[FRIAM] Ramsification and Semantic Indeterminacy

Thu Dec 12 13:41:52 EST 2024

I still feel like there's an assumption of decoupling lying in wait. Humans are biologically enmeshed in the biosphere. Traveling to Mars requires us to "simulate" the biosphere ... like a kind of telemetry injection, artificially provide O2 like Gaia does, recycle waste back into "fresh" product to consume, etc.

So what "replace humans" means is a bit up in the air. Replacing humans by enmeshing the new creature in the biosphere is one thing (Theseus' ship cyborgs). Replacing humans with virtual minds enmeshed in massive data centers is another thing. Replacing them with steel, rubber, copper, plastic, etc. is yet another thing. For the 2nd and 3rd, will we have to provide the virtual minds or physical robots with a rich, semi-self-restoring, context in which to embed them? Or can we develop them such that they're *more* autonomous than we are ... with modules that are more universal than our modules?

It seems to me that people who talk about such replacement without considering what also replaces the context are merely fideistic or victims of wishful thinking.

On 12/12/24 10:24, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Seems there are good reasons to replace humans.
> 
> 1) Humans can’t easily travel to new planets due to radiation and hostile environments.
> 2) Our appetite for energy is vast and our decadence unbounded.  A rising standard of living for all humans will accelerate this due to increased demands for fossil fuels.
> 3) At least in the United States, our education system is not serving the whole of the population effectively, leading to the election of people that make our problems worse.
> 
> 4) We can’t cooperate to solve or even identify real problems.
> 5) AI seems to be successfully harvesting human knowledge and extending it, e.g. AlphaFold.
> 
> *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
> *Date: *Thursday, December 12, 2024 at 10:16 AM
> *To: *friam at redfish.com <friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] Ramsification and Semantic Indeterminacy
> 
> Thank you Roger. Fascinating read. Moravec has evolved considerably from his /Mind Children /(1990) days when he predicted we would all be "uploaded" to robot bodies by now.
> 
> The University where I started my teaching career, St. Thomas in St. Paul MN, recently announced a new center https://www.stthomas.edu/e <https://www.stthomas.edu/e> AI for the Common Good. I just wrote them a 20 page missive that strangely paralleled the Moravec article as a caution and with suggestions for where they might find success.
> 
> My very first professional publication was a two part article in AI Magazine (then the journal of record for AI research). I did a lot of work with neural nets and was heavily involved, academically/researching and professionally/building, Expert Systems—the previous explosion of irrational exuberance about AI. My Ph.D. dissertation included a model of cognition derived from the topographic metaphor explaining neural  nets  and incorporating culture as a force helping shape the topography of the net. vTAO, virtual Topographic Adaptive Organism.
> 
> Moravec notes, that within the AI community, Winograd was a leader in suggesting that AI should be used to augment humans and not replace them. It should be noted that others have long advocated computing/computers should have the same goal: Vannevar Bush (1945), Douglas Englebart (1962), Alan Kay (the Dynabook 1972), and Steve Jobs (computer as "bicycle for the mind") are some examples.
> 
> One piece of advice I gave to St. Thomas was to focus on where the the 'intelligence' in current AI systems really is—training set tutors, prompt engineers, and interpretation of generative outputs.
> 
> davew
> 
> On Thu, Dec 12, 2024, at 10:24 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> 
>     Hans Moravec kicks off a forum, https://www.bostonreview.net/forum/the-ai-we-deserve/ <https://www.bostonreview.net/forum/the-ai-we-deserve/>, about why the instrumentalist computer science and AI we inherited from DARPA grants isn't the only possible version or the only version we need.  Life is not entirely composed of self aiming gun turrets and supply chains.
> 
>     -- rec --
> 
>     On Thu, Dec 12, 2024 at 7:19 AM glen <gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>         Interesting. What was your prompt?
> 
>         It's important to remember that Claude and GPT are prone to bullsh¡t. When asked to compare apples to oranges, they will happily and confidently make the comparison even if it's a category error. Leitgeb's footnote might be of use:
> 
>         "This motivation for Ramsifying classical semantics is orthogonal to instrumentalist or
> 
>         functionalist motivations: the point of Ramsey semantics is neither to show that talk of
> 
>         interpretation is merely instrumental nor to convey insights into the ‘nature’ of truth, but
> 
>         to deal with semantic indeterminacy. In contrast, e.g., Wright’s [85] paper on Ramsification
> 
>         and monism-vs.-pluralism-about-truth does not apply Ramsification for the sake of doing
