to a human editor for improvement, with due acknowledgement.

Nor even like handing your half formed prose to a ghost writer receiving due acknowledgement albeit semi-private.

Or even handing half formed prose to a "proof reader" for patently dishonest submission as your work.

Within 10 years, the vast majority of the internet will be AI generated---such is the logic of competitiveness and consumerism. We won't be. — Baden

I really hope. :grimace:

Sorry for ranting.

I would think handing your half-formed prose to a bot for it to improve it is plagiarism, regardless of the number of words changed or inserted. It's a different thing from you deliberately searching for a synonym. No?

The regular Google results have been garbage for years, — Jamal

This is obviously missing the point. We knew the order of listing was biased and constantly under attack from bots. It was our job to filter and find actually authored texts, and attribute their epistemic value or lack of it to the genuinely accountable authors.

You honestly now want to defer those epistemic judgements to a bot? How would that not be swallowing the fantasy? (Of an intelligent oracle.)

Is using a thesaurus to write a novel and saying you wrote it lying? — Jamal

No. Well done you. Getting the thesaurus to suggest whole phrases and sentences is obviously plagiarism. The gaping difference denied, again.

Take me for instance. Although I use LLMs quite a lot, for everyday tasks or research, in the context of philosophical discussion or creative writing I always say I never directly cut and paste what they give me. But sometimes they come up with a word or phrase that is too good to refuse. So — was I lying? — Jamal

Yes.

I'm mystified that percipient philosophers can't see a gaping difference between (A) using a search engine to produce a list of texts containing a given string (well done, us and it) and on tother hand (B) swallowing the insulting fantasy of interaction with an intelligent oracle.

That is, I can't understand or sympathise with them admitting to reading the AI summary, instead of ignoring that insulting click-bait and searching immediately among the genuinely authored texts.

And if you admit to no longer constructing all the sentences you post to me, then I'm disappointed. I'm looking for a better relationship.

For example, René Descartes (1596–1650) argued that we perceive the external world through ideas or representations in the mind, not directly. John Locke (1632-1704) developed this idea. George Berkeley (1685-1753) argued that our perceptions are ideas in the mind and not physical entities. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) emphasized the role of the mind in shaping our understanding of reality. — RussellA

I wonder at what stage in the process of this post's creation you found it appropriate to research the exact years of birth and death for each philosopher?

I guess he isn't familiar with discussions about color itself, — frank

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Has anyone addressed the core problem of circularity. We understand the property of redness by the elements in its set, but we must know the property of redness before we can include an element in the set? — RussellA

Noted. I think you mentioned the choice: extension/intension? I suppose the latter is a proposed solution to

we must know the set of red things before we can include an element in the set?

Which isn't a problem (requiring a solution) in natural language. Usage there is guided by exemplification. See Goodman's Languages of Art which cashes in on the theoretical economy of analysing properties (or sets) away as predicates.

In formalised languages, sure. The circularity is famous since Russell B. As plenty here have pointed out.

or making sets into reified metaphysical entities — Banno

Well, they are, a bit. :wink:

But in set theory, sets do add to ontology. — litewave

That's why nominalists (e.g. Quine) didn't like taking it for granted in logic.

Yes, and so does a model theorist? (And earlier theorists of the semantics of first order logic too.) I thought this was what @Banno was pointing out to you 4 years ago? I may have misunderstood.

Alas, I have broken the vows in the course of this thread. — litewave

:rofl:

Although it was not really nominalism about properties; I still regarded them as real separate objects, I just wanted to identify them with sets. — litewave

Right, but, identify them with sets in the way that model theory maps predicates to sets? (Sets defined on elements in a domain.)

Then you can be at least extensionalist about properties just by replacing them with predicates? Or with the corresponding sets if you prefer, yes!

Hyper-extensionalism is a further economy:

The nominalist cancels out the property and treats the predicate as bearing a one-many relation directly to the several things it applies to or denotes. — Goodman, p49

And in this case cancelling out the property is indeed a matter of cancelling out the set. And satisfying @Banno's thirst for a restriction to individuals. See Goodman's "calculus of individuals". (Mereology as @Moliere alluded.)

we would need Tones. — jgill

Yes, where is he!

