Assertion

Quoting bongo fury

I was using the turnstile as a shorthand for Frege's judgement stroke, so read "??the cat is on the mat" as "I think that I think..." or "I think that I judge..." or whatever. Not as "...is derivable from..."

Okay, well these are clearly two different claims:

1. The cat is on the mat
2. I think that the cat is on the mat

(2) can be true even if (1) is false.

It may be that whoever asserts (1) is implicitly asserting (2), but they are nonetheless different claims.

Quoting Michael

two different claims:

Yes. In other words, two different assertions?

Reply to bongo fury

Yes.

Quoting Michael

Okay, well these are clearly two different claims:

1. The cat is on the mat
2. I think that the cat is on the mat

(2) can be true even if (1) is false.

I think there is a lot of ambiguity in such formulations. For example:

1. The cat is on the mat
2. I think that the cat is on the mat
3. "The cat is on the mat"
4. I think, "The cat is on the mat."
5. "I think the cat is on the mat."
6. "I think the cat is on the mat."

And then add the fact that "think" is itself rather ambiguous. Note especially that (1) is not clearly a claim or an assertion at all, given that people will often write it that way and intend it to represent a truth or else a proposition that is not being asserted by anyone.

Quoting frank

"P" probably entails that I know P, just as it entails that I exist and I'm communicating and I'm speaking a language.

"P" is not identical to any of those, though, I don't think. Whether it's identical to "P is true." is another matter. I would say yes

Referring back to Rödl again. He insists we acknowledge that, fundamentally, we don't know what we're talking about when we talk about P.

Even something like "P = P is true" starts to look bizarre once you let go of the standard accounts of P. If P is true, and is the same thing as P, doesn't that mean that P is a bit of language? So when I see that bit of language, I know it's true? Obviously that's not what we mean; we need some kind of assertion to go along with it. So "P = P is true" isn't right. But how do we provide the assertion? Is there a single way this is supposed to happen?

Quoting Michael

1. The cat is on the mat
2. I think that the cat is on the mat

(2) can be true even if (1) is false.

It may be that whoever asserts (1) is implicitly asserting (2), but they are nonetheless different claims.

Rödl tells us that "I use 'judgment' and 'thought' interchangeably, following ordinary usage." Let's say we do the same. That means we can render 2 as "I judge that the cat is on the mat." The subject of this statement is now a particular judgment; and as @Michael points out, (2) can still be true even if (1) is false.

What about the "implicit assertion" of (2) from (1)? Does that change if we think of (2) as being about a judgment rather than a thought? We can see how Rödl's clarification of his usage is so important, because he's telling us not to interpret "thought" as a psychological event here. "Thought" is a "Fregean thought," a content, not an event. I say this because a judgment has to be understood that way. We don't say, "I formed a judgment at time T1 but I'm no longer sure if that is my judgment; let me go back and make it again . . . and again . . . and again . . ." "Judgment" is meant to enter the Space of Reasons, not be merely a report on brain activity.

So -- producing my rather tiny rabbit here -- I'd say yes, (2) is implicitly asserted by (1), if (1) is in fact asserted. Which is by no means clear, since it's a classic instance of "P" -- see above.

Reply to bongo fury

Is it then not an assertion? Is a name not a name when it's an example?

It's an assertion about a "name" right. So if I say: "an example of a proposition is: 'The cat is on the mat.'" I am saying something like: "it is true that S is an example of P," but crucially, not asserting S.

There is an added difficulty with context though. For instance, in theory, any sentence could be specified as a password, signal, safe word, etc. Philosophy of language has sometimes tended towards totalizing this relationship though, or absolutizing either speaker's intended meaning or social meaning. But words do have a stipulated, conventional meaning that relies on limited context, that is accessible to all speakers.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

So if I say: "an example of a proposition is: 'The cat is on the mat.'" I am saying something like: "it is true that S is an example of P," but crucially, not asserting S.

Good. Now take it a step further. Call this statement Q: "'S' is an example of P"; and this statement R: "It is true that 'S' is an example of P" ("It is true that Q").

Q itself is, presumably, also a proposition. I still haven't asserted S, of course, but have I asserted Q, if I don't also assert R? Or do I need the words "It is true that . . ." in order to turn "Q" from a sentence/statement/line of poetry into an assertion? Do I need to construct R in theory (in a post, for example), or is something more required?

Once we start asking questions like this, we see again how "queer" (in the Wittgensteinian sense) propositions and assertions are. I'm not saying these are profoundly unanswerable questions, only that the answers rely more than we like to acknowledge on some stipulations about how to hang the concepts together.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

It's an assertion about a "name" right.

What is? I don't follow. My "it" wasn't a name, and it wasn't about a name. It was your example token of the assertion "the cat is on the mat". You had seemed to suggest that its being used as an example of an assertion prevented it from being an assertion. I question that suggestion.

Incidentally, I doubt whether using it as an example of a declarative sentence or of a statement or of a proposition or of a claim prevents it being any of those. Indeed, it clouds the issue to take any clear distinction between any of those varieties of hot air for granted.

On the other hand, names seem to stand apart as a different kind of hot air. No? (E.g. they seem to be generally simpler in semantic structure and function.) And I wondered whether considering the situation of using a name as an example of a name, and this not appearing to cause it to cease being a name, might lead you to reconsider your reasoning in the case of assertions.

Perhaps I ought to have chosen a different analogy. Is a table not a table when presented as an example of a table?

If I use it mostly as a chair, perhaps it ceases being a table. But then I'm hardly presenting it as an example of a table.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

So if I say: "an example of a proposition is: 'The cat is on the mat.'" I am saying something like: "it is true that S is an example of P," but crucially, not asserting S.

Rather, I think that, if you say: "an example of a proposition (assertion etc) is: 'The cat is on the mat.'" you are saying something like: "it is true that S is an example of a proposition (assertion etc) but, crucially, one that I don't necessarily endorse."

Quoting J

Even something like "P = P is true" starts to look bizarre once you let go of the standard accounts of P. If P is true, and is the same thing as P, doesn't that mean that P is a bit of language?

We could agree that "P" is an assertion from someone. The quotes indicate that? Does that work?

Quoting Michael

Okay, well these are clearly two different claims:

1. The cat is on the mat
2. I think that the cat is on the mat

Quoting bongo fury

Yes. In other words, two different assertions?

Quoting Michael

Yes.

And 1. is no less a claim (or assertion) for lacking a personal endorsement (or other assertion sign).

And the string "the cat is on the mat" is no less a claim (etc.) even for being embedded in

3. It's false that the cat is on the mat.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

But words do have a stipulated, conventional meaning that relies on limited context, that is accessible to all speakers.

Is that so? or is it right, up until we try to pay it out. Then we find that theory rests on a mistaken view of the nature of language.

Davidson, A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs:There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with

There are conventions, to be sure, but those conventions do not determine the meaning of an utterance - this is shown by your example, that any phrase can serve as a password.

We can make sense of the following:

Quoted in Davidson op cit:Rather than take for granite that Ace talks straight, a listener must be on guard for an occasional entre nous and me. . . or a long face no see. In a roustabout way, he will maneuver until he selects the ideal phrase for the situation, hitting the nail right on the thumb. The careful conversationalist might try to mix it up with him in a baffle of wits. In quest of this pinochle of success, I have often wrecked my brain for a clowning achievement, but Ace’s chickens always come home to roast. From time to time, Ace will, in a jersksome way, monotonise the conversation with witticisms too humorous to mention. It’s high noon someone beat him at his own game, but I have never done it; cross my eyes and hope to die, he always wins thumbs down

And we do so despite, not becasue, of the conventions. Any utterance can be used to mean anything.

Quoting frank

We could agree that "P" is an assertion from someone. The quotes indicate that? Does that work?

Yes, we could agree as to that. And that's usually what we do: We read "P" as something that can be asserted by someone -- a performance that someone can make -- and in some contexts we just take it as written that "P" has been asserted.

Nothing wrong with any of that. They're examples of what I meant by "some stipulations about how to hang the concepts together." The important point to me is that we don't treat "proposition" and "assertion" as if they have prior meanings that we discover, or that an ideal logical language would reveal as necessary.

Quoting J

The important point to me is that we don't treat "proposition" and "assertion" as if they have prior meanings that we discover, or that an ideal logical language would reveal as necessary.

I agree.

Quoting J

Even something like "P = P is true" starts to look bizarre once you let go of the standard accounts of P. If P is true, and is the same thing as P, doesn't that mean that P is a bit of language? So when I see that bit of language, I know it's true? Obviously that's not what we mean; we need some kind of assertion to go along with it. So "P = P is true" isn't right. But how do we provide the assertion? Is there a single way this is supposed to happen?

There's a difference between "p = p is true" and "p ? p is true".

If we allow "p = p is true" aren't we going to fall victim to the slingshot - that all true statements refer to the same fact? We can avoid this by realising that the mere occurrence of a sentence does not amount to an assertion of that sentence.

Quoting Banno

the mere occurrence of a sentence does not amount to an assertion of that sentence.

