How's this for analogical reasoning: "g-factor" is horseshit, intelligence is massively multidimensional, it can't be reduced to a one-dimensional object without performing lossy compression.
Run, don't walk, to see Mark Turner, George Lakoff, Giles Fauconnier, Mark Johnson, and Eve Sweeter's work on metaphor and cognitive blending...
...which (perhaps?) does not go quite as far neurobiologically, but quite a bit further, semantically. Maybe browse "The Way We Think" (Turner) or "Metaphors We Live By" (Lakoff).
There's a lot of material out there on this, for several decades now...
Holyoak deals with this school of thought in The Human Edge. He criticizes these thinkers for not making a clear enough distinction between the metaphorical and the literal. If everything is a metaphor, then nothing is! Also, he distinguishes between metaphors and analogies and notes that they are enabled by different brain processes.
I have just checked Holyoak's pedigree (and free PDF book link, btw) and it's clear he knows what he's talking about.
disagree on insufficient clarity on metaphor/literal. Those authors drive directlt into the heart of that discussion.
agree on differences between metaphor and analogy. In my untutored view, metaphor is a superset of analogy, and with the maps underlying cognitive blending, yields powerful results. (cf James Alexander and Mark Turner's collaboration on mathematics, e.g.)
For me, the absolute gold in your post is the highlighting of present/missing features of LLM models vis á vis analogical reasoning. I think there's going to be more good work being done there!
Looking forward to your writing about that, as well!
Well, I don't have any plans to write any more about analogical reasoning for the time being, so maybe you should write about that very fascinating dimension of the subject. Also, Holyoak wrote a book about poetry and metaphor called The Spider's Thread. He's a poet himself!
Really good article! It's nice to read interesting and understandable articles about effective science.
As a Kantian I can't help but point out your last sentence:
"I continue to hold out hope that neuroscientists will develop an ever more precise and encompassing, and perhaps even complete, understanding of how a deterministic brain can give rise to flexible and spontaneous thinking and action."
I don't really think you meant to put "determinism" and "spontaneity" in opposition here but for Kant this "spontaneity" is indeed in exact opposition to "determinism" and is nonetheless a key-component of human cognition. In Kantian terms thus that "explanatory gap" is essential to human cognition. Whatever the position on this issue, I think either side can agree that the science you present in you article and the hopes you put forth is getting to the core of things.
Kant was the foremost champion of the teleological, dualistic worldview that I am trying to question and undo in my writings. I am a great fan of his moral philosophy, with its emphasis on freedom and spontaneity. I want to show that freedom can be reconciled with determinism.
I would agree that certain aspects of his knowledge-theory contain some dualism but he "corrected" in a way the "crude" dualism of Descartes. In light of your article I understand more or less your opposition against his dualism, I regard that a legitimate position. His view on the world on the other hand and the way he saw the role of science in that is explicitly NON-teleological (and even NON-theological for that matter).
with maybe the nuance here that he thought science itself should proceed towards a unity of knowledge (so in that sense indeed teleological in a way) but we should never use teleological principles as a foundation for our explanations of the world.
Right, we can't experience teleology as a phenomenon, but we can deduce that the the world has a purpose from moral knowledge and aesthetic experience. That's what I understand Kant to be saying.
I guess you're mixing certain aspects of Kant's analysis of the faculties of the understanding in one sentence in a bit of a strange way.
-to experience teleology as a phenomenon: I would say for Kant "experience" or "perceiving a phenomenon" can only happen when the categories of the understanding are applied to the raw sensory data we receive. One of the categories is "causality" (everything that happens has it's cause) and indeed has nothing to do with teleology (final causes).
-moral knowledge is immediately deduced from our self-consciousness (I think therefore I am). and so are the categories of thought.
-that the "world has a purpose" is indeed in a not so straightforward way deduced from moral knowledge but definitely doesn't act as a foundation for morality and is only a "regulative idea" just like his theism is - and can never act as a "constitutive idea". The only ideas that are "constitutive" in perceiving the world are Kants categories of thought (causality, identity etc...)
