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@almostlikethat | |||||
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2/ Basically, a person sortof(MUST) sortof(understand) THAT words after "that" sortof(refer) to nebulous mental objects...
The (mostly failed) attempts to translate "NL-to-logic" very systematically often mention "intensional contexts" as jargon:
youtube.com/watch?v=iNVXHv…
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David Chapman
@Meaningness
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12. srp |
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In the Cognitive Reflection Test, you have to forcefully inhibit your informal reasoning, which gets wrong answers. Nice analysis from @drossbucket!
@cdutilhnovaes gives similar examples from the Wason selection task: real-world relevance interferes.
drossbucket.wordpress.com/2018/12/12/the… pic.twitter.com/gS9ykxsecE
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David Chapman
@Meaningness
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12. srp |
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Reasoning with external material formal notation (squiggles on paper) accomplishes abstraction in two ways discussed by @cdutilhnovaes: de-semantification and ease of calculation.
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David Chapman
@Meaningness
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12. srp |
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De-semantification: If you read the word “raven” you usually get a visual image and are primed with all your background knowledge of ravens.
Writing ɸ(x) instead of “is a raven” strips that off, and thereby inhibits the “merely reasonable” ways of thinking.
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David Chapman
@Meaningness
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12. srp |
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Humans evolved for concrete sensorimotor activity (e.g. foraging) and for social relationship maintenance. We didn’t evolve for formal rationality; unfortunately there is no “System 2” logic box in the brain, and we are terrible at it.
We can manage only with external aids…
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David Chapman
@Meaningness
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12. srp |
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Calculation: external formal notation repurposes our sensorimotor skills to perform operations our brains unaided mostly can’t.
Logical giant A.N. Whitehead: “By the aid of symbolism, we can make transitions in reasoning almost mechanically by the eye”
& @cdutilhnovaes below: pic.twitter.com/thW8x7tW6i
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David Chapman
@Meaningness
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12. srp |
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A well-designed formalism, skillfully deployed, makes each next calculation step *visually obvious* and therefore difficult to screw up.
Mathematicians speak of calculative rationality as “symbol pushing” because at a felt level that’s exactly what we’re doing.
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Adam Strandberg
@The_Lagrangian
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12. srp |
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how do we explain ramanujan in this framework
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David Chapman
@Meaningness
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12. srp |
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Which part of “goddess” do you not understand?
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David Chapman
@Meaningness
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13. srp |
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(more seriously: how do we explain Ramanujan in *any* framework??)
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Jennifer RM
@almostlikethat
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13. srp |
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Goddesses are spooks, right? ;-)
Above you pointed to "propositions" or "beliefs" as spooks, but they reminded me of what many called a "sense" in late 1900s philosophy of language.
Also, "senses" wreak havoc with most straightforward "NL-to-logic" translation attempts...
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Jennifer RM
@almostlikethat
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13. srp |
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3/ First language acquisition involves NOT explicitly knowing "all that has been learned"...
But part of what people USUALLY pick up by age 8, which is helped by observing SOPHISTICATED (non-pidgin) NL, is how to systematically impute mental states:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17381779
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Jennifer RM
@almostlikethat
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13. srp |
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4/ It makes sense to me that actual functional brain states might vary (some have aphantasia, some don't) and also be only partially captured in any external form (translation to paintings, or diagrams on a chalkboard, etc). I would expect confusion here as the default.
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