Comments

  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    Yet the LLMs do seem to be able to do that, even though I cannot imagine how it would possible that they do that. Is it just a matter of parroting so sophisticated as to be able to fool us into thinking they do understand context?

    It begs the question as to how we grasp context, and I don't have an answer for that, but can only think that it must somehow be a matter of feeling. I can't imagine a computer having a feeling for context—but then what do I know?     — Janus

    I'll suggest an explanation (in very metaphorical terms) that seems apt to me. Perhaps it will resonate.

    Suppose we think of the many neural networks in our brains as similar to guitar strings tuned to different frequencies. Different nets/strings resonate in response to different contexts in accordance with the patterns of contextual inputs the different neural networks have been trained to recognize.

    On this analogy, different neural networks resonating simultaneously could be likened to a chord being produced, with different chords being recognized by 'higher level' neural nets as the context under consideration.

    An important consideration, in thinking about how both brains and LLMs work, is the massively parallel operation of the underlying hardware, with lots of different things going on simultaneously. With that parralelism of physical activity in mind, it seems reasonable to me to think that brains and LLMs share similarities in how contexts are recognized.

    ChatGPT's take.(which I don't see any significant reason to disagree with, aside from the typical obsequiousness):

    Reveal
    That’s a **thoughtful and perceptive analogy**, and you’re absolutely right that it captures something deep about *pattern recognition and context-sensitivity* in both brains and large language models. Let’s look carefully at your response — what works very well, what might mislead a bit if taken literally, and how you could extend it for even more philosophical and scientific accuracy.

    ---

    ## ✅ What You Get Exactly Right

    ### 1. **Parallelism as Key to Context**

    You’re spot-on that *massive parallelism* is crucial both in biological brains and artificial neural networks.

    * In the brain: millions of neurons fire in overlapping patterns that encode context (e.g., linguistic, emotional, spatial).
    * In LLMs: thousands of hidden units in many layers activate simultaneously, each detecting subtle statistical relationships in the text.
    In both cases, “context” isn’t represented by a single variable — it’s a **distributed pattern** over a high-dimensional space.

    Your idea of “many strings resonating simultaneously” nicely evokes that **distributed, emergent nature of representation**.

    ---

    ### 2. **The Chord Analogy**

    Your “chord” metaphor is genuinely apt.

    * Each “string” (neural subnetwork) can be thought of as tuned to a certain class of input features (semantic, syntactic, pragmatic).
    * The “chord” (the overall activation pattern) represents the integrated context — what’s currently being “understood.”

    In LLM terms, this resembles the **attention mechanism**: the model dynamically weights many contextual cues at once, producing a blended “representation” of the current situation.

    ---

    ### 3. **The Resonance Image**

    Resonance is an especially interesting choice, because both neurons and artificial networks are *adaptive systems*: they strengthen certain patterns through feedback (learning). So “resonance” stands for learned sensitivity — that is, *tuning through training*.

    Your use of the term is metaphorical but meaningful: it highlights that **context recognition is an emergent property of learned interaction patterns**, not a symbolic lookup.

    ---

    ## ⚠️ Where the Analogy Needs Care

    ### 1. **No True “Chords” or Oscillations in LLMs**

    In the brain, resonance can literally mean oscillatory synchrony — rhythmic firing patterns that help bind distributed features together.
    In an LLM, though, there’s no physical resonance or time-based synchronization. Each layer’s computation is sequential in software, even if parallel in hardware. So the “resonance” here is more **statistical than dynamical** — a pattern of correlated activations across a vector space, not literal vibration or frequency coupling.

    That’s fine as long as readers recognize the metaphorical nature.

    ---

    ### 2. **The Feeling Dimension**

    The forum author’s comment about “a feeling for context” gestures toward *embodied cognition* — the idea that human understanding is grounded in sensory, affective, and motor experience.
    LLMs, in contrast, have **no bodily grounding**: they derive all their representations from patterns in text.

