Comments welcome, as always, by email, as comments on this blog post, or through social media. This is intended as a submission to a special issue of Semiotic Studies on Krzysztof Poslajko's recent book Unreal Beliefs.
Superficialism about property X treats the possession, or not, of property X as determined entirely by superficial as opposed to deep facts. Belief should be understood superficially, as determined entirely by facts about actual and potential behavior, conscious experience, and transitional cognitive states ultimately understood in terms of actual and potential behavior and conscious experience. On both intuitive and pragmatic grounds, superficialism about belief is superior to accounts of belief in terms of deep cognitive or neural architecture, and it is not systematically inferior on scientific grounds. Behaviorist and interpretativist superficialism suggests that robots and Large Language Models already do, or will soon, believe. If consciousness is also essential to belief, the issue might soon become unclear for some of the most advanced systems. However, it will at least be practical to attribute some such systems belief* -- belief shorn of commitment to any conscious aspect -- and it will be forgivable if people forget to pronounce the asterisk. Krzysztof Poslajko should welcome this manner of thinking, though it needn't be as "antirealist" as Poslajko suggests.
6 comments:
I have not gone to Wiki yet, but I may. It seems to me that superficialism may be, roughly = or, analogous with speculatory. (I may have made that last word up).This much suggested/offered, I further wonder how we WILL decide that robots believe. Since I am not even certain, at this time, how we CAN make such a decision, I don't know. So, having put up, I will shut up. Thanks, Eric!
Are you summisioning evolution goes on with or without real-unreal-anti-real postures given or taken by all the kinds of bots-chatbots, if so...
...then place is everything-belief nothing in consciousness...
Okay. I admitted, half jokingly, I "made" up speculatory. I suppose speculative would have been a better word That would have matched better with superficial. I don't invent many words. Occasionally, I combine words into phrases I want to convey ideas. Contextual reality is one of those combinations.So, no, I did not coin the term, superficialism. Here again,I know nothing about *summissioning*...not in my lexicon. Nor did I understand the rest of what the commentor said, within or without context.
I am half-sorry if this comment offends someone. I just try harder to think better, and then write that down. Now and then, I manage to do both.That does not always, or in all ways make everyone happy.Spaghetti does not stick-to-the-wall, if it is not done. After a time, it makes a mess... Thanks!
I try being, as Dennett might have said, "cognizant in the body" when commenting, but Eric's blogings are funny, so I just have to say something sometimes...like offence-defence-halftime...thanks...
All good. I still don't know what superficialism means. No worries---I do understand *superficial*---the ism piece is just another modification, I guess.
Yeah, I sometimes make up words and invent phrases, too. No further comment, Arnie. Be well, and happy.
Gemini and me...In the news today: Thalamus to Cognition is a way to understand reality becoming belief; the thalamus's crucial role in cognition and how understanding this role can shed light on the neural basis of "reality belief."...
This is being considered in the context of both human and artificial intelligence The thalamus, traditionally viewed as a simple sensory relay station, is now recognized as a central integrator of information from across the entire brain. This includes sensory systems, the cortex, basal ganglia, limbic systems, brainstem nuclei, and the cerebellum....
Then is cognition superficial belief and thalmics' metaphysical reality...
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