I heard on the wireless yesterday that the current head of Microsoft lies awake worrying that people are forming relationships with AI tools as if they were human. He used the expression 'seemingly conscious AI' and I think that is a good place to start. When , in normal circumstances do questions of consciousness arise? … Continue reading Why do we suppose AI might be conscious?
Category: philosophy
reflections in a philosophical strain
Coming back to Ludwig
Wittgenstein at the bar of the Folies Bergere By what James Joyce would call a vicus of recirculation, I find myself once more in agreement with Ludwig Wittgenstein after an unexpected falling-out. It was my reading of Wittgenstein’s well-known dictum that ‘the meaning of a word…is its use in the language’ along with his notion … Continue reading Coming back to Ludwig
The Shepherd Boy and the Philosopher: a fable about numbers
‘It's surreal to me that it's 2022 and there are still people out there who think 2 + 2 = 4 is an objective truth that was true before humans even existed and not just like a thing society agreed on because it's useful’ (culled from Twitter, where people say the most extraordinary things out … Continue reading The Shepherd Boy and the Philosopher: a fable about numbers
The Magic Money Tree: is Covid-19 a game-changer?
The idea of 'convention' and its associated activity of 'deeming' are fundamental to human activity, as I think I have said elsewhere. By 'convention' I mean the agreement to be bound by something, to deem it to have a power which in reality resides with us. The paradigm of this concept is when a child, … Continue reading The Magic Money Tree: is Covid-19 a game-changer?
A picture of the world
Let us suppose two people, poring over a map spread on a table; make it an Ordnance Survey two-and-half-inch to the mile one. They are planning a cycle journey together that will traverse the area shown on the map, by one of several routes. Both are skilled in reading maps, so that in tracing a … Continue reading A picture of the world
Why Writing is like a Playtex Bra
‘It lifts and separates’ is a slogan that will be familiar to those of my generation - it was advertised as the chief virtue of the Playtex ‘cross-your-heart’ Bra in the impressionable days of my youth. However, it also serves as a memorable illustration of my theory concerning the origin of what we think of … Continue reading Why Writing is like a Playtex Bra
The Actual Colour of the Sun
‘The sun is actually white, it just appears yellow to us through the Earth’s atmosphere.’ This is a line that appeared on Facebook a while ago, courtesy of my friend Else Cederborg, who posts all sorts of curious and interesting things. It is a common form of argument that most will readily understand and generally … Continue reading The Actual Colour of the Sun
‘Like, yet unlike.’
'Like, yet unlike,' is Merry's comment in The Lord of the Rings when he first sees Gandalf and Saruman together: Gandalf, returned from the dead, has assumed the white robes formerly worn by Saruman, who has succumbed to despair and been corrupted by evil and is about to be deposed. So we have two people … Continue reading ‘Like, yet unlike.’
More thinking about thinking
As I remarked elsewhere, a lot of my own thinking might be described as ‘subvocalisation’, i.e. speaking without voicing the actual words. Even as I am typing this, I am constructing the sentences ‘in my head’ - though I would not say that I hear them: this is not someone else’s voice, it is mine, … Continue reading More thinking about thinking
A penny for them…
‘What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? I never know what you are thinking.’ – Eliot, The Waste Land ‘He’s the sort that you never know what he’s thinking’ defines a recognisable character but carries a curious implication. There is a strong suggestion of duplicity, of inner workings at odds with outer show. Even among … Continue reading A penny for them…
COMPLEAT TROWZER 