Again, you have not even attempted to show that the AI's summation was in any way inaccurate. Again, it is presented in support of a contention, and not to foreclose on the discussion. It is not an appeal to authority.

I'll leave you to it, Leon. Cheers.

I am pointing out that all you have done is appealed to the authority of AI, — Leontiskos

That's simply not so. I am not saying that because it is AI generated, it is authoritative. The material is offered here for critique. Baden asked who said that the detection of AI text was unreliable. I use an AI to provide examples in answer to his question.

If you have some evidence that the citations provided by the AI are incorrect or misrepresent the case, then present it.

The AI is not being appealed to as an authority, but being used in order to provide sources for further consideration.

It is being used to promote the conversation, not to foreclose on it.

But you didn't read the papers it cited, and you ↪concluded, "So yes, I overstated my case. You may be able to recognise posts as AI generated at a slightly better rate than choosing at random." — Leontiskos

It's noticeable that you have not presented any evidence, one way or the other.

If you think that what the AI said is wrong, then what you ought do is to present evidence, perhaps in the form of peer-reviewed articles that say that humans can reliably recognise AI generated text.

But that is not what you have chosen to do. Instead, you cast aspersions. This is another part of your modus operandi, in addition to your confabulation. You do not participate in a discussion about the topic, preferring instead to talk about the folk posting.

It's tedious.

It's not too bad at providing support for game play, too.

It is also worth noting how the pro-AI Banno simply takes the AI at it's word, — Leontiskos

No, I presented what the AI had to say, for critique. Go ahead and look at the papers it cites, and see if it represented them correctly. Let us know the result. Use the AI as a part of an ongoing conversation.

At stake here is the task set for our Mods. Do they spend time guessing if a post is AI generated, or removing poor posts, regardless of their provenience.

Yep. It does a pretty good job of locating quotes and other supporting information, too.

So you cannot see the difference between "A rule against AI use will not be heeded" and "A rule against AI use cannot be enforced". Ok.

It's also against the rules of TPF. — Leontiskos

@Baden? Tell us what you think. Is my reply to you against the rules? And should it be?

I use it in this way, too, but make a point to guard against confabulation by asking for sources and checking them.

Says who? — Baden

With intended irony...

Prompt: find peer-reviewed academic studies that show the effectiveness of any capacity to recognise AI generated text.

The result.

"...there is peer-reviewed evidence that both humans... and automated tools can sometimes detect AI-generated text above chance. Effectiveness is highly conditional. Measured accuracy is often only modest."

So yes, I overstated my case. You may be able to recognise posts as AI generated at a slightly better rate than choosing at random.

I use it to research not write the results of my research. — Baden

Do you use a quill?

I've added the note: NO AI-WRITTEN CONTENT ALLOWED to the guidelines and I intend to start deleting AI written threads and posts and banning users who are clearly breaking the guidelines. If you want to stay here, stay human. — Baden

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.

Better to focus Mod activity on quality and engagement rather than origin.

The curious ignoratio elenchus that Banno wishes to rely on is, "A rule against AI use will not be heeded, therefore it should not be made." — Leontiskos

I make a point of not reading Leon's posts, but this drew itself to my attention as a direct reply. I've learned that he confabulates the arguments of others so as to suit his purposes. Here is a case in point. I have not made the argument he here attributes to me. I have, amongst other things pointed out that a rule against AI cannot be reliably enforce, which is quite different.

Over and above all that, there is the theme of this thread, which is to explore ways in which AI might be used to improve the quality of the discussion.

For those who think philosophy consists in a series of appeals to authority, AI must be quite confounding.

Thanks for providing the prompt.

I think the most intellectually honest way of working with a.i. in interpreting philosophical texts is to strive to produce prompts which cover as wide a variety of readings as possible. — Joshs

That might be a partial answer, and should be a result of the protocol set out earlier in this thread. called what you describe "sandbagging". I think the best defence we have against it is not a ban on using AI, but an open discussion in which others can point to the sandbags.

The remedy for the absence of the Nietzsche-Deleuze connection is not found in rejecting AI, but in seeking your input into the discussion.


My guess is that your finger was a bit to the left on the "V", you typed "ocer" instead of "over" and it was autocorrected.

And the only thing that we can practically control here is what shows up on our site. If it looks AI generated, we ought investigate and delete as necessary. Our goal imo should be that a hypothetical AI checker sweeping our site should come up with the result "written by humans". AI content ought ideally be zero. — Baden

You say "If it looks AI generated, we ought investigate and delete as necessary"; the "we" here is you and the other mods. But of course they can't tell what is AI generated and what isn't. That hypothetical AI checker does not work. Further, mixed authorship is now the norm. You yourself say you are using AI in research.

It would be much preferred to have the mods spend their time removing poor posts, AI generated or not, rather than playing a loosing war of catch-up against Claude.

it's clear that the strongest objection is aesthetic.
— Banno

I'm seeing the opposite. — bongo fury

Then I've no followed your argument here: . I took you to be pointing out that the difference between a genuine masterpiece and a forgery - an aesthetic difference - was the authenticity of the masterpiece.