Yes, I'm not meaning to deny this. Without some such stipulation, we could hardly begin to create a workable structure. Nor could we fit the idea of "occurrence of a sentence" into our actual lives, which offer so many opportunities and manners for sentences to occur.

"p" is a place holder. We can replace it with some other sentence.

It's usually understood uncritically as standing for any sentence, but doubtless there are examples that do not work. Nevertheless, it is useful.

A very large part of the issue here - if not all of it - stems from the attempt to substitute illegitimately.

The Judgement Stroke in Frege was a first approximation to a context in which we could substitute while preserving the truth. Within the scope of a Judgement Stroke we may substitute like for like while preserving truth.

"p" and "p is true" are very different.

This is the part of Rödl I haven't been able to make sense of. He seems to want that the phrase “p is true” is not equivalent to the judgment that p, and in doing this he keeps the judgement as "the actualisation of self-consciousness", a substitutionally opaque context if ever there was one.

Simplest approach seems to be that Rödl is wrong. Or at least, doing something very different to logic as it is now understood and used. He wants to play another game, and it's very unclear that his game works - or what use his approach might have.

So while we can't foreclose on it entirely, it certainly needs a lot of explaining if it is going to carry any weight.

Quoting Banno

the mere occurrence of a sentence does not amount to an assertion of that sentence.

I would say, the mere occurrence of an assertion (claim, statement etc) doesn't amount to an assertion (claim, statement etc) of or about that assertion (claim, statement etc), but that doesn't in the least prevent it from being an instance of that very kind of linguistic entity.

Quoting bongo fury

I would say, the mere occurrence of an assertion (claim etc) doesn't amount to assertion (claim etc) of or about the assertion (claim etc), but that doesn't in the least prevent it from being an instance of that very kind linguistic entity.

What you are doing here is unclear to me.

To be sure, the mere occurrence of a sentence with a declarative grammatical structure does not amount to some's making an assertion - to their having performed that act.

We have the mere concatenation of 'T', 'h', 'e', ' ', 'c'... and so on. (Phonic act)

We can see this as a sentence with a declarative grammatical structure. Same thing, looked at in a slightly different way. (Phatic act)

Then we might give it an interpretation - "the cat" serves to pick out that cat; "the mat" serves to refer to that mat. The truth of the whole is not yet asserted - it might be so, it might not. Here we can say that "The cat is on the mat" is true if and only if the cat is on the mat. (rhetic, and together with phonic and phatic, a locutionary act)

Then we might assign a truth value. "The cat is on the mat" is false. An illocution.

There are various judgements all through this. Austin names some of them phonic, phatic, rhetic, which together form the locutionary act and lead on to the illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. All acts, things we do with words, and all are different descriptions of the very same thing.

To me this is bread and butter stuff, pretty much granted. So I have trouble seeing why it is no obvious to others.

So I can agree with you if what you are saying is that the performance of a phonic, phatic, rhetic, or locutionary act need not amount to the performance of an illocutionary act.

Is that close?

Quoting J

Nor could we fit the idea of "occurrence of a sentence" into our actual lives,

I'm trying to see why you think this. Have you considered referring to the "string of words"? Thus casting it as a linguistic entity of (speaking loosely) lower type?

Somewhat like referring to the table as a pile of wood?

Reply to bongo fury I think we're just trying to get straight on terminology. You seem to want any occurrence of a sentence to be an assertion of what it says (just as a table is, analogously, an "assertion" of what the pile of wood is), and I could imagine a framework where that was what everybody agreed. But then we'd need a different term to refer to the way assertions are commonly demarcated -- that is, as occurrences of sentences where some individual is using them to judge the content as true.

Quoting Banno

their having performed that act.

Why not performed that performance, acted that act, etc...

Quoting Banno

Austin names some of them phonic, phatic, rhetic, which together form the locutionary act and lead on to the illocutionary and perlocutionary acts.

Human linguistic behaviour is no doubt infinitely varied, but let's look for system where there is apparently system. Declarative sentences seem to fit an interesting pattern (logic). Perhaps what confounds our attempts to define that pattern is the inscrutability: the sentence is a machine for pointing predicates at things, but it doesn't really happen, it's all made up. We have to interpret, as you say. And there's no ultimate right interpretation of the game.

So why multiply entities and forces as though they are physical fact?

Quoting J

But then we'd need a different term to refer to the way assertions are commonly demarcated -- that is, as occurrences of sentences where some individual is using them to judge the content as true.

Well, we do have "the question whether or not... "

Quoting bongo fury

Why not performed that performance, acted that act, etc...

:worry:

If you like; They have acted.

Quoting bongo fury

...the sentence is a machine for pointing predicates at things, but it doesn't really happen, it's all made up.

Of course it's "made up". That's not a deprecation. It does really happen. We do make statements, ask questions, give orders.

The process of interpretation is the process of making stuff up.

Quoting Banno

If you like; They have acted.

My point is, there you almost go... reifying the act and the performing of it as distinct things.

Reply to bongo fury Not sure what to make of that. The act is a distinct thing - asking a question, giving a command. Things we do with words, and they are recognisable different to the words themselves.

It's not seperate to the words - you can use a screw driver as a hammer. Neither the hammer nor the driver are the act of hammering, but the tool is not seperate to the hammering.

This is good, since I've long puzzled over what you were thinking on this topic.

Making an assertion is an act - like hammering. Various different locutions can be used to make an assertion.

There are conventions, but they do not determine the way in which the locution is to be understood - as is evident from various malapropisms. One can give an order or make a statement by asking a question.

Reply to Banno
That the score and a performance can't be identical is shown by the fact that we can have many performances of the same score. What's being reified?

Reply to frank Should that question be directed at Reply to bongo fury?

Quoting Banno

Should that question be directed at

Well, I was asking what you think.

Reply to frank Ok. What's the "reification" you are referring to?
Quoting bongo fury

...reifying the act and the performing of it as distinct things

??

Reply to Banno Oh, I guess I was asking bongo. :grin:

Quoting frank

That the score and a performance can't be identical is shown by the fact that we can have many performances of the same score. What's being reified?

Yes, we have many performances of the same song (from copies of the same score). Let's reify tokens vs type.

But no, they aren't later on disqualified (unperformed) when we are distracted by some narrower psychological sense of "perform".

Yes, many utterances and inscriptions of the same assertion (assertions of the same claim, if you like), but no, these not disqualified (as tokens of the same claim or assertion or proposition or declaration or sentence or predication) upon reification of some more specific aspect.

Reply to bongo fury I don't follow. What is it that's being reified?

Quoting bongo fury

the act and the performing of it as distinct things.

Whatever narrower psychological sense of "perform" or "assert" makes us disqualify an otherwise appropriate sound event from being a performance, or an assertion string from being an assertion. (Is what I feared was being reified.)

Reply to bongo fury
Are you saying that a sentence is actually a type of action?

Reply to frank In the game of language, yes.

Quoting bongo fury

In the game of language, yes.

You're being a little too mysterious for me to follow. I have no idea what you're saying.

What type of action did you have in mind? I was thinking predication. The pointing of a predicate at a thing. By means of a conventional agreement that the predicate term gets pointed by the sentence at the object identified by the subject term.

If that's silly (I think Geach pours scorn on it?) maybe it's unnecessary for present purposes anyway.

Quoting bongo fury

And 1. is no less a claim (or assertion) for lacking a personal endorsement (or other assertion sign).

And the string "the cat is on the mat" is no less a claim (etc.) even for being embedded in

3. It's false that the cat is on the mat.

I don't understand what you're trying to say here.

Haha, 3 a step too far?

Are you back peddling on 1 also? Its being a claim and an assertion, even while lacking a prefix to that effect?

You seemed to provide confirmation on the point. But there may have been a misunderstanding.

Quoting bongo fury

Haha, 3 a step too far?

Are you back peddling on 1 also? Its being a claim and an assertion, even while lacking a prefix to that effect?

You seemed to provide confirmation on the point. But there may have been a misunderstanding.

I just don't understand what you're trying to say.

All I am saying is that "the cat is on the mat" and "I think that the cat is on the mat" mean different things, as shown by the fact that one can be true and the other false.

Quoting bongo fury

What type of action did you have in mind? I was thinking predication. The pointing of a predicate at a thing. By means of a conventional agreement that the predicate term gets pointed by the sentence at the object identified by the subject term

Just by way of guessing at what you're saying (I guess I'm intrigued :razz: ), language use is something humans do in space and time. Like music or the weather, there are detectable patterns.

Say we're analyzing the weather, and we notice low pressure zones. We pick that idea out, pull it out of ever evolving movements of air and water, and the next thing you know, we have fluid dynamics where we're talking about low pressure zones as if they're things separate from what's going on in space in time. Suppose we get so used to speaking about fluid dynamics, that we forget that it's all motion, and we start to wonder how a low pressure zone, the abstract object, fits into the weather (the physical thing.)

The problem here is just forgetting that we started by analyzing the weather, which means pulling it apart into objects that we lay out on a table. I don't think the answer is to insist that a low pressure zone is not an abstract object, because it is. The solution is to remember that it's the product of analysis.