So for me it is clear that Kant would never accept thing like FTA or intelligent design.
-aesthetic experience for Kant is indeed linked (in a speculative way) with the idea of final causes and teleology. Kant suggests that our faculty of judgement and it's necessary imagination in a way favors the idea of final cause (as in purposeful) in our aesthetic judgement and suggests that this even might play a role in how we perceive the world.
That explanation jibes with what I know about Kant. I agree with you that Kant wouldn't accept the FTA because he would regard it as overstepping the limits of what science can know.
O heck! You introduce "aesthetic experience" and "the world as a purpose" and your short answer depicts some aspects of Kant's philosophy more or less in a coherent but nonetheless not so correct way (in my view) so you've created a situation where short answers are no longer the way to go. Give me some time and I'll do my best to address in a way Kant himself would find half decent! ;-)
This was great. I recently participated in a conversation with the authors of this book on Darwin's use of analogy -- which it seems like you might enjoy,
Maybe I just got on the right side of the algorithm somehow. On a normal day, my substack gets 50 views or less, but it's already up to a record-breaking 566 today and it shows no signs of stopping!
Kepler spent years developing his analogies, while AI generates hundreds in seconds. The difference isn't in analogical capacity, but in the patience to dwell within the analogy. I'd say that slowness wasn't Kepler's limitation, it was his method.
Surely the obvious response to the hard problem of consciousness is that materialistic determinism is simply wrong? Philosophers have spent the past 400 years trying to square the circle of Descartes' mistakes and every single time we end up at square one.
We have made all this stuff up though. As a species we are not essential… a minor adjunct at best. For all of our so called abilities we have truly fucked things up… and continue to do so day by day.
How's this for analogical reasoning: "g-factor" is horseshit, intelligence is massively multidimensional, it can't be reduced to a one-dimensional object without performing lossy compression.
Run, don't walk, to see Mark Turner, George Lakoff, Giles Fauconnier, Mark Johnson, and Eve Sweeter's work on metaphor and cognitive blending...
...which (perhaps?) does not go quite as far neurobiologically, but quite a bit further, semantically. Maybe browse "The Way We Think" (Turner) or "Metaphors We Live By" (Lakoff).
There's a lot of material out there on this, for several decades now...
Great stuff..thanks for re-reminding me of this.
Holyoak deals with this school of thought in The Human Edge. He criticizes these thinkers for not making a clear enough distinction between the metaphorical and the literal. If everything is a metaphor, then nothing is! Also, he distinguishes between metaphors and analogies and notes that they are enabled by different brain processes.
I have just checked Holyoak's pedigree (and free PDF book link, btw) and it's clear he knows what he's talking about.
disagree on insufficient clarity on metaphor/literal. Those authors drive directlt into the heart of that discussion.
agree on differences between metaphor and analogy. In my untutored view, metaphor is a superset of analogy, and with the maps underlying cognitive blending, yields powerful results. (cf James Alexander and Mark Turner's collaboration on mathematics, e.g.)
For me, the absolute gold in your post is the highlighting of present/missing features of LLM models vis á vis analogical reasoning. I think there's going to be more good work being done there!
Looking forward to your writing about that, as well!
Well, I don't have any plans to write any more about analogical reasoning for the time being, so maybe you should write about that very fascinating dimension of the subject. Also, Holyoak wrote a book about poetry and metaphor called The Spider's Thread. He's a poet himself!
Great article.
But at the risk of being trounced by most four year olds and all nine year olds, I think the best answer to puzzle 1 is G.
Really good article! It's nice to read interesting and understandable articles about effective science.
As a Kantian I can't help but point out your last sentence:
"I continue to hold out hope that neuroscientists will develop an ever more precise and encompassing, and perhaps even complete, understanding of how a deterministic brain can give rise to flexible and spontaneous thinking and action."