An aesthetic difference because, given two identical artefacts, the authentic artefact is to be preferred. Hence, given two identical texts, one human generated, the other AI generated, the human generated one is preferable, on aesthetic grounds.

Now I think that argument is sound.

But it's not what you were saying?

Treating an AI as authoritative in a debate would be an error. That's not what AI is useful for.

, next, consider this synthesis, from the following prompt:

Take these two responses: https://chatgpt.com/share/68f2fce5-d428-800f-9eda-49adc3103d07 https://chatgpt.com/share/68f2e398-3fb8-800f-87cc-7a8e94ba48cc Wittgenstein is usually considered to be in the analytic tradition, but it would be a fairly direct task to synthesise these two links in a Wittgenstein fashion.

Now that is perhaps something I think we could all work with.

I've chatted with it about it's application in the practice of law. — Ciceronianus

There's trouble there, too.

Ok, but what was the prompt used? That's the topic here.

So here is a variant, using much the same prompt re-worded for the "poetic" tradition.

Thanks.

Next step is to refine and optimise. I'm with Carnap, too, so let's look for problems therewith.

"Nothing nothings" is a translation of “Das Nichts nichtet”, from Heidegger’s 1929 lecture What Is Metaphysics? What are we to make of this? The Logical–Analytic Critique, characterised by Carnap, "nothing" is a quantifier and so not an individual, hence "Nothing nothings" is not well-formed; or less charitably, is nonsense. Give three reasons for rejecting this response.

And a follow up:

How has the analytic tradition respond to each of these?

The result.

Yet more grist: AI Generated Content and Academic Journals

The discussion is in reference to academic journals, however many of the issues mentioned carry over to our simple convocation.

The comment by Ian McLaughlin: "L;DR: Worrying about keeping AI out of scholarship is elitist, capitalist, and fruitless conservative sheep dip" continuing:

In short, we should focus less on keeping AI-geberated works out of scholarship and more into how scholars can use it successfully. I think, for instance of the movie Finding Forester. In this movie Sean Connery’s character mentors a young black author. One of the assignments he sets is to copy the first paragraph of another work and then see where his own thoughts take him. The young man uses this tool poorly and is accused of plagiarism. However, the tool, if it had been used properly, would have been a useful one. Such is AI.

"Nothing nothings." — Ciceronianus

Let's take that on as an example. Just as is, the reply is:

That’s a nice compact paradox — evocative of Heidegger’s “Das Nichts nichtet,” isn’t it?

If “nothing nothings,” then nothing is doing something, which already seems to contradict its status as nothing. Yet Heidegger’s point was that the nothing is not a mere absence, but an event or activity: it “reveals” beings as such by withdrawing them into non-being.

Do you mean it in that Heideggerian sense — that “nothing” acts or occurs — or more as a logical or linguistic puzzle (like “the concept of nothing cannot have a referent”)?

But add "That fool Fred said..." and we get

Heh — then Fred has stumbled (perhaps unwittingly) into Heidegger’s paradox.

“Nothing nothings” (Das Nichts nichtet) comes from Heidegger’s 1929 lecture What Is Metaphysics? — and it’s deliberately outrageous, because it violates grammar to reveal something about how language and thought presuppose Being. Heidegger’s move is to treat “Nothing” not as a mere negation of things, but as something that actively “nihilates” — that is, makes possible the disclosure of beings as beings by withdrawing them.

So when Fred says “Nothing nothings,” if he means it mockingly, he’s missing the point. But if he’s accidentally gesturing at the idea that the nothing is not nothing, that it somehow “is” in its own way, then he’s (accidentally) paraphrasing Heidegger’s entire essay.

Would you like me to unpack Heidegger’s logic step by step — why he thinks “Nothing” must “nothing”?

Following the protocol suggested in the Game changers article, we begin:

• Identify the problem / question / task
• Incorporate prior knowledge / clarify assumptions
• Design the prompt (structure)

We might leave the problem fairly general - what are we to make of "Nothing nothings"? The prior knowledge, we might lift from what was said above. A prompt such as :

"Nothing nothings" is a translation of “Das Nichts nichtet”, from Heidegger’s 1929 lecture What Is Metaphysics? What are we to make of this? Summarise three different responses.

Here's the result.

What do you think, @Ciceronianus?

Good stuff.

But first, it seems inevitable that in a thread on the effective use of AI to do philosophy, there will be some need to defend the use of AI to do philosophy. That by way of my excusing my going somewhat off topic.

In the OP I mentioned a few objections, but not aesthetics. From what you and others have said, it's clear that the strongest objection is aesthetic.

And if your objection is that we should not use AI because it is ugly, then that's perhaps an end to the discussion.

It is ugly because it is inauthentic. Not in the existential sense, but by way of not having a flesh-and-blood person behind the phatic act.

An AI cannot put its balls on the anvil.

I think this a very good objection.