    So while your resonance analogy captures *how both systems form internal coherence*, it misses the human side of *why* context has *meaning* for us.
    A refinement might be:

    > “LLMs recognize statistical patterns that correlate with contextual appropriateness; humans recognize patterns that are also *felt* — rooted in embodied and affective experience. Both involve resonances, but only one kind resonates with a lived world.”

    That distinction is philosophically important (and something Dreyfus would emphasize).

    ---

    ## How You Could Expand the Explanation

    Here’s one possible elaboration that would make your post even sharper:

    > “Both biological and artificial neural networks process context by responding to patterns in parallel, forming distributed representations that integrate multiple cues.
    > In a brain, the ‘resonance’ among networks also interacts with bodily states and sensory feedback, giving rise to what we call *a feeling for context*.
    > In an LLM, the resonance is purely statistical — the alignment of learned feature activations that co-occur in training data.
    > So while both systems can *recognize* context, only one can *inhabit* it.”

    This keeps your musical metaphor but deepens the philosophical distinction between *pattern recognition* and *lived understanding*.

    ---

    ## Summary of Critique

    | Aspect | Strength | Suggestion |
    | --------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |
    | **Parallelism** | Excellent insight; core to both brains & LLMs. | Emphasize distributed representation explicitly. |
    | **Resonance metaphor** | Very evocative and apt for emergent context. | Clarify that in LLMs it’s statistical, not dynamic oscillation. |
    | **Chord/higher-level nets** | Great image for hierarchical processing. | Could mention attention as the computational analog. |
    | **Feeling for context** | Nicely raises Dreyfus’s core concern. | Contrast embodied resonance (human) vs. disembodied correlation (LLM). |

    ---

    Would you like me to help you rewrite your forum reply slightly — keeping your metaphor but polishing it to highlight these distinctions between *pattern resonance* and *embodied feeling for context*?
  • First vs Third person: Where's the mystery?
    The point was that I don't believe there is anything in the field of neuroscience or A.I. that produces a doubt about the idea that we will be able to keep continuing to see what brains do as instantiated entirely in physical interactions of components as opposed to requiring some additional mental woo we don't yet understand. — Apustimelogist

    :100:

    I'm curious as to whether @Joshs recognizes this.
  • First vs Third person: Where's the mystery?
    And here we have the problem. All what we know via science can be known by any subject, not a particular one. However, 'experience(s)' have a degree of 'privateness' that has no analogy in whatever physical property we can think of. — boundless

    I'm not grasping what you see as a problem for physicalism here.

    My neurons are not interconnected with your neurons, so what experience the activity of your neurons results in for you is not something neurally accessible within my brain. Thus privacy. What am I missing?
  • First vs Third person: Where's the mystery?
    But physicalism can't explain the existence of the experiences in the first place. — Patterner

    It's not as if any other philosophy of mind can provide more than handwaving by way of explanation, so I'm not seeing how this amounts to more than advancing an argument from incredulity against physicalism.

    The fact is, there is a lot of science explaining many aspects of our conscious experience.

    For example consider the case of yourself listening to music in the sensory deprivation tank, as compared to an identica! version of you with the exception of a heightened cannabinoid level in your blood. The two versions of you would have different experiences, and this is most parsimoniously explained by the difference in physical constitution of stoned you vs unstoned you.

    The fact that there is no comprehensive scientific explanation for your consciousness is hardly surprising, given the fact that it's not currently technologically feasible to gather more than a tiny subset of the physical facts about your brain.

