[ExI] GPT-4 on its inability to solve the symbol grounding problem

Wed Apr 12 21:40:32 UTC 2023

I'm sorry if I insulted philosophers. I make an exception for Max More that
is one of the few philosophers that doesn't talk nonsense and I truly
admire.
Giovanni

On Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 2:36 PM Giovanni Santostasi <gsantostasi at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> *In the same paragraph, Nagel states that he does not deny that mental
> states can be causal, which means he is not advancing epiphenomenalism. I
> also don't see that it follows. His argument is only that subjective
> experience or qualia cannot be fully reduced to or explained by objective
> third party descriptions alone. Subjective experience has a first person
> element that defies any third person description in the language of science
> or functions or philosophy in general for that matter. This is what is
> meant by the explanatory gap.*
> Or everything in the mind is qualia or nothing is qualia. Why the redness
> or red is more difficult to explain than me thinking about how to calculate
> the square root of a number? I really do not get it.
> Yes, there are mysteries like existence in general and the fact we
> perceive the world in a certain way. That the miriads of neurons somehow
> unify and pronounce "We are an I".
> It is cool, beautiful, interesting and fascinating. But there is no
> explanatory gap.
>
> Actually, let me put it upside down. THE EXPLANATION IS THE GAP, or the
> the GAP IS THE EXPLANATION.
>
> What I mean with that. I tried many times both with Gordon and Brent. The
> power of science is in the ability to extract what is fundamental and what
> is not in understanding some phenomenon. For example, when I drop an object
> on the ground what is essential is that there is an acceleration that acts
> on the object (we can later explore what causes the acceleration and so
> on). But this is the essential fact. Yes, there are complications like the
> presence of wind, air and so on. But the essence of the phenomenon of an
> object falling near the earth is that it seens there is a constant
> acceleration (approximately) near the surface of the earth.
> This is how Galileo investigated the world and this is how science came
> about. Oh, we also use math to describe most of reality.
>
> But some one could object and say "But what the presence of air and wind?
> If I really do the experiment in real life I see that a piece of paper
> floats and a feather flies away if there is wind and so on and on". It is
> complex, the simple idea that there is constant acceleration near the
> surface of the earth doesn't capture the entire picture, there is an
> explanatory gap !
> Such a person doesn't undestand how science works.
>
> I can always introduce all the complications you want. I can model for the
> presence of air, of wind or anything else you want. But the essence of the
> phenomenon of a falling object near the earth is that there is what seems a
> roughly constant acceleration of a given value.
> The gap or difference between the abstraction and the complexity of the
> real phenomenon is where the EXPLANATION, the understand really is.
>
> I have used also the analogy of the MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY. Usually
> people mention this fact as a limitation, meaning if one looks at a map you
> would not be able to experience the real territory. If you look at the
> picture of a beautiful girl you don't know how it is to kiss her or talk
> with her about quantum physics. I use this analogy to explain what science
> is all about. It is about making maps. There is power in maps. Their power
> is the abstraction. It is showing what is essential. They are MODELS.
> Science is about models, people.
>
> To me when people mention the EXPLANATORY GAP is basically screaming*
> "But the map is not the territory (they use the analogy in the opposite of
> how I use it, as a limitation, the bug not the feature) ! *I touch this
> blue line here that you say it represents a river but my finger doesn't
> become wet !" They want science in a way to recreate the real experience.
> It is science not magic !
>
> The gap is the explanation. The fact we abstact and we extract what the
> real important things are in the brain (as repeated many times these are
> the patterns) is where our knowledge of the brain comes in.
> But then a philosopher, marginalized by the dominance of science, wants
> attention and comes along and screams "but your explanation of how the
> brain works doesn't make me feel what your redness is (using Brent
> definitions) !"
> Or the philosopher screams: "This picture of the beautiful girl doesn't
> kiss me back, it feels like paper and not like the lips of a person !" I
> want my money back !!!! Science cannot explain qualias !
>
> This philosopher is an idiot and has no clue of what is talking about.
> This why he has not a PhD in Physics and he had to settle in a PhD in
> Philosophy.
>
>
> Giovanni
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> On Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 1:55 PM Gordon Swobe via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 11:25 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>> Nagel: We may call this the subjective character of experience. It is not
>>>> captured by any of the familiar, recently devised reductive analyses of the
>>>> mental, for all of them are logically compatible with its absence.
>>>>
>>>
>>> This I do not agree with. This is the thinking that leads one to believe
>>> qualia are epiphenomenal, and inessential, which leads to zombies, and
>>> zombie twins, zombie earths, etc.
>>>
>>
>> In the same paragraph, Nagel states that he does not deny that mental
>> states can be causal, which means he is not advancing epiphenomenalism. I
>> also don't see that it follows. His argument is only that subjective
>> experience or qualia cannot be fully reduced to or explained by objective
>> third party descriptions alone. Subjective experience has a first person
>> element that defies any third person description in the language of science
>> or functions or philosophy in general for that matter. This is what is
>> meant by the explanatory gap.
>>
>> (hmm... I see now that at the end of your message, you acknowledged that
>> his view does not lead to epiphenomenalism.)
>>
>> There is a sense in which I believe discussions about the philosophy of
>> mind are wastes of time. I agree with Nagel that first person
>> subjective experience is real and central to the question and that it
>> cannot be captured fully in or understood in terms of third party
>> descriptions. This is mostly what I mean when I say that I believe
>> subjectieve experience is primary and irreducible.
>>
>> As I've mentioned several times when you have pressed me for answers,
>> the brain/mind is still a great mystery. Neuroscience is still in its
>> infancy. We do not know what are sometimes called the neural correlates of
>> consciousness, or even necessarily that such correlates exist, though I
>> suspect they do. This answer was not good enough for you, and you suggested
>> that I was dodging your questions when actually I was answering honestly
>> that I do know. You wanted me to suppose that the brain/mind is an
>> exception to the rule that understanding comes from statistical
>> correlations, but nobody knows how the brain comes to understand anything.
>>
>> I'm much better at arguing what I believe the brain/mind cannot possibly
>> be than what I believe it to be, and I believe it cannot possibly be
>> akin to a digital computer running a large language model. Language models
>> cannot possibly have true understanding of the meanings of individual words
>> or sentences except in terms of their statistical relations to other words
>> and sentences the meanings of which they also cannot possibly understand.
>> I'm glad to see that GPT-4 "knows" how LLMs work and reports the same
>> conclusion.
>>
>> -gts
>>
>>
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>
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