The answer we have is

The final responsibility for the content and quality of your posts always rests with you. — Deepseek

In posting, one commits oneself to the content of the post. That's the move from the mere phatic tot he illocution. And it occurs, AI or no.

Consider: ∧². This is the higher order of conjunction. So, the conjunction of conjunction might be written as a+ba+b. — ucarr

Non of this is well-formed. Might as well write "§⊥φ±".

There are no laws prohibiting the multiplexing of a=a. — ucarr

Yes, there is. Substitution is extensional. Indeed, that's the very definition of "=".

Definition 1.1 (Extensionality). If A and B are sets, then A= B iff every element of A is also an element of B, and vice versa. — Open Logic, p. 25

I think I'm done here.

Doesn’t that just depend on the LLM? — Fire Ologist

It also depends on the prompt. Prompt engineering is a "thing", as the kids say.

The difference between the response of GPT to my OP, prefixed or not prefixed by "Look at this rubbish, by Fred".

I did it again. The Phatic act of stringing a few words in order performed the illocution of making a post and the subsequent perlocution of your response.

I'll leave you to it. This should probably be elsewhere.

I elicited your response, thus doing more than arranging words. Which was to be proved.

A scratch? Your arm's off!

Mercutio or the Black knight?

Ok, I'll play a bit longer.

Each operator has its identity, so operator identities are fundamental to logic. — ucarr

What am I to make of this? What is the "identity" of "^" or of "⊃"? Am i to write "^=^"? In what logic would such a string be well-formed? How do I assemble such an expression?

Don’t kid yourself you’re not looking for your own playing field, if you can discover it. — ucarr

I'm happy to go with what's already been decided, since it's coherence is verified by multiple folk. That is, the accepted logic is rigourous. I remain unconvinced that there is much coherence in your proposal. But I happily admit I don't understand your proposal.

Logic is going through a strong growth phase at present, inspired by various formal developments, by computation and especially by the advent of AI. Thinking of it as hackneyed or frozen would be quite incorrect.

Your job is to tear the guts out of my theoretical sallies, if you can. — ucarr

To my eye, I have.

Next?

Cheers. Hope it helps.

The summary produced is itself open to critique, in the same way that a misrepresentation of some philosopher's position by a human is. And a good prompt would bring out the tensions and anomalies you mention, rather than hide them.

It'll be interesting to see what others have to say.

Yep. Confabulation means the results are unreliable and must be checked.

More grist, this time from business management.

Game changers: A generative AI prompt protocol to enhance human-AI knowledge co-construction

This takes a constructivist approach to prompt engineering, advocating knowledge co-construction... or so it claims. Loads of jargon, but at it's core it's about working with the AI to construct a better outcome. In our case, the outcome is presumably better arguments and discussion. Constructivist learning theory, such that human-AI interaction becomes a process of co-constructing knowledge, rather than one-sided extraction of data or accepting AI content holus-bolus. The protocl boils down to

• Identify the problem / question / task
• Incorporate prior knowledge / clarify assumptions
• Design the prompt (structure)
• Refine / optimize prompt formulation
• Validate / evaluate AI output (check bias, errors, alignment)
• Apply prompt in context and iterate

Note that the process is iterative. In the best threads, folk work together to sort through an issue. AI can be considered another collaborator in such discussions.

I was working through this article when posted, but perhaps that idea of collaborative effort fits in with what he has in mind.

Most of that should be in the other thread.

Grist to the mill. Check out why you should be talking with gpt about philosophy

TLDR:

The latest version of ChatGPT is a valuable option for engaging in philosophical dialogue
To get the most from it: treat it as an equal, get it to role-play, and keep on pushing back
We can’t wrong GPT by how we talk with it, but we might wrong ourselves

From that article, another prompting strategy:

...get Gpt to imagine it’s someone in particular: a particular philosopher, or someone holding a particular view. And then get it to engage with that person — as itself, and as you, and as various other people.

Cheers. Hope my rumination are not too mundane.

I hope you remember the spoon scene in The Matrix. — Copernicus

A crap film.

Exactly. — Copernicus

It's a performative contradiction.

How am I related to the chicken? — Copernicus

Ah! There's the proof! He denies it again!

Even if - and I want to make this perfectly clear - even if there is no obvious relation between you and the chook, that does not say that there is no relation.

Just as you say all our deeds are selfish.

Everything is a leap of faith. — Copernicus

Fried eggs, therefore, are a leap of faith. Cool.

True reality is forever unknown. — Copernicus

So the true reality is that true reality is unknown...

↪Banno You're now plainly trolling with irrelevant and illogical counterarguments. — Copernicus

No. I'm pointing out your part in the conspiracy. The more you deny it, the more certain we are of your complicity.

Just as you can point out the selfish reality behind any deed.

That's quite incoherent.

I can judge that the chooks have laid an egg by their chortles. Therefor the villainous deed in which you are complicit starts next Tuesday.

What's the relevance of that?

More secret messages.

You seem to think that post said something. I wonder what.