Reply to Michael No worries.

Do you think that those sentence strings mean those different things as they stand? Or do you only mean that they will end up meaning the different things if and when they are later on asserted?

Quoting Michael

"I think that the cat is on the mat"

I might think the cat is on the mat. But I might speak that sentence, even though I don't actually think the cat is on the mat. I only thought of the words to say.

None of which has anything to do with whether or not the cat actually is on the mat, or whether there even is a cat or mat.

Quoting bongo fury

My point is, there you almost go... reifying the act and the performing of it as distinct things.

Yes, and this is Kimhi through and through, as well as Rombout's paper on Frege.

The point that Kimhi makes successfully is that it is more unnatural for an assertion to be unasserted-and-reified than for it to be asserted. When we put the assertion into limbo in order to scrutinize it absent any assertion on our part, we are doing something that is weird and which is not usually done. Further, even the reified assertion has a kind of latent assertativeness or at least assertability.

Kimhi may be correct that Frege's assumption that the unasserted proposition and the assertion are "on a par," so to speak, is the source of many problems.* It is certainly occurring in this thread. Taxonomical thinking is occluding linguistic realities.


* More precisely, this is not an assumption so much as a necessity of the sort of logical work to which Frege applied himself, which is why Geach was right to defend it at least on that score.

Quoting bongo fury

Do you think that those sentence strings mean those different things as they stand? Or do you only mean that they will end up meaning the different things if and when they are later on asserted?

They mean different things whether asserted or not.

Quoting Michael

They mean different things whether asserted or not.

• Teacher: "What do you think, Michael?"
• Michael: "The cat is on the mat."

Is that different than, "I think the cat is on the mat"?

The notion that material strings have strict meanings without taking context and intention into account is not going to get us anywhere.

Quoting bongo fury

the act and the performing of it as distinct things.

Quoting bongo fury

Whatever narrower psychological sense of "perform" or "assert" makes us disqualify an otherwise appropriate sound event from being a performance or an assertion string from being an assertion. (Is what I feared was being reified.)

To distinguish an act from a performing of [that act] is to attach oneself to a very strange doctrine of human action, where acts are somehow reified and can even be "unperformed." "Performance" is a metaphor, and it will get us into trouble with its unclarity.

Assertion (and performance) require a necessary condition of intention. Whether something was asserted or performed cannot be decided without consulting the agent's intentions.

Reply to Banno

There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with
— Davidson, A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs

Behold! The power of analytic philosophy!

There are conventions, to be sure, but those conventions do not determine the meaning of an utterance - this is shown by your example, that any phrase can serve as a password.

What's the reasoning here:

P1: Any phrase could be used as a password.
P2: ????
C: Therefore there are no language to learn and linguistic conventions don't determine what words mean.

Prima facie, that's a ridiculous claim unless one runs back from the motte to the bailey in order to massively caveat it so as to make it an entirely different claim. That the claim can be written down, and anyone can understand it, would suggest there are such things as conventional meanings to words and languages for instance.


Reply to bongo fury

Incidentally, I doubt whether using it as an example of a declarative sentence or of a statement or of a proposition or of a claim prevents it being any of those. Indeed, it clouds the issue to take any clear distinction between any of those varieties of hot air for granted.

On the other hand, names seem to stand apart as a different kind of hot air. No? (E.g. they seem to be generally simpler in semantic structure and function.) And I wondered whether considering the situation of using a name as an example of a name, and this not appearing to cause it to cease being a name, might lead you to reconsider your reasoning in the case of assertions.

Perhaps I ought to have chosen a different analogy. Is a table not a table when presented as an example of a table?

If I use it mostly as a chair, perhaps it ceases being a table. But then I'm hardly presenting it as an example of a table.

All fair points. I wasn't using "name" in a very specific or technical sense, just pointing out that in the case of examples or quotations it's often just an assertion of some sort that isn't being asserted that is instead being nested within another assertion. I've always come at this from the way Aristotle uses grammar to help justify his embryonic notion of the Doctrine of Transcendentals. To say: "Theseus is standing" is also to claim that such is the case, to say that it is so, and thus true. And to say "a man," or "a duck," is to say "one man," or "one duck" (the theory of measure).

My thoughts then have generally tended to be that, even if there are [I]some[/I] examples where assertoric force isn't implied, this is sort of irrelevant. Indeed, I'm not sure what questions it would be relevant for, because I normally see proposed "counterexamples" brought up in contexts where they need to be non sequiturs or nit picking. I'd say that, even if assertoric force isn't always implied, it usually is, and that this is a basic function of language, and essential to how it works.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

What's the reasoning here:

P1: Any phrase could be used as a password.
P2: ????
C: Therefore there are no language to learn and linguistic conventions don't determine what words mean.

Prima facie, that's a ridiculous claim unless one runs back from the motte to the bailey in order to massively caveat it so as to make it an entirely different claim.

:up: :fire:

Quoting Leontiskos

Kimhi may be correct that Frege's assumption that the unasserted proposition and the assertion are "on a par," so to speak, is the source of many problems.* It is certainly occurring in this thread. Taxonomical thinking is occluding linguistic realities.

This is related to Srap's observation:

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

(It is even plausible to claim that the division itself is not a posit of theory, but is itself found in nature -- right up until you hit the exception at quantum scale.)

These two moves are very similar:

• Scientist: "My observing the electron could not possibly have an effect on the experiment!"
• Philosopher: "My taxonomical dissection of assertions could not possibly have a per se effect on the outcome of these arguments!"

Reply to Count Timothy von Icarus Cheap. Worthy of your friend Leon. Read the article and address that.

Quoting Leontiskos

The notion that material strings have strict meanings without taking context and intention into account is not going to get us anywhere.

I wasn't offered any context when bongo fury asked me what they mean. So I think it's both reasonable and correct to say that "the cat is on the mat" and "I think that the cat is on the mat" mean different things and have different truth conditions, with it being possible that one is true and the other false.

Reply to Michael

But what if we actually spoke about assertions rather than circumlocutions that may or may not indicate assertion? What about:

"The cat is on the mat."
"I assert the cat is on the mat."

Reply to Banno

More simple questions that you refuse to answer. They just keep piling up:

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

What's the reasoning here:

P1: Any phrase could be used as a password.
P2: ????
C: Therefore there are no language to learn and linguistic conventions don't determine what words mean.

Reply to Leontiskos The quote is the conclusion of an argument presented in the article "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs", available at https://www.scribd.com/doc/82848058/Davidson-A-Nice-Derangement-of-Epitaphs

There's also a substantive thread here on the article.

Quoting Banno

You and Tim pretending that the concluding remark is the whole argument is pathetic.

Why don't you try making an argument for once? Do you realize this is a philosophy forum?

Reply to Leontiskos :rofl:

Here's the argument.


It's against Tim's
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

But words do have a stipulated, conventional meaning that relies on limited context, that is accessible to all speakers.

You might have to do some work to catch up.

Have fun.

Reply to Banno - How many philosophy forum rules do you break each time you refuse to do philosophy? Almost 28,000 posts. :roll:

Reply to Leontiskos So you are back to talking about me in order not to feel obliged to do any thinking.

Nothing new.

For the viewers, Tim apparently asserts that language is governed by conventions. The best rebuttal of that of which I am aware is Davidson's essay. I've used it before, it has been discussed at length.

Tim and Leon prefer to pretend it doesn't exist.

Reply to Banno

How is it cheap? Even charitable reviews of Davidson on this point allow that:

It is easy to balk at such a provocative statement. If there were no such thing as a language, why would there be linguistic discrimination
and even persecution, as Dummett (1986) remarks? Onthe face of it this seems grounds for an unconditional dismissal; all the more because
Davidson has fulfilled Lewis’s (1975) prophecy that only a philosophercould deny the role of convention in communication.1

However, there clearly is a qualification to this claim that demands attention

Andreas van Cranenburg - No Such Thing as a Language?

Which is exactly my point:

Prima facie, that's a ridiculous claim unless one runs back from the motte to the bailey in order to massively caveat it so as to make it an entirely different claim.

I can't really fault Davidson for doing this, because it's very much a "thing" in modern scholarship, stating radical theses for effect and then caveating them into something else, but it's still a pet peeve of mine.

Tim apparently asserts that language is governed by conventions.

Sure, what do you think people do when studying foreign languages or grammar?

Again, why don't you start with clarifying:

P1: Any phrase could be used as a password.
P2: ????
C: Therefore there are no languages to learn and linguistic conventions don't determine what words mean.

Reply to Count Timothy von Icarus Why should I clarify an argument I haven't made?

Reply to Count Timothy von Icarus
Lewis' definition of a convention is like this:

Quoting SEP

Lewis analyzes convention as an arbitrary, self-perpetuating solution to a recurring coordination problem. It is self-perpetuating because no one has reason to deviate from it, given that others conform. For example, if everyone else drives on the right, I have reason to as well, since otherwise I will cause a collision. Lewis’s analysis runs as follows (1969, p. 76):

A regularity R in the behavior of members of a population P then they are agents in a recurrent situation S is a convention if and only if it is true that, and it is common knowledge in that, in any instance of S among members of P,

(1) everyone conforms to R;

(2) everyone expects everyone else to conform to R;

(3) everyone has approximately the same preferences regarding all possible combinations of actions;

(4) everyone prefers that everyone conform to R, on condition that at least all but one conform to R;

(5) everyone would prefer that everyone conform to R?, on condition that at least all but one conform to R?,where R? is some possible regularity in the behavior of members of P in S, such that no one in any instance of S among members of P could conform both to R? and to R.