I don't really think you meant to put "determinism" and "spontaneity" in opposition here but for Kant this "spontaneity" is indeed in exact opposition to "determinism" and is nonetheless a key-component of human cognition. In Kantian terms thus that "explanatory gap" is essential to human cognition. Whatever the position on this issue, I think either side can agree that the science you present in you article and the hopes you put forth is getting to the core of things.
Kant was the foremost champion of the teleological, dualistic worldview that I am trying to question and undo in my writings. I am a great fan of his moral philosophy, with its emphasis on freedom and spontaneity. I want to show that freedom can be reconciled with determinism.
I would agree that certain aspects of his knowledge-theory contain some dualism but he "corrected" in a way the "crude" dualism of Descartes. In light of your article I understand more or less your opposition against his dualism, I regard that a legitimate position. His view on the world on the other hand and the way he saw the role of science in that is explicitly NON-teleological (and even NON-theological for that matter).
with maybe the nuance here that he thought science itself should proceed towards a unity of knowledge (so in that sense indeed teleological in a way) but we should never use teleological principles as a foundation for our explanations of the world.
Right, we can't experience teleology as a phenomenon, but we can deduce that the the world has a purpose from moral knowledge and aesthetic experience. That's what I understand Kant to be saying.
a short answer:
I guess you're mixing certain aspects of Kant's analysis of the faculties of the understanding in one sentence in a bit of a strange way.
-to experience teleology as a phenomenon: I would say for Kant "experience" or "perceiving a phenomenon" can only happen when the categories of the understanding are applied to the raw sensory data we receive. One of the categories is "causality" (everything that happens has it's cause) and indeed has nothing to do with teleology (final causes).
-moral knowledge is immediately deduced from our self-consciousness (I think therefore I am). and so are the categories of thought.
-that the "world has a purpose" is indeed in a not so straightforward way deduced from moral knowledge but definitely doesn't act as a foundation for morality and is only a "regulative idea" just like his theism is - and can never act as a "constitutive idea". The only ideas that are "constitutive" in perceiving the world are Kants categories of thought (causality, identity etc...)
So for me it is clear that Kant would never accept thing like FTA or intelligent design.
-aesthetic experience for Kant is indeed linked (in a speculative way) with the idea of final causes and teleology. Kant suggests that our faculty of judgement and it's necessary imagination in a way favors the idea of final cause (as in purposeful) in our aesthetic judgement and suggests that this even might play a role in how we perceive the world.
That explanation jibes with what I know about Kant. I agree with you that Kant wouldn't accept the FTA because he would regard it as overstepping the limits of what science can know.
O heck! You introduce "aesthetic experience" and "the world as a purpose" and your short answer depicts some aspects of Kant's philosophy more or less in a coherent but nonetheless not so correct way (in my view) so you've created a situation where short answers are no longer the way to go. Give me some time and I'll do my best to address in a way Kant himself would find half decent! ;-)
This was great. I recently participated in a conversation with the authors of this book on Darwin's use of analogy -- which it seems like you might enjoy,
https://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Argument-Analogy-Artificial-Selection/dp/1108477283
This article is getting huge traffic from somewhere. Can someone tell me how you found it?
Randomly on feed
Maybe I just got on the right side of the algorithm somehow. On a normal day, my substack gets 50 views or less, but it's already up to a record-breaking 566 today and it shows no signs of stopping!
Kepler spent years developing his analogies, while AI generates hundreds in seconds. The difference isn't in analogical capacity, but in the patience to dwell within the analogy. I'd say that slowness wasn't Kepler's limitation, it was his method.
Surely the obvious response to the hard problem of consciousness is that materialistic determinism is simply wrong? Philosophers have spent the past 400 years trying to square the circle of Descartes' mistakes and every single time we end up at square one.
We have made all this stuff up though. As a species we are not essential… a minor adjunct at best. For all of our so called abilities we have truly fucked things up… and continue to do so day by day.