How is the significance of the doctrine Scientism to be understood?To answer that question,it will be necessary to distinguish three stances towards scientific activity.This can be done by developing distinctions alre...How is the significance of the doctrine Scientism to be understood?To answer that question,it will be necessary to distinguish three stances towards scientific activity.This can be done by developing distinctions already delineated between Relativistic,Methodological and Dogmatic Scientism.In the present paper,the first two senses are best characterized as the scientistic:Scientistic Relativism and Scientistic Methodologism.Dogmatic Scientism arises in two forms:a Janus-faced Scientism and an Essentialist form.The former can be understood as advocating a public tolerance of behaviourism in relation to other people’s responses,cast as spatio-temporal events whilst adopting,at the same time,a private existentialism so that one’s own first person evaluations remain valid.An Essentialist form sustains a predictive and normative stance where any human action or communication is cast as“a natural object of investigation of the empirical sciences”.After distinguishing these four ways of interpreting scientific activity,Ladyman and Ross’s own contribution to this debate can be elucidated through examining five theses carried by their text Every Thing Must Go,and ideas forwarded subsequently in Ladyman’s article“Scientism with a Humane Face”:(1)the attack upon conceptual analysis;(2)the defence of metaphysics;(3)the advocacy of scale relative ontology;(4)the rehabilitation of Peirce’s philosophy;and(5)the rejection of a traditional conception of materialism.It may then become possible to ascertain how far their approach to scientific activity can be identified with either a Scientific Methodologism or some form of Scientism itself.展开更多
This paper introduces a theory of mind that positions language as a cognitive tool in its own right for the optimization of biological fitness.I argue that human language reconstruction of reality results from biologi...This paper introduces a theory of mind that positions language as a cognitive tool in its own right for the optimization of biological fitness.I argue that human language reconstruction of reality results from biological memory and adaptation to uncertain environmental conditions for the reaffirmation of the Selfas-symbol.I demonstrate that pretrained language models,such as ChatGPT,lack embodied grounding,which compromises their ability to adequately model the world through language due to the absence of subjecthood and conscious states for event recognition and partition.At a deep level,I challenge the notion that the constitution of a semiotic Self relies on computational reflection,arguing against reducing human representation to data structures and emphasizing the importance of positing accurate models of human representation through language.This underscores the distinction between transformers as posthuman agents and humans as purposeful biological agents,which emphasizes the human capacity for purposeful biological adjustment and optimization.One of the main conclusions of this is that the capacity to integrate information does not amount to phenomenal consciousness as argued by Information Integration Theory.Moreover,while language models exhibit superior computational capacity,they lack the real consciousness providing them with multiscalar experience anchored in the physical world,a characteristic of human cognition.However,the paper anticipates the emergence of new in silico conceptualizers capable of defining themselves as phenomenal agents with symbolic contours and specific goals.展开更多
文摘How is the significance of the doctrine Scientism to be understood?To answer that question,it will be necessary to distinguish three stances towards scientific activity.This can be done by developing distinctions already delineated between Relativistic,Methodological and Dogmatic Scientism.In the present paper,the first two senses are best characterized as the scientistic:Scientistic Relativism and Scientistic Methodologism.Dogmatic Scientism arises in two forms:a Janus-faced Scientism and an Essentialist form.The former can be understood as advocating a public tolerance of behaviourism in relation to other people’s responses,cast as spatio-temporal events whilst adopting,at the same time,a private existentialism so that one’s own first person evaluations remain valid.An Essentialist form sustains a predictive and normative stance where any human action or communication is cast as“a natural object of investigation of the empirical sciences”.After distinguishing these four ways of interpreting scientific activity,Ladyman and Ross’s own contribution to this debate can be elucidated through examining five theses carried by their text Every Thing Must Go,and ideas forwarded subsequently in Ladyman’s article“Scientism with a Humane Face”:(1)the attack upon conceptual analysis;(2)the defence of metaphysics;(3)the advocacy of scale relative ontology;(4)the rehabilitation of Peirce’s philosophy;and(5)the rejection of a traditional conception of materialism.It may then become possible to ascertain how far their approach to scientific activity can be identified with either a Scientific Methodologism or some form of Scientism itself.
文摘This paper introduces a theory of mind that positions language as a cognitive tool in its own right for the optimization of biological fitness.I argue that human language reconstruction of reality results from biological memory and adaptation to uncertain environmental conditions for the reaffirmation of the Selfas-symbol.I demonstrate that pretrained language models,such as ChatGPT,lack embodied grounding,which compromises their ability to adequately model the world through language due to the absence of subjecthood and conscious states for event recognition and partition.At a deep level,I challenge the notion that the constitution of a semiotic Self relies on computational reflection,arguing against reducing human representation to data structures and emphasizing the importance of positing accurate models of human representation through language.This underscores the distinction between transformers as posthuman agents and humans as purposeful biological agents,which emphasizes the human capacity for purposeful biological adjustment and optimization.One of the main conclusions of this is that the capacity to integrate information does not amount to phenomenal consciousness as argued by Information Integration Theory.Moreover,while language models exhibit superior computational capacity,they lack the real consciousness providing them with multiscalar experience anchored in the physical world,a characteristic of human cognition.However,the paper anticipates the emergence of new in silico conceptualizers capable of defining themselves as phenomenal agents with symbolic contours and specific goals.