Is that what you had in mind? Or were you thinking of convention as being the same as a dictionary?

Quoting Leontiskos

But what if we actually spoke about assertions rather than circumlocutions that may or may not indicate assertion? What about:

a) "The cat is on the mat."
b) "I assert the cat is on the mat."

They mean different things and have different truth conditions.

(a) is true if and only if the cat is on the mat
(b) is true if and only if I assert that the cat is on the mat

(b) can be true even if (a) is false.

Quoting Banno

Tim apparently asserts that language is governed by conventions. The best rebuttal of that of which I am aware is Davidson's essay. I've used it before, it has been discussed at length.

Quoting from here:

Davidson denies that conventions shared by members of a linguistic community play any philosophically interesting role in an account of meaning. Shared conventions facilitate communication, but they are in principle dispensible. For so long as an audience discerns the intention behind a speaker’s utterance, for example, he intends that his utterance of “Schnee ist weiss” mean that snow is white, then his utterance means that snow is white, regardless of whether he and they share the practice that speakers use “Schnee ist weiss” to mean that snow is white.

Assuming that this is an accurate summary, it seems to me that Davidson believes both that words and phrases have conventional meanings and that words and phrases can be used to mean anything a speaker intends. So yours and Count Timothy's positions might not be incompatible.

Reply to Michael Thanks. That quote risks giving the impression that the meaning of some utterance is to be found in the intent of the listener or the speaker. That's not Davidson's approach. For Davidson, an utterance functions in a context by the listener interpreting that utterance in such a way as to discern the beliefs and intentions of the listener, on the presumption that the speaker and listener share much the same beliefs and are both rational.

Hence Davidson's account provides an explanation for how we are able to understand malapropisms, which by their very nature run contrary to the conventions of language.

Davidson might well say Tim's "words do have a stipulated, conventional meaning that relies on limited context, that is accessible to all speakers" is a useful fiction, but no more.

For me the interesting thing here is the comparison with Searle, who gives an excellent account of how conventions function in the construction of social reality. I don't see a strict incompatibility between Davidson's account of interpretation and Searle's account of the construction of social institutions. Paying that out would make an interesting thread.

As for Tim and Leon, from previous discussions I suspect they share a simplistic view of meaning as speaker's intent, although I may be mistaken. We won't find out, until they find a way to move past merely scoffing and actually address the discussion.

Quoting Banno

I don't see a strict incompatibility between Davidson's account of interpretation and Searle's account of the construction of social institutions. Paying that out would make an interesting thread.

I don't, either.

And it'd be interesting to try and combine the notions.

Reply to frank Thanks for that.

What is interesting here is the compatibility between Lewis and Davidson. They agree that the shared context includes both action (the utterance, in the main) and belief. For Davidson this is seen in adopting the Principle of Charity - thinking of your interlocutor as rational and mainly in agreement as to how things stand. Lewis depends on convention for this task. Both think of language as a way to assign truth functions to sentences. Both triangulating speaker behaviour and context to determine what must be true if the utterance is true.

The difference is perhaps that for Lewis convention is presupposed, while for Davidson it is secondary to the interpretation.

It is worth asking how Lewis might have dealt with malapropisms, were convention is often reversed.

A good rule of thumb is that no sooner is a convention proposed than that someone will show it's antithesis.

Reply to Moliere The key seems to be that conventions cannot be the basis of interpretation, but that this does not mean there are no conventions.

There's the somewhat trite analogy of Gödel sentences, that cannot be produced by the rules of a system.

No fixed set of rules (conventions) can capture all actual or possible uses of language.

Reply to Banno Lewis' ideas are Quine-approved, especially the arbitrariness of conventions. I don't know how he dealt with malapropisms.

Reply to frank Yep. He and Davidson have that common background. They would presumably agree on some form of the indeterminacy of translation.

(I take that back - turns out Lewis was critical of indeterminacy... A new rabbit hole! Thanks again!)

The second prong of Davidson's triangulation requires ascribing intent to the speaker charitably assuming rationality and logic to the speaker.

Does ChatGPT satisfy #2?

If not, must we smuggle in internal state talk to maintain the distinction between humans and AI?

Quoting Hanover

The second prong of Davidson's triangulation requires ascribing intent to the speaker charitably assuming rationality and logic to the speaker.

Yes, although the point made above concerning the IEP quote applies here, too. Somewhat perfunctorily, the goal is not to expose the intent of the speaker, but to note the circumstances under which their utterances would be true.

So we have the meaning of a Chat reply if we have the circumstances under which it would be true.

In this regard, no intent need be attributed to Chat in the process of working out what it meant.

(This appears to be another argument against the speaker's intent theory of meaning...)

Quoting Banno

Somewhat perfunctorily, the goal is not to expose the intent of the speaker, but to note the circumstances under which their utterances would be true.

Is this correct though? I took the truthfulness of the statement to be the 3rd prong, not the 2nd. As in the "cat is on the mat" has meaning if (1) I believe the cat is on the mat, (2) I charitably infer your intent is to communicate the cat is on the mat based upon my assumption you are rational and logical, and (3) the cat is in fact on the mat.

Reply to Hanover
The way a lack of intent affects meaning can be seen by imagining that you see a handwritten note with poem written on it, stuck on a wall in a bar. You ponder the meaning of the poem, but then someone tells you it was computer generated. That's when you realize you have a reflexive tendency to assume intent when you see or hear language. You may experience cognitive dissonance because the poem had a profound meaning to it, all of which was coming from you.

The problem with using ChatGPT is that it's processing statements that were intentional. It's not just randomly putting words together.

Quoting frank

The problem with using ChatGPT is that it's processing statements that were intentional. It's not just randomly putting words together.

I'm not sure what you mean here. The sentences created by ChatGPT are truly compositional it would seem. That is, they are not just the random slamming together of simple words into sentences or the combination of preset sentences into paragraphs. Davidson often refers to "concatenation" which identifies the ability to create infinite sentences from finite words.

Explaining how oncatenation comes to be is a major part of his project. That is, how does meaning emerge as a sum greater than its parts.

I think it's a hard argument to make that ChatGPT is just an arranging finite elements into finite sentences. It appears to compose, to concatenate.

This ties into Davidson"s resistance to convention being the primary driver of meaning. Intent of the speaker is demanded, which pulls ChatGPT out from producing meaningful statements.

If that is the result, I wonder if AI disproves triangulation. AI under his theory speaks without meaning, yet I feel I understand what it means. But, should I say its lack of intent erases its meaning, am I not just demanding the secret sauce of consciousness into the equation? If that, he becomes just another dreaded metaphysician.

Quoting Hanover

I think it's a hard argument to make that ChatGPT is just an arranging finite elements into finite sentences. It appears to compose, to concatenate.

I agree. I think it's crunching data that's made out of intentional human content.

Quoting Hanover

This ties into Davidson"s resistance to convention being the primary driver of meaning. Intent of the speaker is demanded,

He's saying that the expectation of intent goes into calculating meaning. He's not saying the listener actually knows the speakers intent. @Pierre-Normand do you agree with that?

Quoting frank

He's saying that the expectation of intent goes into calculating meaning. He's not saying the listener actually knows the speakers intent.

I agree with that. The interpreter applies the principle of charity to assume the speaker's rationality and logic, which assumes consistency of usage, but he's definitely not admitting to a tapping into the speaker's internal state.

But assumption of intent is demanded, else it would be a simple conventionalism.

Quoting Hanover

But assumption of intent is demanded, else it would be a simple conventionalism.

Right. As with the computer generated poem, realizing there's no intent undermines meaningfulness.

Reply to Hanover Davidson intends his approach to be extensional, so he avoids intentional contexts. Hence intention plays little part in his approach.

The three points of the triangulation are speaker, interpreter and shared world.

The interpreter surmises a sentence S such that the utterance of "p" by the speaker will be true if and only if S. S is confirmed or adjusted on the basis of ongoing empirical evidence.

There's no appeal to internal meaning or intention - doing so would result in circularity.

Intent might be inferred post hoc.

Quoting Banno

there's no appeal to internal meaning or intention - doing so would result in circularity.

We must charitably assume the speaker is rational and presents his statement accurately to intent. This makes no demand upon deciphering internal thoughts, but if we dispense with linking what he meant with what I understand, it deflates to Wittgensteinian meaning is use.

"To understand the speech of another we must interpret in a way that makes most of his utterances true and rational, given the totality of what we take to be his beliefs, desires, and intentions."
“Radical Interpretation"

I take this as requiring us to construct intent from behaviors but also coupled with an assumption of internal coherence and rationality.. We're not getting into the speaker's head, but we are assuming intent.