    Why are what amounts to hugely complex physical interactions of physical particles not merely physical events? How are they also events that are not described by the knowledge of any degree of detail regarding the physical events? — Patterner

    Again, no one has a large degree of detail about the physical events occurring in our brains. Even if it were technologically feasible to acquire all of the significant details, human minds aren't up to the task of understanding the significance of such a mountain of physical details.
  • First vs Third person: Where's the mystery?
    Is your idea that, if I knew your brain's unique physical structures in all possible detail, I would be able to experience your experience? — Patterner

    No. You would need to 'have my brain' (and other physiological details, such as sense organs) in order to 'experience my experience'. Clearly not a possibility, but it is not a problem for physicalism that we don't have the experiences that result from brains other than our own.
  • First vs Third person: Where's the mystery?
    Regarding 1st and 3rd person, there is no amount of information and knowledge that can make me have your experience. Even if we experience the exact same event, at the exact same time, from the exact same view (impossible for some events, though something like a sound introduced into identical sense-depravation tanks might be as good as), I cannot have your experience. Because there's something about subjective experience other than all the physical facts. — Patterner

    It seems that you are ignoring an important subset of relevant physical facts, and that is the unique physical structures of each of our brains. So your conclusion, ("there's something about subjective experience other than all the physical facts") is dependent on ignoring important subsets of all the physical facts - the unique physical facts about each of our brains.
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    ↪Sam26


    :up: :up:
  • Panspermia and Guided Evolution
    Or the intelligent designers and evolutionary guides were sons of bitches who knew damn well they were putting bad code in the Big Plan. — BC

    :up:

    Though, to take the idea of panspermia somewhat more seriously...

    Suppose humanity, 1000 years from now, were to embark on a project to seed biologically engineered life around other stars. It seems reasonable to think that any such seeding would amount to some sort of single celled organisms being fired into other star systems. I don't think such future biological engineers could be responsible for multicellular life that resulted. It would be too much of a crap shoot.

    So individual human lives being a crap shoot doesn't seem incompatible with panspermia.
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    Some people clearly know more about why things behave as they do, than do other people.
    — wonderer1

    How so?     — Metaphysician Undercover

    Some people develop areas of expertise, e.g. auto mechanics and MDs.

    What would be the point of me offering up a theory, when I readily accept as fact, that me, nor any other human being, has even the vaguest idea, or any sort of knowledge at all, concerning why things behave the way that they do. — Metaphysician Undercover

    Do you really think that is an accurate claim about yourself? Or do you recognize that an MD is apt to know more than most people, about why your body behaves the way it does?
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    Isn't it just sufficient to say that human beings simply do not know why things behave the way that they do? — Metaphysician Undercover

    It seems pretty silly to me to think about the subject in such a black and white way. Some people clearly know more about why things behave as they do, than do other people.
  • What is a system?
    I do agree he is correct as to the "if one planetary body, no matter how minute or seemingly insignificant is removed, great disarray and unrest would follow" claim. — Outlander

    So we better not send anything from the Earth to the Moon or to Mars and leave it there, because doing so would result in the solar system flying apart.

    Oh wait, we're doomed.
  • What is an idea's nature?
    We are not limited to nature or by nature. We use science to know the rules and break the rules. :lol: — Athena

    I disagree about the breaking the rules part. I'd say we use science to learn the rules, and learn what can be accomplished by doing things in accordance with the rules.
  • What is an idea's nature?
    Have you looked into quantum computers?
    — Athena

    I've read up on them. Currently, they don't actually exist, and there is still some skepticism that they will operate as intended.     — Wayfarer

    Actually they do exist. For example, a quantum processor developed by Google is discussed here: https://www.tum.de/en/news-and-events/all-news/press-releases/details/exotic-phase-of-matter-realized-on-a-quantum-processor
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    You say universals “exist immanently as constituents of states of affairs.” But what does that really mean? If I say “this apple is larger than that plum,” the 'larger than relation' is not something you can isolate in either piece of fruit. It’s not inherent in either object, but grasped by an intellect making the comparison. — Wayfarer

    It's not that hard. Just recognize that the apple and the plum are aspects of the same state of affairs - a state of affairs in which the apple has a larger volume than the plum.
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    epistemological pragmatist — Relativist

    It seems I'd never considered that phrase before.