@litewave

... Nominalism in the sense of, as @Banno says, dissolving properties by analysis.

But not necessarily in any strict sense.

E.g. not in the sense of, as Goodman says, "hyper-extensionalism", i.e. allowing no more than the power set to be defined upon the elements in the domain.

Rather, just in the sense of, as you (and @frank, I think? I need to study the thread) correctly say, extensionalism, i.e. allowing the definition of sets according to their extension to iterate indefinitely. E.g. on the domain {a, b} the sets { }, {a}, {b}, {a, b}, {{a}, a}, {{a}, b}, {{a}, a, b}, {{b}, a}, {{b}, b}, {{b}, a, b}, {{a, b}, a}, {{a, b}, b}, {{a, b}, a, b}, {{{a}}, a}, etc.

Not sure what @Banno is thinking there :chin:

It does indeed continue ad nauseum, but that is indeed set theory.

So much so, that structures in set theory are typically constructed entirely from the empty set.

I don't think that a property is a collection. Redness is not the collection of all red things but something that is had by all red things. — litewave

Glad to see you've since taken the vows of nominalism!

Goodman's discussion of authenticity seems entirely relevant, even if it shows up contrasts as well as parallels. Or contrasts for you, and parallels for me. — bongo fury

More so, now that I have the privilege of browsing the renowned book. The suspicion grows that Parfit reifies consciousness, as a substance capable of continuity (relation R) or discontinuity, instead of hanging it ultimately on bodily activity. Styling his theory "reductionist" seems wrong, on that score.

He comes close to examining the analogy with painting, but is keen to dismiss it:

Suppose that an artist paints a self-portrait and then, by repainting, turns this into a portrait of his father. Even though these portraits are more similar than a caterpillar and butterfly, they are not stages in the continued existence of a single painting. — Parfit, p.203

Er, why not? Why aren't they a perfectly fine analogy with gradual personal transformation?

The self-portrait is a painting that the artist destroyed. — (cont.)

Oh. Why, exactly?

In a general discussion of identity, we would need to explain why the requirement of physical continuity differs in such ways for different kinds of thing. But we can ignore this here. — (cont.)

Hmm.

Needless to say, Goodman's book, fairly famous for bringing to bear (on aesthetics) a deal of previous work on identity and structure, isn't referenced in this book.

A subtly related problem is the conception of memory: as an implanted mental picture, with a natural and causal (as opposed to conventional) manner of depicting its object. Not a radical conception, of course; perfectly in line with Locke and Hume. But this results in a view of neuro-psychology as revealing that

The causes of long-term memories are memory-traces. It was once thought that these might be localised, involving changes in only a few brain cells. It is now more probable that a particular memory-trace involves changes in a larger number of cells. — Parfit, p.220

Perhaps there were then and still are plenty of neuro-scientists inclined to this view. I'll take correction on this, because I'm out of touch with psychology, but I'm vaguely aware of a tidal drift in psychological theory (since Bartlett in the thirties) completely away from that idea of a trace, analogous to a frame of imprinted vision or sound, and towards the contrary idea of memory (and perception too) as a continual project of constructing and testing and revising little mental performances. A drift which would be in agreement with Goodman's "language theory of pictures". (And probably modern trends like Bayesian predictive coding.) And which makes sense, if you reflect on the simple observation that animals have hardly ever, if ever, evolved a black box recorder. (Parrots a counter-example?)

This point of view makes, on the other hand, nonsense of the kind of thought experiment (however familiar) wherein,

[...] neuro-surgeons develop ways to create in one brain a copy of a memory-trace in another brain. This might enable us to quasi-remember other people's past experiences. — (cont.)

Enable us to have similar thoughts, sure. To rehearse (somewhat) similar mental performances. Not enable us to be confronted with a similar scene, though. Not in reality, obviously, but more crucially not perceptually: we shall not be confronted with a memory-scene, susceptible to forensic examination like a real picture.

Quasi-remembering other people's past experiences deflates to endorsing their autobiographical assertions. (In a word language or picture language.) And, we should add, the same is true for our own remembering. The only forensic authenticity available is the "autographic" identity of the person mentally rehearsing the assertions.