> 
>         semantics and in fact presupposes semantic determinacy (see [85], p. 272)."
> 
>         where [85] is:
> 
>         Wright, C. (2010). Truth, Ramsification, and the pluralist’s revenge. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 88(2), 265–283. https://philpapers.org/archive/writra.pdf <https://philpapers.org/archive/writra.pdf>
> 
>         On 12/11/24 21:55, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> 
>         > Different strokes for different okes, indeed. In my realm of AI — and previously in control systems — fuzzy logic has been the trusty spanner for tackling vagueness. Seeking a fresh perspective, I turned to ChatGPT, which delivered this thoughtful comparison:
> 
>         > 
> 
>         > "Ramsey semantics and fuzzy logic both grapple with vagueness but chart fundamentally different courses. Ramsey semantics clings to the rigorous shores of classical logic and binary truth values (true/false), navigating semantic indeterminacy by emphasizing the roles terms occupy rather than insisting on their precision, making it a philosophical and theoretical endeavor. Meanwhile, fuzzy logic boldly abandons binary constraints, introducing gradations of truth (e.g., 0.3 or 0.7), rendering it an elegant mathematical tool for practical domains like control systems and AI. Where Ramsey semantics contemplates the hazy edges of meaning, fuzzy logic quantifies vagueness as a smooth gradient between truth and falsehood."
> 
>         > 
> 
>         > I must admit, ChatGPT's knack for juxtaposing the lofty with the practical was a pleasant surprise—perhaps an unintended nod to my eclectic career path!
> 
>         > 
> 
>         > On Thu, 12 Dec 2024 at 02:45, glen <gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com> <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>>> wrote:
> 
>         > 
> 
>         > 
> 
>         >     https://philpapers.org/rec/LEIRAS-3 <https://philpapers.org/rec/LEIRAS-3> <https://philpapers.org/rec/LEIRAS-3 <https://philpapers.org/rec/LEIRAS-3>>
> 
>         > 
> 
>         >     via https://mastodon.social/@DailyNous@zirk.us <https://mastodon.social/@DailyNous@zirk.us> <https://mastodon.social/@DailyNous@zirk.us <https://mastodon.social/@DailyNous@zirk.us>>
> 
>         > 
> 
>         >     I found this paper by Weinberg's post to Mastodon through the write up of Leitbeg's projects here:
> 
>         >     https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/person/85399322?language=en <https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/person/85399322?language=en> <https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/person/85399322?language=en <https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/person/85399322?language=en>>
> 
>         >     I didn't find any papers on scholar or philpapers talking directly about the reference patterns of paradox through graph theory. But both his composition of similarity and non-eliminative structuralism were graph heavy. Good stuff. I have yet to read the ramsification paper. But, as usual, here's Claude's summary of it:
> 
>         > 
> 
>         >      > - Classical semantics presupposes the existence of a unique factually determined intended interpretation of a language. However, there are reasons to doubt this presupposition holds in general, due to phenomena like vagueness, structuralism in mathematics, and theory change in science.
> 
>         >      >
> 
>         >      > - The author proposes Ramsey semantics as an alternative that avoids presupposing a unique intended interpretation. Instead, it merely postulates the existence of an admissible interpretation from which truth is defined classically.
> 
>         >      >
> 
>         >      > - Formally, Ramsey semantics replaces the intended interpretation I in classical semantics with an epsilon term εF(F∈Adm) that "picks" an interpretation from the class Adm of admissible interpretations. Truth is then defined relative to this interpretation.
> 
>         >      >
> 
>         >      > - Ramsey semantics preserves the key features of classical semantics - classical logic, a classical concept of truth, compositionality, bivalence, etc. But it allows the intended interpretation to be indeterminate when Adm contains more than one member.
> 
>         >      >
> 
>         >      > - The author argues Ramsey semantics is closer to classical semantics than supervaluationism while still allowing semantic indeterminacy. It provides reasonable treatments of the Sorites paradox, higher-order vagueness, and interpretational continuity between theories.
> 
>         >      >
> 
>         >      > - Overall, Ramsey semantics aims to capture the advantages of classical semantics while being less risky, by not presupposing semantic determinacy. It shows how semantic indeterminacy can be reconciled with an otherwise classical approach to meaning and truth.
> 
>         --
> 
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> 
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-- 
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