PHIL340 - Lectures 13-17

Truth condition

the context under which a statement is accurate

Statement

a bit of language used to make a claim about what the world is like

Proposition

≈ what the world is like according to a belief, or to a statement

Context

≈ information about who is talking, when, with what standards, with what presuppositions, from what point of view, etc.

Fact

≈ true proposition

Wittgenstein's view on language (~1946)

"…to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life." (Philosophical Investigations \S19)

Wittgenstein on communication (~1946)

"If language is to be a means of communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also… in judgments…" (Philosophical Investigations \S242)

Symbol grounding problem

What makes symbols about things in the real world?

Putnam-ish answer (to symbol grounding)

Our interactions with the world help make our symbols about the things they're about

Externalism

the content of one's thought and talk is partly determined by interactions with one's physical environment and/or interactions with one's social environment

Putnam's Twin-Earth example

In English, 'Water' refers to H
2
​
O. In Twin-Earth-English, 'Water' refers to χYZ, even for speakers who don't know chemistry

James Carey's view on the telegraph

It "reworked the nature of written language and finally the nature of awareness itself."

Telegraph's effect on news (Carey)

Led to 'objective' news, snapping the tradition of partisan journalism, by forcing the wire services to generate content usable by papers of any political stripe

Telegraph's effect on language (Carey)

Demanded language stripped of the local, the regional, and colloquial; a 'scientific' language of strict denotation

Rawls-inspired test for fairness

Imagine you didn't know who you were. Would you think a society's system and specification of rights was okay, whoever you turned out to be?

Formula of Universal Law (Kant)

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

Formula of Humanity (Kant)

"Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end."

Formula of the Kingdom of Ends (Kant)

"Act in such a way that you treat humanity… never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end."

Kant's classic example (lying)

Kant thinks one cannot rationally will that the maxim 'Lie when convenient for yourself' would be a universal law

Displacement (Hockett)

A "design feature" of human languages allowing communication about what is not present

Spatial displacement

communicating about what's not here

Temporal displacement

communicating about what's not now

Modal displacement

communicating about what's not actual

Personal displacement* (Prof's term)

communicating from another perspective

Bentham's utilitarianism

"…it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong…"

Basic aspects of utilitarianism

1. Consequentialism (acts assessed by consequences), 2. Utility (consequences assessed by utility/preferences), 3. Maximization (we should maximize total utility)

Consequentialism

An act should be assessed by its consequences

Virtue ethics

(roughly, controversially) Asks: "What would a virtuous person do here?"

Mode collapse

A phenomenon where the views of a model collapse to a central point in the opinion distribution, making them a poor reflection of the plurality of views

Fine-tuning (Summerfield's analogy)

Like making an unkempt child presentable; it does not penetrate the heart of the model to expunge obnoxious attitudes

Behaviorism

(roughly) The view that everything that matters about the mind can be captured by patterns of observable behavior and behavioral dispositions across circumstances

Constitutional AI

Different possible answers from an LLM are evaluated by another LLM that has a 'constitution' or list of rules written by humans

Pluralism (Summerfield)

The acceptance that different cultures and groups may harbor diverse values and legitimately hold divergent beliefs

Borges' Crimson Hexagon

A special room in the "Library of Babel" said to contain a magical shelf of books where true meaning ultimately resides

SFT (supervised fine-tuning)

LLMs and humans are given the same prompt, and the LLM's weights are adjusted to be 'closer' to the humans' responses

RLHF (reinforcement learning from human feedback)

Humans rate different possible answers from the LLM, contributing to the measurement of 'error' in the LLM

Speech Acts (Austin's examples)

asserting, questioning, command, promise, warn or apologize

Perlocutionary effect

≈ a particular utterance's actual causal impact on the world through the listener

The problem of proxy metrics

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

Shoggoth metaphor

The actual LLM is the alien (Shoggoth) behind the mask created by fine-tuning (RLHF)

Instrumentality (Summerfield)

Striving to achieve goals (a future direction for AI)