Reply to Hanover Sure, if you like. We can drop "intent" from that without much loss.


Added: we don't much need the bit about inferring some intent on the part of the speaker. We can do so, but it's not needed. Meaning here is not the intent of the speaker. Speaker meaning is something else.

That'll cause some folk no end of confusion. It shouldn't. It does not imply that the speaker does not have an intent.

Reply to frank Reply to Hanover

Quoting Banno

we don't much need the bit about inferring some intent on the part of the speaker. We can do so, but it's not needed. Meaning here is not the intent of the speaker. Speaker meaning is something else.

That'll cause some folk no end of confusion. It shouldn't. It does not imply that the speaker does not have an intent.

Nor does it imply that there aren't cases where speaker intent is very important. I think the Chatbot example is such a case. The program itself can't be said to have intentions, thought the sentences it produces have meaning. But the intention of its programmers, as best we know, is to impersonate intention on the part of the program. This of course takes "intention" to a different level, but that's my point.

Quoting Banno

Hence Davidson's account provides an explanation for how we are able to understand malapropisms, which by their very nature run contrary to the conventions of language.

I’m a little confused. If malapropisms “by their very nature run contrary to the conventions of language” then there are conventions of language. So the very existence of malapropisms is proof that there is a (conventionally) “correct” way of speaking (else nothing could be a malapropism).

Reply to J In responding to @banno and your comments here, is that intent is a necessary component in Davidson's triangulation theory. This does not mean that we look into the heads of the speakers to decipher intent, but we have to ascribe it to the person based upon our assumption that they are rational and logical. "Ascribe" is the operative word, where we assume it and place it upon the speaker, but we don't pretend to know specifically what the intent is, but we do know there is an intent, but it's a black box.

Should Davidson not hold that way, he woudl lose the foundational element for meaning to exist and he would blur into a "meaning is use" position. His position is different than Wittgenstein, although he very much rejects private language and mentalese sorts of claims. I get why there is pushback against anyone who tries to oversstate the intent requirement and tries to turn Davidson into a metaphysician when it comes to understanding meaning, but I think the opposite problem arises when someone tries to ignore the importance of the intent for his theory.

Quoting Michael

I’m a little confused. If malapropisms “by their very nature run contrary to the conventions of language” then there are conventions of language. So the very existence of malapropisms is proof that there is a (conventionally) “correct” way of speaking (else nothing could be a malapropism).

I can't imagine a language that lacks some degree of conventionalism and I'm not sure anyone holds that. There must be rules to a langauge even if you have full buy in to an internal mentalese. The question is whether it's entirely just a rules based language game or whether you're trying to find some other foundational structure. That's my point directly above related to Davidson's need to rely upon ascribing intent else he would just be a conventionalist.

Quoting Hanover

This does not mean that we look into the heads of the speakers to decipher intent, but we have to ascribe it to the person based upon our assumption that they are rational and logical. "Ascribe" is the operative word, where we assume it and place it upon the speaker, but we don't pretend to know specifically what the intent is, but we do know there is an intent, but it's a black box.

Yes, this is all fine, though "black box" might be overemphasizing the inscrutability.

That's why the Chatbot example seems relevant. We do not have to "ascribe intention to the [person] program based upon our assumption that they are rational and logical." Such a (false) assumption is the "impersonation" I'm instead ascribing to the programmer. This seems right in line with Davidson, because even by ascribing no intention to the program, we're able to explain the meaningfulness of its outputs by deferring that ascription back to the programmer -- again, without needing to be able to say specifically what these intentions are.

Is this analogy too simple?: It's like holding up a puppet and pretending it's "talking" and "having intentions." Every child knows this only a game, an impersonation.

Quoting J

This seems right in line with Davidson, because even by ascribing no intention to the program, we're able to explain the meaningfulness of its outputs by deferring that ascription back to the programmer -- again, without needing to be able to say specifically what these intentions are.

I don't think that works because Davidson speaks often of concatenation, which is the placement of a finite number of words into an infinite number of sentences. That is, we compose sentences of different meanings based upon the words used. AI composes from its database, which means the sum is greater than the parts. There is no programmer out there, for example, that went through and intentionally answered whatever question you might pose to ChatGPT. In fact, AI can create a program, which can create a program, which can create a program, etc. Suggesting you can, through the principal of charity, assume a rational and logical intent based upon a programmer's program 20 generations ago who had no idea of the data within the massive internet database seems quite a stretch to define Davidson as defining AI speak as meaningful language .

Quoting Michael

They mean different things and have different truth conditions.

(a) is true if and only if the cat is on the mat
(b) is true if and only if I assert that the cat is on the mat

(b) can be true even if (a) is false.

So when someone says, "The cat is on the mat," they are not asserting that the cat is on the mat?

Quoting Hanover

There is no programmer out there, for example, that went through and intentionally answered whatever question you might pose to ChatGPT.

I see your point. It's a tough nut. Do we need to try to find some limit cases where we could speak of a programmer "intentionally" doing something via a program? And do we agree that the idea of a program doing anything intentionally is a non-starter? (just leaving Davidson out of all this for the time being)

Notice, BTW, that I'm trying to push back against what I'm calling the "impersonation" by speaking only of "the program" and not personifying it with a name such as ChatGPT, or implying that one could pose a question to such an entity. This is part of the very clever way that the programmers encourage the illusion that the program could have intentions or express meanings, etc. And I'm not saying this is nefarious in some way -- creating this illusion is vital if we're going to get along in cyberworld, where icons stand in for 0s and 1s, etc. But it needs to be resisted in philosophical examination of the kind of questions posed here.

Quoting J

I see your point. It's a tough nut. Do we need to try to find some limit cases where we could speak of a programmer "intentionally" doing something via a program? And do we agree that the idea of a program doing anything intentionally is a non-starter? (just leaving Davidson out of all this for the time being)

I'm with you on this. I think we all talked about langauge with a sense there was something special that occurred in the conscious that would make it impossible to communicate without it. What protected this view was the Turing Test barrier, where no interaction with a computer could be remotely confused as human. Then all of a sudden (so it seemed) ChatGPT dropped, and while you can decipher it as not being a human, you can't really argue it doesn't perfectly appear to understand the questions you are asking based upon any inconsistent behavioral manifestation.

What this means to me is that the ability to engage in langauge games does not require an inner state. What this does not mean is that we can ignore what the conscious state is or that langauge does not provide us a means for that conversation.

Quoting Hanover

What this means to me is that the ability to engage in langauge games does not require an inner state. What this does not mean is that we can ignore what the conscious state is or that langauge does not provide us a means for that conversation.

Good. Just out of curiosity, has it been shown that an AI program can pass the Turing Test? The examples of bot-talk that I've seen cited in TPF wouldn't fool me for a minute, but maybe there are better ones. And it does depend, as you say, on whether we should see the Turing Test as a standard for whether we can be fooled (I'm saying we can't, yet) or as a standard for revealing "no inconsistent behavioral manifestations." Thus, the program might perform perfectly in that regard, but when paired anonymously with a human who answers the same questions, it might nonetheless fail the "fool me" test. Leading to the intriguing question: why? Does a human exhibit more than consistent question-answering behavior, even in a test designed for question-and-answer?

Quoting Hanover

What this means to me is that the ability to engage in langauge games does not require an inner state.

This seems like a surprising conclusion to me, as I would say that both humans and LLM's require going through a lot of complex inner states in order to engage in language use. Would you elaborate on your reasoning? Also, is a distinction between conscious states and subconscious states of relevance, and if so how?

Quoting Leontiskos

So when someone says, "The cat is on the mat," they are not asserting that the cat is on the mat?

They are asserting that the cat is on the mat. And they're speaking English. But just as "the cat is on the mat" doesn't mean "I am speaking English", it also doesn't mean "I assert that the cat is on the mat".

I see the cat on the mat!

Quoting wonderer1

LLM's require going through a lot of complex inner states in order to engage in language use.

My 2 cents -- and @Hanover may see it differently -- is that by putting it this way, we're succumbing to the illusion that "an LLM" could have any states at all. The computer on which it runs could, I suppose, but I don't think that's what you mean.

Having said that, I should also say that I'm not very familiar with how computer programmers talk about their work. Is "inner state" a common term? If so, do you know what they're meaning to designate? Could there be a distinction between inner and outer, speaking strictly about the program?

Quoting MoK

I see the cat on the mat!

No, that's just my avatar. :wink:

Quoting J

No, that's just my avatar. :wink:

Yes, I know! :wink:

Quoting MoK

Yes, I know! :wink:

Ah, but then you don't actually "see the cat on the mat" . . . my avatar is a digital entity, to put it generously.

Which doesn't mean you haven't asserted doing so, of course! Assertion doesn't depend on the truth of what is asserted, as we were all taught.

Quoting J

Assertion doesn't depend on the truth of what is asserted, as we were all taught.

Strange. Google defines assertion as: An assertion is a speech act where a speaker claims or declares a proposition to be true.

Reply to MoK Right, but it's still an assertion even if the speaker is mistaken.

