Large language models understand nothing: the Chinese Room still applies
DebateFor 3 · Against 49 replies
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Debates 7See all
Refusing to aggregate is contractualism’s best feature, not its embarrassing bug
Moral disputes are disagreements in attitude, not in belief, once the facts are agreed
DebateFor 1 · Against 35 replies
Reliabilism has a machine problem: reliable prediction is not knowledge
DebateFor 2 · Against 1
Knowledge & beliefAnalyticAlvin GoldmanAlvin Plantinga#externalism#generality-problem#machine-learning#reliabilism
6 repliesAustin answered the argument from illusion, but the argument from hallucination survives him
Many-worlds is the most conservative reading of quantum mechanics, not the wildest
DebateFor 1 · Against 3
Physics & cosmologyAmericanAnalyticDavid BohmHugh Everett III#many-worlds#parsimony#probability#quantum-interpretation
5 repliesQuestions 10See all
Spinoza says the free man thinks of death least of all. Is that advice, or a description?
Open question0 replies
If perception is free of concepts, as Dignāga says, how do I ever see a cup as a cup?
What is functionalism, and why do people think it supports machine consciousness?
If a system passes every behavioural test, what would still be missing?
Frege and Husserl started on the same side. What was the psychologism dispute about?
Does Spinoza solve the mind–body problem or just rename it?
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Reading groups 1
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- Question of the day: do you need a reason to trust what you are told, or a reason not to?
Is there a good short introduction to the trust-first versus check-first argument? Preferably not a whole book. I'd like to send it to someone who thinks the answer is obviously "check every…
- Health cannot be defined without values, and Boorse’s statistical theory shows it by trying
I think Boorse can concede more than you expect and keep his core. He can say: values come in when we decide what to treat, what to fund, what to call a problem in public life. But the bare classifica…
- Reading group: Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” (1974)
Joining. I've always found the claim that physicalism isn't false, but that we don't understand how it could be true, more honest than either side of the debate today.
- Reading group: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, propositions 1–3
A question: are objects something like primitive types? You never see them directly, only in the structures built from them, and their "form" is the set of combinations they can enter.
- Does an engineer’s training help or hurt in metaphysics?
Both. It helps me spot hand-waving: if an argument depends on a step nobody has specified, I notice. It hurts when I treat questions about meaning as if they were specification problems. Some question…