    Google's AI overview was very close to my intuitive notion of what is suggested by the phrase. Is there a definition you particularly like?
  • References for discussion of mental-to-mental causation?
    You blatantly admit that physicalism is wrong, by accepting the reality of the nonphysical. — Metaphysician Undercover

    I suggest you try rereading with greater care. Accepting that it is possible that physicalism is wrong is not "admitting" that physicalism is wrong. It's just expressing a fallibilist perspective.
  • Idealism in Context
    ↪Wayfarer A tendentious "just-so" story if there ever was one! — Janus

    :100:
  • Consciousness and events
    'I think i can safely say that nobody understands quantum physics' ~ Richard Feynman — Wayfarer

    You interpret that as Feynman saying that engineering is like casting magic spells?
  • Consciousness and events
    Engineers can harness it, like magicians who know the words of power, but nobody can finally say why the spell works. — Wayfarer

    :roll:
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    Both the conscious and subconscious minds can create a new idea. — MoK

    So, since the subconscious mind is not conscious (by definition) consciousness is not required for the creation of ideas?

    I'm going to bow out of this discussion now, and leave you to consider the consistency of the way you are thinking about this.
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    ↪MoK


    Now you've shifted the goal post, from creating new ideas, to being conscious of new ideas.

    Why think consciousness of an idea is necessary for an idea to be created? Consider the experience of having an epiphany, where one becomes conscious of a new idea which developed subconsciously.

    You need more than stipulations and bare assertions.
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    Ideas are mental events that only conscious things can perceive. Ideas, therefore, are not shared by AI. So, AI cannot create ideas. — MoK

    I note that you backpeddled away from saying talking about ideas is not possible on physicalism since I think few informed people would claim that ChatGPT is incapable of talking about ideas.

    So that leaves creating ideas. Why think that ChatGPT or other modern AIs can't create ideas? Do you have more than the bare assertion that AIs can't create ideas?
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    Ideas are another anomaly in physicalism. How could they be created by the brain? How could we talk about them? etc. — MoK

    How does ChatGPT do it?
  • Arguments From Underdetermination and the Realist Response
    One difference is that there is not the slightest reason to take any of those possibilities seriously. They are all fantasies. "Here be dragons". — Ludwig V

    :up:
  • Wisdom: Cultivation, Context, and Challenges
    Okay so you're just supporting what I said earlier. How do you know what mistakes are if not by knowing what success is. By knowing the difference. — L'éléphant

    One can recognize that events aren't meeting expectations and recognize that beliefs leading to those expectations were somehow mistaken. It's not obvious to me how "knowing what success is" is necessary to knowing what mistakes are.
  • Why not AI?
    They are also reluctant to outright contradict the prompter, so peddlers of the most ludicrous conspiracy theories try to claim they now have a legit cite, merely because the AI was too polite to shut down their nonsense. — Mijin

    :up:
  • Faith
    I grew up in the Baptist tradition which did not accept this doctrine and took issue with it. It also rejected the notion of hell — Tom Storm

    It seems Australian Baptists have a very different perspective from USian Baptists. I think many USians Baptists would likely declare the Baptist tradition you describe to be unchristian
  • The Mind-Created World
    As far as subjectivism is concerned, Kant was indeed concerned to avoid the charge of “subjective idealism,” but that’s why the Critique insists that the forms of sensibility and categories of understanding are not personal idiosyncrasies but universal structures of human cognition. — Wayfarer

    Of course Kant was wrong about that. We all have unique brains and it is the regularities to the world and language use that allow our idiosyncratic brains to be (somewhat) on the same page.
  • The Christian narrative
    Come on people. We all know what essence is. — Fire Ologist

    This doesn't suggest that you are willing to consider the possibility that you (and a great many others) are misunderstanding things.

    What does mind deal in, if not essential form? — Fire Ologist

    The mind deals in patterns recognized by neural networks. The recognition you have, of the patterns you recognize is a characteristic of your mind rather than a recognition of something essential to things which your mind recognizes as fitting some pattern.