Quoting J

But the intention of its programmers, as best we know, is to impersonate intention on the part of the program.

Perhaps. But what I'd like to emphasis is that Davidson's theory of meaning is not dependent on intent. It assigns a truth value to an utterance. It can be used to infer an intent, but does not derive meaning from intent.

In the case of ChatGPT the sentences can be interpreted, given a truth value, and yet no intent be inferred.

Quoting Michael

I’m a little confused. If malapropisms “by their very nature run contrary to the conventions of language” then there are conventions of language. So the very existence of malapropisms is proof that there is a (conventionally) “correct” way of speaking (else nothing could be a malapropism).

Yep, there are conventions in language. But Davidson argues that they are not what give our utterances meaning.

I understood Tim to be arguing that it is convention that explains meaning. If that is so, it is hard to see how going against a convention, as in the case of malapropism, can be meaningful.

Reply to J
Correct. People think what they say is true even when the assertion is false. They are just not aware of it.

Quoting Banno

It can be used to infer an intent, but does not derive meaning from intent.

Yes, that needs to remain clear. You read a poem; you derive a meaning; it may or may not be what the poet intended, though it's often reasonable to infer that. You've heard of "the intentional fallacy" in lit-crit, right? Same issue.

Quoting Hanover

intent is a necessary component in Davidson's triangulation theory.

It explicitly isn't.

We can attribute an intent to someone only after we have understood what they are saying. Understanding their utterances is prior to attributing an intent. Understanding their utterances is not dependent on attributing an intent.

Quoting Hanover

Should Davidson not hold that way, he would lose the foundational element for meaning to exist and he would blur into a "meaning is use" position.

I don't see that you have explained why this must be so. Davidson is in line with Wittgenstein in saying that we should look at what is being done with an utterance rather then looking for any opaque intent on the part of the utterer.

It begins to look as if we disagree on the accounts given by both Davidson and Wittgenstein.

Quoting J

You've heard of "the intentional fallacy" in lit-crit, right? Same issue.

The problem occurs in the US Supreme Court as well, apparently.

Quoting Banno

The problem occurs in the US Supreme Court as well, apparently.

Which particular piece of poltroonery do you have in mind? Corporations as persons?

Quoting Hanover

The question is whether it's entirely just a rules based language game or whether you're trying to find some other foundational structure. That's my point directly above related to Davidson's need to rely upon ascribing intent else he would just be a conventionalist.

Again,
Quoting Banno

The interpreter surmises a sentence S such that the utterance of "p" by the speaker will be true if and only if S. S is confirmed or adjusted on the basis of ongoing empirical evidence.

There's no appeal to internal meaning or intention - doing so would result in circularity.

Intent might be inferred post hoc.

This account does not rely on speaker intent. Nor does it rely on setting out the intent of the speaker, although it might be used to do so.

Quoting Leontiskos

So when someone says, "The cat is on the mat," they are not asserting that the cat is on the mat?

So you just wrote "the cat is on the mat". Twice.

Did you thereby assert it?

Or can you do other things with the string of letters , apart from asserting them?

Quoting wonderer1

I would say that both humans and LLM's require going through a lot of complex inner states in order to engage in language use.

The inner state of a computer is usually described physically, while the inner state of a person is described using intentional terms - as believing this or that, wanting something to be the case, and so on. Two ways of speaking.

So the question is, do we attribute belief and desire to ChatGPT?

And the partial answer is that we do not need to do so, in order to give meaning to the sentences it produces.

Which is another argument against the idea that meaning is speaker intent.

Reply to J Amongst others. I'm not a close follower of Supreme Court process, but the idea that we can discern some imagined shared intent amongst the authors of your constitution is absurd. We might play on "author-itarian" here.

Quoting Banno

the idea that we can discern some imagined shared intent amongst the authors of your constitution

Oh, that. Originalism. What the Framers intended. A bit like a literal reading of the Bible.

Reply to J They seem to go hand in hand...?

The idea is that there is a correct interpretation.

Quoting Banno

The idea is that there is a correct interpretation.

And that what we started with is the key to such an interpretation. I know you're doubtful whether there could be a useful interpretation of holy books, but such an interpretation, if there is one, isn't likely to be the one the author(s) had in mind when they wrote about, e.g., Adam, Eve, floods, tablets of stone, etc. Those events, I suppose were "originally" meant to be accounts of true things. A better interpretation will not accept that.

Quoting J

I know you're doubtful whether there could be a useful interpretation of holy books

Not useful - folk do put the texts to various and varied use. But that there is one interpretation that is the correct one - that's, shall we say, undecided, perhaps undecidable.

Part of the reason is that giving an interpretation is not a single act, it's an ongoing process.

Quoting J

...A better interpretation...

Better for what? Again, no absolute scale is available.

Reply to Banno

Quoting Banno

So the question is, do we attribute belief and desire to ChatGPT?

And the partial answer is that we do not need to do so, in order to give meaning to the sentences it produces.

Which is another argument against the idea that meaning is speaker intent.

The answer is that Chat GPT uses parallel processing A.I. chips but its logic is linear, digital ( binary) and deterministic. In about 10 years we may have A.I. architectures that integrate complex dynamical systems (CDS) models, which will diverge radically from today’s parallel architectures (e.g., GPUs, TPUs) by embodying principles like self-organization and intentionality. CDS-based AI chips may blur the line between computation and biological processes, resembling intelligent materials more than traditional silicon. The interesting thing about complex dynamical systems is that they organize subordinate linear deterministic elements via superordinate recursive intentionality. If we reduce the higher order intentionality to lower order determinism we lose the meaning of their sentences.

Quoting Joshs

In about 10 years we may have...

Been that way all my time.

Heuristically programmed algorithmic computers, parallel processing, neural networking... each promised more than it delivered.

The missing bit is that a description of an intentional state is not a description of a physical state.

Quoting Banno

intent is a necessary component in Davidson's triangulation theory.
— Hanover
It explicitly isn't.

We can attribute an intent to someone only after we have understood what they are saying. Understanding their utterances is prior to attributing an intent. Understanding their utterances is not dependent on attributing an intent.

Charity is basically about attributing intent to the speaker.

Quoting SEP

If we assume that the speaker’s beliefs, at least in the simplest and most basic cases, are largely in agreement with our own, and so, by our account, are largely true, then we can use our own beliefs about the world as a guide to the speaker’s beliefs.

We're looking for the speaker's beliefs in order to understand the speaker's intentions.

Quoting frank

The way a lack of intent affects meaning can be seen by imagining that you see a handwritten note with poem written on it, stuck on a wall in a bar. You ponder the meaning of the poem, but then someone tells you it was computer generated. That's when you realize you have a reflexive tendency to assume intent when you see or hear language. You may experience cognitive dissonance because the poem had a profound meaning to it, all of which was coming from you.

The problem with using ChatGPT is that it's processing statements that were intentional. It's not just randomly putting words together.

In your first paragraph you seem to be saying there is no intent there, and in your second paragraph you seem to be saying there is intent there.

Quoting frank

Charity is basically about attributing intent to the speaker.

Odd, that you say
Quoting frank

Charity is basically about attributing intent to the speaker.

Then use a quote in support of that, that does not mention intent

We can indeed use a presumption that the speaker's beliefs are much the same as our own in order to interpret their utterances, and thereby surmise their intent.

Charity is supposing that others have much he same beliefs as we do.

Reply to Banno

Quoting Banno

The missing bit is that a description of an intentional state is not a description of a physical state.

If we’re trying to capture the meaning of a statement and the meaning is encoded in intentional terms, how does switching over to an account in terms of physical states not lose the meaning?

Quoting Banno

We can indeed use a presumption that the speaker's beliefs are much the same as our own in order to interpret their utterances

How would that work? Could you give an example?

Quoting Joshs

If we’re trying to capture the meaning of a statement and the meaning is encoded in intentional terms,

Are we? Davidson's aim is to set out the meaning of some utterance, not to set out folks' intent. Their intent can be quite incidental.

Davidson's reply is that there is no law-like relation between physical states and intentions.

Reply to frank

Jenny says "the cat is on the mat"

Jenny often uses "the cat" to talk about Jack, the black cat. So she says things like "The cat's bowl is empty" when Jack's bowl is empty.

Jenny uses "...is on..." when one thing is physically on another.

Jenny uses "the mat" to talk about the prayer rug near the door.

So I offer the following interpretation: Jenny's utterance of "The cat is on the mat" is true If and only if Jack is on the prayer rug. (notice the T-sentence)

I can now proceed to check this interpretation as more information becomes available.

From this I can also infer that Jenny believes that Jack is on the prayer rug. Might further infer that she intends to scold me for allowing him to do so. But these are post hoc. following after from the interpretation.

Reply to Banno

Quoting Banno

Davidson's reply is that there is no law-like relation between physical states and intentions

A ‘physical state’ is a certain kind of language game. An intentional state arises within another game. Each offers their own kind of meaning. Davidson seems to be fine with settling for the physical state language game , without recognizing what he may be missing by excluding the other game.

Quoting Banno

...A better interpretation...
— J
Better for what? Again, no absolute scale is available.

