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32Large Language Models, Agency, and Why Speech Acts are Beyond Them (For Now) – A Kantian-Cum-Pragmatist CasePhilosophy and Technology 37 (1): 1-24. 2024.This article sets in with the question whether current or foreseeable transformer-based large language models (LLMs), such as the ones powering OpenAI’s ChatGPT, could be language users in a way comparable to humans. It answers the question negatively, presenting the following argument. Apart from niche uses, to use language means to act. But LLMs are unable to act because they lack intentions. This, in turn, is because they are the wrong kind of being: agents with intentions need to be autonomo…Read more
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20Capturing the Varieties of Natural Language Inference: A Systematic Survey of Existing Datasets and Two Novel BenchmarksJournal of Logic, Language and Information 33 (1): 21-48. 2023.Transformer-based Pre-Trained Language Models currently dominate the field of Natural Language Inference (NLI). We first survey existing NLI datasets, and we systematize them according to the different kinds of logical inferences that are being distinguished. This shows two gaps in the current dataset landscape, which we propose to address with one dataset that has been developed in argumentative writing research as well as a new one building on syllogistic logic. Throughout, we also explore the…Read more
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148A Loosely Wittgensteinian Conception of the Linguistic Understanding of Large Language Models like BERT, GPT-3, and ChatGPTGrazer Philosophische Studien 99 (4): 485-523. 2023.In this article, I develop a loosely Wittgensteinian conception of what it takes for a being, including an AI system, to understand language, and I suggest that current state of the art systems are closer to fulfilling these requirements than one might think. Developing and defending this claim has both empirical and conceptual aspects. The conceptual aspects concern the criteria that are reasonably applied when judging whether some being understands language; the empirical aspects concern the q…Read more
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12A Science-Based Critique of Epistemological Naturalism in Quine’s TraditionSpringer Verlag. 2019.At the intersection of epistemology, metaphilosophy, and philosophy of science, this exciting new book examines the epistemic limits of empirical science. It makes a unique contribution to research on epistemological naturalism in Quine’s tradition by criticizing the position based on first-order data from empirical psychology and the history of natural science. This way, it meets the naturalist on their own ground not only regarding subject matter, but also regarding their epistemic methods. Th…Read more
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25Maddy vs. Quine on Innate Concepts. Revisiting a Perennial Debate in Light of Recent Empirical ResultsPhilosophia 48 (1): 159-177. 2020.This article critically assesses the empirical research that leads Quine, in his posthumously published work, to abandon his empiricist principle that humans do not have any innate concepts, or knowledge. It is the same empirical research that Penelope Maddy capitalizes on to develop her own contributions to naturalized epistemology, and it has been pioneered by developmental psychologist Elisabeth Spelke. Spelke employs the method of habituation and preferential looking to argue that human infa…Read more
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67From Shared Stimuli to Preestablished Harmony: The Development of Quine’s Thinking on Intersubjectivity and Objective ValidityHopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 9 (2): 343-370. 2019.W. V. O. Quine is generally seen as one of the foremost empiricists of the twentieth century. For large parts of his career, the label “empiricist” is accurate; in his mature work, however, he integrated decidedly antiempiricist elements in his epistemology. From The Roots of Reference onward, he enlists natural selection and innate cognitive structures to ensure that scientific concepts have a “degree of objective validity.” From From Stimulus to Science onward, he also explains the very possib…Read more
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37Quine and his place in history (review)British Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (6): 1249-1252. 2017.
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Neural Networks and Connectionism |
Epistemology |
Kant: Metaphysics and Epistemology |
W. V. O. Quine |