Which might be expected to not count for much. Napoleon's own recollections of (i.e. his dispositions towards verbal or pictorial assertions about) Waterloo we would expect to be as badly biased as my own delusional ones. Still, they have the distinction (even if not necessarily a virtue) of having formed through the cognitive efforts of an embodied brain actually there at the scene.

We've no grounds to discount the possibility that personal continuity defined spatiotemporally will make an important epistemic difference to memory. Just as (as Goodman argues) we can't know that autographic authenticity (defined similarly) won't make an important aesthetic difference to a picture.

but evidently you don't bother read through?
— bongo fury

No idea what you're referring to. Everything I've said is relevant and seems pertinent at the time I commented it. — AmadeusD

Wouldn't you think I was referring to the sentence of yours that I had just quoted? This one:

I mean to say that you can't give a criteria for the 'self' to being 'self-same' isn't quite available. — AmadeusD

Did you read that through when I quoted it, and still make sense of it? Just curious. Presumably you knew what you meant. So maybe it's forgiveable that you failed to notice the syntactic malformation, even when urged to reinspect it. Or maybe it's well formed, and I'll be astonished and humbled.

Ok, and you don't think the same is true of personal identity?
— bongo fury

No, and I don't think you do either. — AmadeusD

I do, though. As you later on recognise as a possibility:

If you're simply stipulating that, for you, a 'self' is, in fact, a confluence of mind and body in a single, recognizable-over-time entity, that's fine. — AmadeusD

Oh, good. Yes, I was simply stipulating that obvious materialist usage of "self" and declaring it suitable for discussion, and stress-testing. Goodman's discussion of authenticity seems entirely relevant, even if it shows up contrasts as well as parallels. Or contrasts for you, and parallels for me.

Yes, but sort of at a higher level than seems we're on. — AmadeusD

Is that, like, yes, both? You mean there's an absolute criterion of identity for the artwork, but not for the person... And it's the other way round as well? That would certainly be on a higher level than I'm on.

I mean to say that you can't give a criteria for the 'self' to being 'self-same' isn't quite available. — AmadeusD

I do appreciate that you're trying to clarify here, but evidently you don't bother read through?

Whereas, the initial piece of art (in our exchange, Guernica) is exactly that piece of art, without having to establish any criteria beyond that it is itself (being painted by x at time y etc..) — AmadeusD

Yes. Ok, and you don't think the same is true of personal identity? Whether I'm Napoleon doesn't depend entirely on my (lack of) spatiotemporal continuity with the human being leading the French troops at Waterloo? We have to establish criteria beyond that? I don't follow.

I can't see that your further comments then make sense: — AmadeusD

Yes, I must be confused.

I could not point to a 'fake self' and support my pointing. I could do so with a piece of art, given I was actually capable of spotting fakes (or, had some evidence of provenance showing it was not the original). It doesn't seem available to the one claiming 'fake self' to do so. — AmadeusD

You wouldn't seek to convince me I was deluded by pointing to evidence of provenance contradicting my claim of bodily continuity with Napoleon? By asking me to reconcile that claim with historical evidence of my more recent birth in South London, e.g., etc?

I do think there's a significant analogy between fake artwork and fake self, and between genuine artwork and genuine self. — bongo fury

Does this make sense, now? The painting is a spatiotemporally defined unit just like a person or a ship?

If so, maybe you'll see the point of this?

Someone purchasing Guernica for say $100millionUSD, they aren't buying a painting, per se.
— AmadeusD

And someone paying that much to prolong their life in the same body, they aren't preserving their person, per se?

But then, what's the painting per se, and what's the person per se? — bongo fury

Between a fake piece of art and a self? — AmadeusD

I do think there's a significant analogy between fake artwork and fake self, and between genuine artwork and genuine self.

Hence my initial remark:

I'm a material token, not a type? — bongo fury

Although, to be more precise, the analogy is with singular artworks (such as paintings) which are types that are uniquely instantiated (they have a unique token).

The obvious dis-analogy is with multiple artworks such as photographs and prints and texts.

Do you mean there's an absolute criterion of identity for the artwork, but not for the person?

Or the other way round?

These aren't comparable at all, imo. — AmadeusD

It was your analogy?

I think the same fits with the Teletransporter. — AmadeusD

Too right.