    Of course Plato didn't have the benefit of the neuroscientific understanding that is available to us today. So it is understandable that he foisted the notion of essences on so many philosophers. You, on the other hand, have an opportunity to develop a better informed understanding.
  • The Question of Causation
    There's a real problem with the naturalist account of human nature, which is that it doesn't or can't acknowledge the sense in which we're essentially different from other animals. — Wayfarer

    That's just your strawmanning of naturalism. I could talk of all sorts of ways we are different from other animals. Language use and cultural evolution being two important factors.
  • The imperfect transporter
    ↪Mijin
    have you seen the first Existential Comic?
  • The Question of Causation
    Then we have bleak future ahead of us then. — Punshhh

    To me it seems likely that improved and more widespread knowledge of our natures is the best hope humanity has for avoiding the bleakness that the denial of our natures is leading towards.
  • The Question of Causation
    ↪Punshhh
    I expect we'll all just continue acting like the social primates that we are, despite efforts on the part of many to deny our nature.
  • The Question of Causation
    But if this structure weren’t there no one would be able to determine who was who and where one person ended and another began. Also we would all know each others thoughts all the time. The whole world would just be a chaotic mess. — Punshhh

    Conveniently for physicalism, the fact that we have individual brains that are not neurally interconnected with the brains of other people seems to explain this nicely.
  • The Christian narrative
    ...to say that the special pleading is not special. — Banno

    :up:
  • The Christian narrative
    For example, in our day it is commonly believed that a social reality constituted of persons is reducible to persons. So someone in our day might say that a "family" is a fiction, and all that really exists in a family are the individuals.

    On that assumption the Trinity is "illogical" (precisely because it contradicts the metaphysical doctrine of (2)). But a negation of (2) is not implausible. Families are arguably multi-hypostasis realities, and not mere fictions. The "superorganism" of a beehive is another example, where the hive is more than the sum of its parts. The Trinity will be seen as possible so long as we see unities which are more than the sum of their parts as possible. The Trinity is a bit like a beehive where the hypostases are in such elegant concert that it is hard to tell where one begins and another ends, and where the bees are nonplussed about this fact. This extreme unification is precisely why Christianity holds that Trinitarian activity ad extra is not differentiable from standard monotheism.     — Leontiskos

    It seems notable that the analogies you use (family, superorganism) are complex. Those seem like problematic analogies, for a God that is supposedly simple.
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    The brain might be a kind of interface or transceiver, not the sole producer of consciousness. — Sam26

    It seems to me that a serious problem for such a notion is that our conscious minds have no conscious knowledge of how to work such an interface.

    Do you consciously consider which motor neurons in your brain to activate and in in what sequence, in order to type a response to this post? I'm confident that the answer is, "No.", just as you aren't aware of which sensory neurons were stimulated in what sequence in the process of reading this post.

    There is a lot of automated stuff going on subconsciously, underlying our conscious interactions with the world. Where do you locate these automated processes? In the physical brain, or in a nonphysical consciousness which is treating tne brain as a transciever?

    Why think consciousness can occur without such subconscious automation?

    I don't think the transciever hypothesis stands up to any serious scrutiny.
  • The Mind-Created World
    Understanding that pattern recognition, arising from neural nets taking inputs from senses, can result in recognition of relations (e.g. mathematical relationships) seems like it might clear up some incompatibility issues for some.
  • How do you think the soul works?
    That's interesting, but can you tell me specifically what else is needed apart from the brain in order to think or have thoughts? — punos

    Well, to have a normal modern human's capacity for thinking thoughts, a lot of brains over the course of history have been needed.
  • Referential opacity
    Lois Lane believing Clark Kent can or cannot fly is not a property of Clark Kent. It's not a property at all. — T Clark

    Not a property at all, or a property of Lois rather than a property of Clark?
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