I don’t know what you mean by “separate from” at this point and it’s probably not worth continuing discussion until that’s clearer. (In what sense can anything be separate from anything else in a causally connected universe?)
I mean observation in the conventional sense (getting visual input and recognizing e.g. objects in it), which in humans requires a working visual cortex. Obviously cartography doesn’t resolve philosophical skepticism and I’m not claiming that it does, only that it works in producing accurate representations of the territory given assumptions that are true of the universe we inhabit.
Yes, an agent’s goals aren’t causally or probabilistically independent of its intelligence, though perhaps a weaker claim such as “almost any combination is possible” is true.
EDIT: re philosophical skepticism: okay, so how does bringing in predictive accuracy help? That doesn’t resolve philosophical skepticism either (see: no free lunch theorems).
Even if the universal claim that complete orthogonality is impossible is true - - - I notice in passing that it is argued for with a claim about how the world works, so that you are assuming scepticism has been resolved in order to resolve scepticism - - even if it is true, the correlation between prediction and correspondence could be 0.0001%.
Predictive accuracy doesn’t help with philosophical scepticism. It is nonetheless worth pursuing because it has practical benefits.
I don’t know what you mean by “separate from” at this point and it’s probably not worth continuing discussion until that’s clearer. (In what sense can anything be separate from anything else in a causally connected universe?)
I mean observation in the conventional sense (getting visual input and recognizing e.g. objects in it), which in humans requires a working visual cortex. Obviously cartography doesn’t resolve philosophical skepticism and I’m not claiming that it does, only that it works in producing accurate representations of the territory given assumptions that are true of the universe we inhabit.
So the orthogonality thesis is a priori false?
But that is exactly what I am taking about!
Yes, an agent’s goals aren’t causally or probabilistically independent of its intelligence, though perhaps a weaker claim such as “almost any combination is possible” is true.
EDIT: re philosophical skepticism: okay, so how does bringing in predictive accuracy help? That doesn’t resolve philosophical skepticism either (see: no free lunch theorems).
Even if the universal claim that complete orthogonality is impossible is true - - - I notice in passing that it is argued for with a claim about how the world works, so that you are assuming scepticism has been resolved in order to resolve scepticism - - even if it is true, the correlation between prediction and correspondence could be 0.0001%.
Predictive accuracy doesn’t help with philosophical scepticism. It is nonetheless worth pursuing because it has practical benefits.