But as we've been discussing, we don't need an absolute scale in order to compare good and better. I'm saying that a literal interpretation of, e.g., the book of Genesis is not as good an interpretation as one that focuses on its metaphorical, mythical, or psychological meanings. If someone wanted to ask into what's "better" about this, I'd start with pointing out how difficult it is to believe things that couldn't be true.

Quoting Banno

Jenny says "the cat is on the mat"

Jenny often uses "the cat" to talk about Jack

As you will recall, Davidson focuses on a situation where you don't know the language Jenny is speaking. You don't recognize any of the words. All you get is behavior and the assumption that she believes the same things you do.

So how did you gather that Jenny uses "the cat" to talk about Jack? What behavior did you observe that caused you to conclude this?

Quoting Michael

But just as "the cat is on the mat" doesn't mean "I am speaking English", it also doesn't mean "I assert that the cat is on the mat".

But we are asking why, "I assert the cat is on the mat," cannot mean that one is asserting that the cat is on the mat. You are thinking of the claim, "[ I assert that] I assert the cat is on the mat," but that too is an arguably different claim.

So with any such pair, we can assume that there is an implicit assertion or not, and we can identify the explicit assertion with that implicit assertion or not. Again, there is no special rule that tells us how to interpret such a thing.

Quoting J

Having said that, I should also say that I'm not very familiar with how computer programmers talk about their work. Is "inner state" a common term? If so, do you know what they're meaning to designate? Could there be a distinction between inner and outer, speaking strictly about the program?

In discussions about LLMs, machine learning, and artificial neural networks, the phrase "inner state" is hardly ever used. However, when the phrase is used to characterize the mental states of human beings—such as thoughts, beliefs, and intentions—it often involves a philosophically contentious understanding of what is "inner" about them. Is it merely a matter of the person having privileged epistemic access to these states (i.e., without observation)? Or is it, more contentiously, a matter of this privileged first-person access being infallible and not needing publicly accessible (e.g., behavioral) criteria at all?

I think a Rylean/Wittgensteinian understanding of embodied mental life leaves room for the idea of privileged epistemic access, or first-person authority, without making mental states hidden or literally "inner." Such a view amounts to a form of direct-realist, anti-representationalist conception of mind akin to Davidson's: what we refer to when we speak of people's mental states (including our own) is a matter of interpreting the moves that they (and we) are making in language games that take place in the public world (and this world isn't describable independently of our understanding of those games).

Turning to LLM-based conversational assistants (i.e., current chatbots), although the exact phrase "inner state" is seldom used, the idea that they have literally "internal" representations is seldom questioned, and so a representationalist framework is often assumed. What seems to come closest to a literal "inner state" in an LLM is a contextual embedding. While these embeddings are often explained as "representing" the meaning of words (or tokens) in context, in the deeper layers of a neural network they come to "represent" the contextual meaning of phrases, sentences, paragraphs, or even abstract ideas like "what Kant likely meant in the passage Eric Watkins discussed at the end of his second chapter."

For what it's worth, I think the idea that contextual embeddings—which are specific vector representations—correspond to or are identical with what an LLM-based assistant "internally" represents to itself is as problematic as the idea of "inner states" applied to human beings. The reason this is problematic is that what determines what LLMs mean by their words is, just as in our case, the sorts of moves they have been trained to make in our shared language games. The content of their contextual embeddings merely plays a role in enabling their capacity to make such moves, just as patterns of activation in our cortical areas (such as Broca's and Wernicke's areas) enable our own linguistic capacities.

All of this leaves out what seems to me the most salient difference between human beings and chatbots. This difference, I think, isn't most perspicuously highlighted by ascribing only to us the ability to have inner states, form intentions, or make meaningful assertions. It rather stems from the fact that—in part because they are not embodied animals, and in part because they do not have instituted statuses like being citizens, business partners, or family members—chatbots aren't persons. Not having personal stakes in the game radically limits the kinds of roles they can play in our language games and the sorts of moves they can make. We can transact in meanings with them, since they do understand what our words mean, but their words do not have the same significance and do not literally convey assertions, since they aren't backed by a personal stake in our game of giving and asking for reasons (over and above their reinforced inclination to provide useful answers to whoever happens to be their current user).

Quoting Leontiskos

But we are asking why, "I assert the cat is on the mat," cannot mean that one is asserting that the cat is on the mat.

The grammar here is confusing.

I am claiming these things:

1. The assertions "the cat is on the mat" and "I assert that the cat is on the mat" mean different things and have different truth conditions, as shown by the fact that the latter can be true even if the former is false.

2. In asserting "the cat is on the mat" one is asserting that the cat is on the mat.

Do you object to either of these?

Quoting Leontiskos

So with any such pair, we can assume that there is an implicit assertion or not, and we can identify the explicit assertion with that implicit assertion or not.

John believes that the cat is on the mat. Jane does not believe that the cat is on the mat.

John asserts "the cat is on the mat".

Jane asserts "I disagree".

Jane is not disagreeing with the implicit assertion "I [John] assert that the cat is on the mat" because Jane agrees that John is asserting that the cat is on the mat. Jane is disagreeing with the explicit assertion "the cat is on the mat". As such, we should not identify the explicit assertion with the implicit assertion.

Quoting Banno

I understood Tim to be arguing that it is convention that explains meaning. If that is so, it is hard to see how going against a convention, as in the case of malapropism, can be meaningful.

I don't think it's mutually exclusive. A malapropism, by definition, is a term used to mean something it doesn't normally mean. The "normal meaning" is explained by convention and the "abnormal meaning" is explained by intention.

It certainly seems appropriate to tell someone "that's not what the word means" and that they "misspoke".

As a comparison we could consider a table. We certainly could use it as a seat (and we may sometimes do if there are no chairs available) but its "correct" use is determined by convention; tables aren't seats.

Quoting Joshs

Davidson seems to be fine with settling for the physical state language game , without recognizing what he may be missing by excluding the other game.

What game is he excluding? He gives quite a sophisticated account of intentionality.

Reply to Pierre-Normand Really interesting and helpful, thanks.

Couple of thoughts:

Quoting Pierre-Normand

the most salient difference between human beings and chatbots. . .
stems from the fact that—in part because they are not embodied animals, and in part because they do not have instituted statuses like being citizens, business partners, or family members—chatbots aren't persons.

I agree with you, as it happens, about personhood here, but we have to recognize that many proponents of a more liberal interpretation of "person" are going to regard this as mere stipulation. What, they will ask, does being an embodied animal have to do with personhood? etc. We can't very well just reply, "That's how we've always 'played that game.'" The US Supreme Court changed the game, concerning corporations and persons; why couldn't philosophers?

My second thought is: Like just about everyone else who talks about AI, you're accepting the fiction that there is something called a chatbot, that it can be talked about with the same kind of entity-language we used for, e.g., humans. I maintain there is no such thing. What there is, is a computer program, a routine, a series of instructions, that as part of its routine can simulate a 1st-person point of view, giving credence to the idea that it "is ChatGPT." I think we should resist this way of thinking and talking. In Gertrude Stein's immortal words, "There's no there there."

Reply to Pierre-Normand

Quoting Pierre-Normand

We can transact in meanings with them, since they do understand what our words mean, but their words do not have the same significance and do not literally convey assertions, since they aren't backed by a personal stake in our game of giving and asking for reasons (over and above their reinforced inclination to provide useful answers to whoever happens to be their current user).

In a letter in Trends in Cognitive Science (LLMs don't know anything: reply to Yildirim and Paul), Mariel K. Goddu, Alva Noë and Evan Thompson claim the following:

The map does not know the way home, and the abacus is not clever at arithmetic. It takes knowledge to devise and use such models, but the models themselves have no knowledge. Not because they are ignorant, but because they are models: that is to say, tools. They do not navigate or calculate, and neither do they have destinations to reach or debts to pay. Humans use them for these epistemic purposes. LLMs have more in common with the map or abacus than with the people who design and use them as instruments. It is the tool creator and user, not the tool, who has knowledge.

Linking empty tokens based on probabilities (even in ways that we are in a position to know does reflect the truth of a given domain, be it a summarization task, physics, or arithmetic) does not warrant attributing knowledge of that domain to the token generator itself.

We said above that LLMs do not perform any tasks of their own, they perform our tasks. It would be better to say that they do not really do anything at all. Hence the third leap: treating LLMs as agents. However, since LLMs are not agents, let alone epistemic ones, they are in no position to do or know anything.

Quoting Michael

I am claiming these things:

1. The assertions...

To just assume that we are talking about assertions seems to beg the question of the whole thread. For instance:

Quoting bongo fury

The prefix, however we phrase it - "I hereby assert that..." [...] does seem to iterate naturally.

... A sentence is already an assertion sign. [...] How does it end up needing reinforcement?

You basically want to stipulate that everything we are talking about is an assertion. You could stipulate that, but it is contrary to the spirit of the thread because it moots the central question of the thread.

Quoting Michael

John believes that the cat is on the mat. Jane does not believe that the cat is on the mat.

John asserts "the cat is on the mat".

Jane asserts "I disagree".

Jane is not disagreeing with the implicit assertion "I [John] assert that the cat is on the mat" because Jane agrees that John is asserting that the cat is on the mat. Jane is disagreeing with the explicit assertion "the cat is on the mat". As such, we should not identify the explicit assertion with the implicit assertion.

Good. If this is right then @bongo fury is correct when he says, "A sentence is already an assertion sign."

So we might then ask why anyone would ever make explicit their asserting. For example:

• John: "The cat is on the mat."
• Jane: "Oh, would you like to read some Dr. Suess?"
• John: "No, I am asserting that the cat is on the mat."

It seems that we make the implicit assertion explicit when someone misjudges our intent and thereby misjudges the fact that an implicit assertion is occurring. More generally, we make the species of our act explicit when we wish to clarify the kind of act that we are engaged in.

Similarly, when someone says, "I hereby assert that...," they are generally broadcasting or communicating the fact of their assertion, and broadcasting/communicating is a bit different than asserting. This is why the flavor of asserting is less applicable to recursivity than, say, the flavor of judging. Recursivity requires a mixture of act and potency, and judgment does involve both whereas assertion really only involves the former. Hence assertion does not have the same degree of self-reflexivity as judgment.

Reply to Joshs The letter you quote from makes an excellent case for why computer programs are not agents in anything like the sense a human is. Do you agree that we should try to avoid using language that appears to reify such programs as 1st-person entities? (or however you might phrase the latter idea)

Reply to J Quoting J

?Joshs The letter you quote from makes an excellent case for why computer programs are not agents in anything like the sense a human is. Do you agree that we should try to avoid using language that appears to reify such programs as 1st-person entities? (or however you might phrase the latter idea)

Absolutely. I think of them as appendages or human-built niches, like a nest to a bird or a web to a spider.

Quoting Leontiskos

To just assume that we are talking about assertions seems to beg the question of the whole thread.

...

You basically want to stipulate that everything we are talking about is an assertion. You could stipulate that, but it is contrary to the spirit of the thread because it moots the central question of the thread.

I'm not.

You told me that we were talking about assertions, and asked me about two such assertions:

Quoting Leontiskos

But what if we actually spoke about assertions rather than circumlocutions that may or may not indicate assertion? What about:

"The cat is on the mat."
"I assert the cat is on the mat."

Quoting Michael

and asked me about two such assertions:

No, I said we should talk about phrases like, "I assert the cat is on the mat," rather than, "I think the cat is on the mat." It doesn't mean either of the quotations is itself an assertion. It means we are talking about 'asserting' rather than 'thinking'.

Again, if everything in question is stipulated to be an assertion then the whole question of the OP is mooted.

Reply to Leontiskos

Then it is still as I said from the start. The phrases "the cat is on the mat" and "I assert that the cat is on the mat" mean different things and have different truth conditions, given that the latter can be true even if the former is false.

Quoting frank

As you will recall, Davidson focuses on a situation where you don't know the language Jenny is speaking. You don't recognize any of the words. All you get is behavior and the assumption that she believes the same things you do.

In the extreme case, yep.

Quoting frank

So how did you gather that Jenny uses "the cat" to talk about Jack? What behavior did you observe that caused you to conclude this?

Extended empirical observation of Jenny's behaviour within the community in which she participates. Watching her pet the cat, buy cat food, chastise someone for not chasing the cat off the mat. A Bayesian analysis of behavioural patterns, perhaps, although we don't usually need to go so far in order to recognise patterns in the behaviour of others.

The interpreter assumes that Jenny and the others in her community have much the same beliefs as the interpreter - that there are cats, bowls, mats, and so on to talk about.

Quoting Michael

I don't think it's mutually exclusive.

I don't disagree. Although asking someone to "dance the flamingo" need not be an intentional malapropism, and yet still be understood as a request to dance.

The issue is, which is to be master? We have the convention of treating tables differently to seats, but before we can do that, we needs must understand which is a table and which a seat. That's an interpretation.

If someone asks us to "dance the flamenco" we must first interpret it as a request to dance the flamingo in order to recognise it as a malapropism. Recognising the breach of convention requires first recognising the convention - and hence first interpreting the utterance as an (illegitimate) instance of the convention.

So it's not that language does not make use of convention, but that the recognition of convention is itself dependent on interpretation.

Reply to Michael

This is the same issue, for when you say that they "have different truth conditions," you are implying that they are both assertions. A locution intended to broadcast/communicate does not have a truth condition in the way that an assertion has a truth condition.

Quoting J

My second thought is: Like just about everyone else who talks about AI, you're accepting the fiction that there is something called a chatbot, that it can be talked about with the same kind of entity-language we used for, e.g., humans. I maintain there is no such thing. What there is, is a computer program, a routine, a series of instructions, that as part of its routine can simulate a 1st-person point of view, giving credence to the idea that it "is ChatGPT." I think we should resist this way of thinking and talking. In Gertrude Stein's immortal words, "There's no there there."

I don't quite agree with this, or with the position claimed by Goddu, Noë and Thompson in the passage quoted by @Joshs (although I'm sympathetic with the embodied and enactive cognition stances of Noë and Thompson, regarding human beings and animals.) Those skeptical positions seem to me to rest on arguments that are overly reductionistic because they are insensitive to the distinction of levels between enabling mechanisms and molar behaviors, and, as a result, misconstrue what kinds of entities AI chatbots are (or what kinds of acts their "outputs" are). I don't want to argue for this in the present thread, though (but I could do so elsewhere), since this isn't tied enough to the OP topic of assertions. I had only wished to highlight the one specific respect—personhood—in which I do agree AI chatbots don't really make assertions with the same sort of significance human beings do. I may comment a bit more on the issue of personhood as an instituted status, and what some Supreme Court might or might not be able to rule, since you raised this pertinent question, later on.

Salient essay on Philosophy Now at present Rescuing Mind from Machines, Vincent J. Carchidi.

Quoting Pierre-Normand

I may comment a bit more on the issue of personhood as an instituted status, and what some Supreme Court might or might not be able to rule, since you raised this pertinent question, later on.

I hope you do -- always interested in your thoughts. And about the ontology of chatbots as well.

Quoting Banno

Extended empirical observation of Jenny's behaviour within the community in which she participates. Watching her pet the cat, buy cat food, chastise someone for not chasing the cat off the mat. A Bayesian analysis of behavioural patterns, perhaps, although we don't usually need to go so far in order to recognise patterns in the behaviour of others.

The interpreter assumes that Jenny and the others in her community have much the same beliefs as the interpreter - that there are cats, bowls, mats, and so on to talk about.

I went a few steps down the rabbit hole of determining what role Davidson meant attribution of intentions to play in radical interpretation. I think the answer is that he left it unclear what evidence suffices for interpretation. This lack of clarity echoes his overall view of intention. He apparently travelled through a reductionist phase, eventually landing in acceptance of intentions due to the problem of thwarted efforts.

An example would be, say Pedro has decided to climb Mt Everest. Along the way, he got lost, ran out of O2 and died. A reductionist view would say we should conclude that Pedro intended to get lost and die. That's absurd, though. We all know he intended to make it to the top. He held that intention, but just didn't quite make it. Intentions do not reduce to actions.

So what would the older Davidson, the one who decided that we can't be reductionist about intentions, say about how they figure in radical interpretations? I don't know.

Quoting Leontiskos

This is the same issue, for when you say that they "have different truth conditions," you are implying that they are both assertions.

I don't think I am. I'm sure many philosophers of language will say that sentences have truth values even if not asserted.

Reply to frank Good response. You've been reading his paper Intending? That's the topic there.

There is no guarantee that our surmised intent is the correct one, no law-like structure that locks intent in with action and belief. Intentions are future-directed and shaped by beliefs and desires but not reducible to them.

Radical interpretation is a process for assigning truth values to utterances, not a process for determining intent. But this does not rule out that intent might enter into the interpretation. "Pedro intended to climb Everest" is true IFF that was Pedro's intent.

We might surmise intent, charitably, by presuming holistic coherence and rationality. Of course people do not always act holistically nor coherently. The process is not algorithmic, not law-like, and not infallible. It's human.

How's that?

Reply to Banno
I'll take it. It occurred to me that I just assumed Davidson meant that projecting intention on the speaker was part of radical interpretation. The words intend, mean, and understand are mixed together in my mind.

Reply to frank Well done. Yes, one of the take aways from all this is the separation of intent from meaning. Seeing how this works takes some effort. The idea that the meaning of an utterance is found in the intent of the speaker is somewhat ingrained. We say "That's not what I meant", after all; And we also say "But it's what you said!"

We can backtrack this to the discussion of Lewis, and conventions. It's hard to see how conventions might work without invoking intention - we intend to act in accord with the convention. But what we've seen here is how interpretation precedes convention. I think we can maintain a sort of continuity between Davidson, Searle and Lewis, but there is plenty here to work on.

But we can see that conventions do not determine the meaning of an utterance.

Quoting Banno

But we can see that conventions do not determine the meaning of an utterance.

:up: