Thanks! I feel like that’s a very straightforward question in my framework. Recall this diagram from above:
[UPDATED TO ALSO COPY THE FOLLOWING SENTENCE FROM OP: †To be clear, the “territory” for (c) is really “(b) being active in the cortex”, not (b) per se.]
Your “truth value” is what I call “what’s happening in the territory”. In the (b)-(a) map-territory correspondence, the “territory” is the real world of atoms, so two different concepts that point to the same possibility in the real world of atoms will have the same “truth value”. In the (c)-(b) map-territory correspondence, the “territory” is the cortex, or more specifically what concepts are active in the cortex, so different concepts are always different things in the territory.
Do you agree that that’s a satisfactory explanation in my framework of why “apple is in awareness” is intensional while “apple is in the cupboard” is extensional? Or am I missing something?
So here (c) is about / represents (b), which itself is about / represents (a). Both (b) and (c) are thoughts (the thought of an apple and the thought of the thought of an apple), so it is expected that they both can represent things. And (a) is a physical object, so it isn’t surprising that (a) doesn’t represent anything.
However, it is not clear how this difference in capacity for representation arises. More specifically, if we think of (c) not as a thought/concept, but as the cortex, which is a physical object, it is not clear how the cortex could represent / be about something, namely (b).
It is also not clear why thinking about X doesn’t imply thinking about Y even in cases where X=Y, while X being on the cupboard implies Y being on the cupboard when X=Y.
Tangential considerations:
I notice that in (b)-(a), (a) is intensional, as expected, while in (c)-(b), (b) does seem to be extensional. Which is not expected, since (c) is a thought about (b).
For example, in the case of (b)-(a) we could have a thought about the apple on the cupboard, and a thought about the apple I bought yesterday, which would not be the same thought, even if both apples are the same object, since I may not know that the apple on the cupboard is the same as the apple I bought yesterday.
But when thinking about our own thoughts, no such failure of identification seems possible. We always seem to know whether two thoughts are the same or not. Apparently because we have direct “access” to them because they are “internal”, while we don’t have direct “access” to physical objects, or to other external objects, like the thoughts of other people. So extensionality fails for thoughts about external objects, but holds for thoughts about internal objects, like our own thoughts.
Thanks! The “territory” for (c) is not (b) per se but rather “(b) being active in the cortex”. (That’s the little dagger on the word “territory” below (b), I explained it in the OP but didn’t copy it into the comment above, sorry.)
So “thought of the thought of an apple” is not quite what (c) is. Something like “thought of the apple being on my mind” would be closer.
More specifically, if we think of (c) not as a thought/concept, but as the cortex, which is a physical object, it is not clear how the cortex could represent / be about something, namely (b).
I sorta feel like you’re making something simple sound complicated, or else I don’t understand your point. “If you think of a map of London as a map of London, then it represents London. If you think of a map of London as a piece of paper with ink on it, then does it still represent London?” Umm, I guess? I don’t know! What’s the point of that question? Isn’t it a silly kind of thing to be talking about? What’s at stake?
It is also not clear why thinking about A doesn’t imply thinking about B even in cases where A=B, while A being on the cupboard implies B being on the cupboard when A=B.
Again, I feel like you’re making common sense sound esoteric (or else I’m missing your point). If I don’t know that Yvain is Scott, and if at time 1 I’m thinking about Yvain, and if at time 2 I’m thinking about Scott, then I’m doing two systematically different things at time 1 versus time 2, right?
But when thinking about our own thoughts, no such failure of identification seems possible.
In some contexts, two different things in the map wind up pointing to the same thing in the territory. In other cases, that doesn’t happen. For example, in the domain of “members of my family”, I’m confident that the different things on my map are also different in the territory. Whereas in the domain of anatomy, I’m not so confident—maybe I don’t realize that erythrocytes = red blood cells. Anyway, whether this is true or not in any particular domain doesn’t seem like a deep question to me—it just depends on the domain, and more specifically how easy it is for one thing in the territory to “appear” different (from my perspective) at different times, such that when I see it the second time, I draw it as a new dot on the map, instead of invoking the preexisting dot.
I sorta feel like you’re making something simple sound complicated, or else I don’t understand your point. “If you think of a map of London as a map of London, then it represents London. If you think of a map of London as a piece of paper with ink on it, then does it still represent London?” Umm, I guess? I don’t know! What’s the point of that question? Isn’t it a silly kind of thing to be talking about? What’s at stake?
Well, it seems that purely the map by itself (as a physical object only) doesn’t represent London, because the same map-like object could have been created as an (extremely unlikely) accident. Just like a random splash of ink that happens to look like Jesus doesn’t represent Jesus, or a random string generator creating the string “Eliezer Yudkowsky” doesn’t refer to Eliezer Yudkowsky. What matters seems to be the intention (a mental object) behind the creation of an actual map of London: Someone intended it to represent London.
Or assume a local tries to explain to you where the next gas station is, gesticulates, and uses his right fist to represent the gas station and his left fist to represent the next intersection. The right fist representing the gas station is not a fact about the physical limb alone, but about the local’s intention behind using it. (He can represent the gas station even if you misunderstand him, so only his state of mind seems to matter for representation.)
So it isn’t clear how a physical object alone (like the cortex) can be about something. Because apparently maps or splashes or strings or fists don’t represent anything by themselves. That is not to say that the cortex can’t represent things, but rather that it isn’t clear why it does, if it does.
Again, I feel like you’re making common sense sound esoteric (or else I’m missing your point). If I don’t know that Yvain is Scott, and if at time 1 I’m thinking about Yvain, and if at time 2 I’m thinking about Scott, then I’m doing two systematically different things at time 1 versus time 2, right?
Exactly. But it isn’t clear why these thoughts are different. If your thinking about someone is a relation between yourself and someone else, then it isn’t clear why you thinking about one person could ever be two different things.
(A similar problem arises when you think about something that might not exist, like God. Does this thought then express a relation between yourself and nothing? But thinking about nothing is clearly different from thinking about God. Besides, other non-existent objects, like the largest prime number, are clearly different from God.)
Maybe it is instead a relation between yourself and your concept of Yvain, and a relationship between yourself and your concept of Scott, which would be different relations, if the names express different concepts, in case you don’t regard them as synonymous. But both concepts happen to refer to the same object. Then “refers to” (or “represents”) would be a relation between a concept and an object. Then the question is again how reference/representation/aboutness/intentionality works, since ordinary physical objects don’t seem to do it. What makes it the case that concept X represents, or doesn’t represent, object Y?
But when thinking about our own thoughts, no such failure of identification seems possible.
In some contexts, two different things in the map wind up pointing to the same thing in the territory. In other cases, that doesn’t happen. For example, in the domain of “members of my family”, I’m confident that the different things on my map are also different in the territory.
If you believe x and y are members of your family, that doesn’t imply you having a belief on whether x and y are identical or not. But if x and y are thoughts of yours (or other mental objects), you know whether they are the same or not. Example: you are confident that your brother is a member of your family, and that the person who ate your apple is a member of your family, but you are not confident about whether your brother is identical to the person who ate your apple.
It seems such examples can be constructed for any external objects, but not for internal ones, so the only “domain” where extensionality holds for intentionality/representation relations is arguably internal objects (our own mental states).
I feel like the difference here is that I’m trying to talk about algorithms (self-supervised learning, generative models, probabilistic inference), and you’re trying to talk about philosophy? (See §1.6.2). I think there are questions that seem important and tricky in your philosophy-speak, but seem weird or obvious or pointless in my algorithm-speak … Well anyway, here’s my perspective:
Let’s say:
There’s a real-world thing T (some machine made of atoms),
T is upstream of some set of sensory inputs S (light reflecting off the machine and hitting photoreceptors etc.)
There’s a predictive learning algorithm L tasked with predicting S,
This learning algorithm gradually builds a trained model (a.k.a. generative model space, a.k.a. intuitive model space) M.
In this case, it is often (though not always) the case that some part of M will have a straightforward structural resemblance to T. In §1.3.2, I called that a “veridical correspondence”.
If that happens, then we know why it happened; it happened because of the learning algorithm L! Obviously, right? Veridical map-territory correspondence is generally a very effective way to predict what’s going to happen, and thus predictive learning algorithms very often build trained models with veridical aspects. (I think the term “teleosemantics” is relevant here? Not sure.)
By contrast, if some part of M has a straightforward structural resemblence to T, then the hypothesis that this happened by coincidence is astronomically unlikely, compared to the hypothesis that this happened because it’s a good way for L to reduce its loss function.
(Then you say: “Ah, but what if that astronomical coincidence comes to pass?” Well then I would say “Huh. Funny that”, and I would shrug and go on with my day. I never claimed to have an airtight philosophical theory of about-ness or representing-ness or whatever! It was you who brought it up!)
Other times, there isn’t a veridical correspondence! Instead, the predictive learning algorithm builds an M, no part of which has any straightforward structural resemblance to T. There are lots of reasons that could happen. I gave one or two examples of non-veridical things in this post, and much more coming up in Post 3.
But it isn’t clear why these thoughts are different. If your thinking about someone is a relation between yourself and someone else, then it isn’t clear why you thinking about one person could ever be two different things.
M is some data structure stored in the cortex. If I don’t know that Scott is Yvain, then Scott is one part of M, and Yvain is a different part of M. Two different sets of neurons in the cortex, or whatever. Right? I don’t think I’m saying anything deep here. :)
I’m not sure how much “structural resemblance” or “veridical correspondence” can account for representation/reference. Maybe our concept of a sock or an apple somehow (structurally) resembles a sock or an apple. But what if I’m thinking of the content of your suitcase, and I don’t know whether it is a sock or an apple or something else? Surely the part of the model (my brain) which represents/refers to the content of your suitcase does not in any way (structurally or otherwise) resemble a sock, even if the content of your suitcase is indeed identical to a sock.
M is some data structure stored in the cortex. If I don’t know that Scott is Yvain, then Scott is one part of M, and Yvain is a different part of M. Two different sets of neurons in the cortex, or whatever. Right? I don’t think I’m saying anything deep here. :)
But Scott and Ivan are an object in the territory, not parts of a model, so the parts of the model which do represent Scott and Yvain require the existence of some sort of representation relation.
Maybe our concept of a sock or an apple somehow (structurally) resembles a sock or an apple.
I could start writing pairs of sentences like:
REAL WORLD: feet often have socks on them MY INTUITIVE MODELS: “feet” “often” “have” “socks” “on” “them”
REAL WORLD: socks are usually stretchy MY INTUITIVE MODELS: “socks” “are” “usually” “stretchy”
(… 7000 more things like that …)
If you take all those things, AND the information that all these things wound up in my intuitive models via the process of my brain doing predictive learning from observations of real-world socks over the course of my life, AND the information that my intuitive models of socks tend to activate when I’m looking at actual real-world socks, and to contribute to me successfully predicting what I see … and you mix all that together … then I think we wind up in a place where saying “my intuitive model of socks has by-and-large pretty good veridical correspondence to actual socks” is perfectly obvious common sense. :)
(This is all the same kinds of things I would say if you ask me what makes something a map of London. If it has features that straightforwardly correspond to features of London, and if it was made by someone trying to map London, and if it is actually useful for navigating London in the same kind of way that maps are normally useful, then yeah, that’s definitely a map of London. If there’s a weird edge case where some of those apply but not others, then OK, it’s a weird edge case, and I don’t see any point in drawing a sharp line through the thicket of weird edge cases. Just call them edge cases!)
But what if I’m thinking of the content of your suitcase, and I don’t know whether it is a sock or an apple or something else? Surely the part of the model (my brain) which represents/refers to the content of your suitcase does not in any way (structurally or otherwise) resemble a sock, even if the content of your suitcase is indeed identical to a sock.
Right, if I don’t know what’s in your suitcase, then there will be rather little veridical correspondence between my intuitive model of the inside of your suitcase, and the actual inside of your suitcase! :)
(The statement “my intuitive model of socks has by-and-large pretty good veridical correspondence to actual socks” does not mean I have omniscient knowledge of every sock on Earth, or that nothing about socks will ever surprise me, etc.!)
But Scott and [Yvain] are an object in the territory, not parts of a model, so the parts of the model which do represent Scott and Yvain require the existence of some sort of representation relation.
Oh sorry, I thought that was clear from context … when I say “Scott is one part of M”, obviously I mean something more like “[the part of my intuitive world-model that I would describe as Scott] is one part of M”. M is a model, i.e. data structure, stored in the cortex. So everything in M is a part of a model by definition.
But what if I’m thinking of the content of your suitcase, and I don’t know whether it is a sock or an apple or something else? Surely the part of the model (my brain) which represents/refers to the content of your suitcase does not in any way (structurally or otherwise) resemble a sock, even if the content of your suitcase is indeed identical to a sock.
Right, if I don’t know what’s in your suitcase, then there will be rather little veridical correspondence between my intuitive model of the inside of your suitcase, and the actual inside of your suitcase! :)
(The statement “my intuitive model of socks has by-and-large pretty good veridical correspondence to actual socks” does not mean I have omniscient knowledge of every sock on Earth, or that nothing about socks will ever surprise me, etc.!)
Okay, but then this theory doesn’t explain how we (or a hypothetical ML model) can in fact successfully refer to / think about things which aren’t known more or less directly. Like the contents of the suitcase, the person ringing at the door, the cause of the car failing to start, the reason for birth rate decline, the birthday present, what I had for dinner a week ago, what I will have for dinner tomorrow, the surprise guest, the solution to some equation, the unknown proof of some conjecture, the things I forgot about etc.
What you’re saying is basically: sometimes we know some aspects of a thing, but don’t know other aspects of it. There’s a thing in a suitcase. Well, I know where it is (in the suitcase), and a bit about how big it is (smaller than a bulldozer), and whether it’s tangible versus abstract (tangible). Then there are other things about it that I don’t know, like its color and shape. OK, cool. That’s not unusual—absolutely everything is like that. Even things I’m looking straight at are like that. I don’t know their weight, internal composition, etc.
I don’t need a “theory” to explain how a “hypothetical” learning algorithm can build a generative model that can represent this kind of information in its latent variables, and draw appropriate inferences. It’s not a hypothetical! Any generative model built by a predictive learning algorithm will actually do this—it will pick up on local patterns and extrapolate them, even in the absence of omniscient knowledge of every aspect of the thing / situation. It will draw inferences from the limited information it does have. Trained LLMs do this, and an adult cortex does it too.
I think you’re going wrong by taking “aboutness” to be a bedrock principle of how you’re thinking about things. These predictive learning algorithms and trained models actually exist. If, when you run these algorithms, you wind up with all kinds of edge cases where it’s unclear what is “about” what, (and you do), then that’s a sign that you should not be treating “aboutness” as a bedrock principle in the first place. “Aboutness” is like any other word / category—there are cases where it’s clearly a useful notion, and cases where it’s clearly not, and lots of edge cases in between. The sensible way to deal with edge cases is to use more words to elaborate what’s going on. (“Is chess a sport?” “Well, it’s like a sport in such-and-such respects but it also has so-and-so properties which are not very sport-like.” That’s a good response! No need for philosophizing.)
That’s how I’m using “veridicality” (≈ aboutness) in this series. I defined the term in Post 1 and am using it regularly, because I think there are lots of central cases where it’s clearly useful. There are also plenty of edge cases, and when I hit an edge case, I just use more words to elaborate exactly what’s going on. [Copying from Post 1:] For example, suppose intuitive concept X faithfully captures the behavior of algorithm Y, but X is intuitively conceptualized as a spirit floating in the room, rather than as an algorithm within the Platonic, ethereal realm of algorithms. Well then, I would just say something like: “X has good veridical correspondence to the behavior of algorithm Y, but the spirit- and location-related aspects of X do not veridically correspond to anything at all.” (This is basically a real example—it’s how some “awakened” (Post 6) people talk about what I call conscious awareness in this post.) I think you want “aboutness” to be something more fundamental than that, and I think that you’re wrong to want that.
Thanks! I feel like that’s a very straightforward question in my framework. Recall this diagram from above:
[UPDATED TO ALSO COPY THE FOLLOWING SENTENCE FROM OP: †To be clear, the “territory” for (c) is really “(b) being active in the cortex”, not (b) per se.]
Your “truth value” is what I call “what’s happening in the territory”. In the (b)-(a) map-territory correspondence, the “territory” is the real world of atoms, so two different concepts that point to the same possibility in the real world of atoms will have the same “truth value”. In the (c)-(b) map-territory correspondence, the “territory” is the cortex, or more specifically what concepts are active in the cortex, so different concepts are always different things in the territory.
Do you agree that that’s a satisfactory explanation in my framework of why “apple is in awareness” is intensional while “apple is in the cupboard” is extensional? Or am I missing something?
So here (c) is about / represents (b), which itself is about / represents (a). Both (b) and (c) are thoughts (the thought of an apple and the thought of the thought of an apple), so it is expected that they both can represent things. And (a) is a physical object, so it isn’t surprising that (a) doesn’t represent anything.
However, it is not clear how this difference in capacity for representation arises. More specifically, if we think of (c) not as a thought/concept, but as the cortex, which is a physical object, it is not clear how the cortex could represent / be about something, namely (b).
It is also not clear why thinking about X doesn’t imply thinking about Y even in cases where X=Y, while X being on the cupboard implies Y being on the cupboard when X=Y.
Tangential considerations:
I notice that in (b)-(a), (a) is intensional, as expected, while in (c)-(b), (b) does seem to be extensional. Which is not expected, since (c) is a thought about (b).
For example, in the case of (b)-(a) we could have a thought about the apple on the cupboard, and a thought about the apple I bought yesterday, which would not be the same thought, even if both apples are the same object, since I may not know that the apple on the cupboard is the same as the apple I bought yesterday.
But when thinking about our own thoughts, no such failure of identification seems possible. We always seem to know whether two thoughts are the same or not. Apparently because we have direct “access” to them because they are “internal”, while we don’t have direct “access” to physical objects, or to other external objects, like the thoughts of other people. So extensionality fails for thoughts about external objects, but holds for thoughts about internal objects, like our own thoughts.
Thanks! The “territory” for (c) is not (b) per se but rather “(b) being active in the cortex”. (That’s the little dagger on the word “territory” below (b), I explained it in the OP but didn’t copy it into the comment above, sorry.)
So “thought of the thought of an apple” is not quite what (c) is. Something like “thought of the apple being on my mind” would be closer.
I sorta feel like you’re making something simple sound complicated, or else I don’t understand your point. “If you think of a map of London as a map of London, then it represents London. If you think of a map of London as a piece of paper with ink on it, then does it still represent London?” Umm, I guess? I don’t know! What’s the point of that question? Isn’t it a silly kind of thing to be talking about? What’s at stake?
Again, I feel like you’re making common sense sound esoteric (or else I’m missing your point). If I don’t know that Yvain is Scott, and if at time 1 I’m thinking about Yvain, and if at time 2 I’m thinking about Scott, then I’m doing two systematically different things at time 1 versus time 2, right?
In some contexts, two different things in the map wind up pointing to the same thing in the territory. In other cases, that doesn’t happen. For example, in the domain of “members of my family”, I’m confident that the different things on my map are also different in the territory. Whereas in the domain of anatomy, I’m not so confident—maybe I don’t realize that erythrocytes = red blood cells. Anyway, whether this is true or not in any particular domain doesn’t seem like a deep question to me—it just depends on the domain, and more specifically how easy it is for one thing in the territory to “appear” different (from my perspective) at different times, such that when I see it the second time, I draw it as a new dot on the map, instead of invoking the preexisting dot.
Well, it seems that purely the map by itself (as a physical object only) doesn’t represent London, because the same map-like object could have been created as an (extremely unlikely) accident. Just like a random splash of ink that happens to look like Jesus doesn’t represent Jesus, or a random string generator creating the string “Eliezer Yudkowsky” doesn’t refer to Eliezer Yudkowsky. What matters seems to be the intention (a mental object) behind the creation of an actual map of London: Someone intended it to represent London.
Or assume a local tries to explain to you where the next gas station is, gesticulates, and uses his right fist to represent the gas station and his left fist to represent the next intersection. The right fist representing the gas station is not a fact about the physical limb alone, but about the local’s intention behind using it. (He can represent the gas station even if you misunderstand him, so only his state of mind seems to matter for representation.)
So it isn’t clear how a physical object alone (like the cortex) can be about something. Because apparently maps or splashes or strings or fists don’t represent anything by themselves. That is not to say that the cortex can’t represent things, but rather that it isn’t clear why it does, if it does.
Exactly. But it isn’t clear why these thoughts are different. If your thinking about someone is a relation between yourself and someone else, then it isn’t clear why you thinking about one person could ever be two different things.
(A similar problem arises when you think about something that might not exist, like God. Does this thought then express a relation between yourself and nothing? But thinking about nothing is clearly different from thinking about God. Besides, other non-existent objects, like the largest prime number, are clearly different from God.)
Maybe it is instead a relation between yourself and your concept of Yvain, and a relationship between yourself and your concept of Scott, which would be different relations, if the names express different concepts, in case you don’t regard them as synonymous. But both concepts happen to refer to the same object. Then “refers to” (or “represents”) would be a relation between a concept and an object. Then the question is again how reference/representation/aboutness/intentionality works, since ordinary physical objects don’t seem to do it. What makes it the case that concept X represents, or doesn’t represent, object Y?
If you believe x and y are members of your family, that doesn’t imply you having a belief on whether x and y are identical or not. But if x and y are thoughts of yours (or other mental objects), you know whether they are the same or not. Example: you are confident that your brother is a member of your family, and that the person who ate your apple is a member of your family, but you are not confident about whether your brother is identical to the person who ate your apple.
It seems such examples can be constructed for any external objects, but not for internal ones, so the only “domain” where extensionality holds for intentionality/representation relations is arguably internal objects (our own mental states).
I feel like the difference here is that I’m trying to talk about algorithms (self-supervised learning, generative models, probabilistic inference), and you’re trying to talk about philosophy? (See §1.6.2). I think there are questions that seem important and tricky in your philosophy-speak, but seem weird or obvious or pointless in my algorithm-speak … Well anyway, here’s my perspective:
Let’s say:
There’s a real-world thing T (some machine made of atoms),
T is upstream of some set of sensory inputs S (light reflecting off the machine and hitting photoreceptors etc.)
There’s a predictive learning algorithm L tasked with predicting S,
This learning algorithm gradually builds a trained model (a.k.a. generative model space, a.k.a. intuitive model space) M.
In this case, it is often (though not always) the case that some part of M will have a straightforward structural resemblance to T. In §1.3.2, I called that a “veridical correspondence”.
If that happens, then we know why it happened; it happened because of the learning algorithm L! Obviously, right? Veridical map-territory correspondence is generally a very effective way to predict what’s going to happen, and thus predictive learning algorithms very often build trained models with veridical aspects. (I think the term “teleosemantics” is relevant here? Not sure.)
By contrast, if some part of M has a straightforward structural resemblence to T, then the hypothesis that this happened by coincidence is astronomically unlikely, compared to the hypothesis that this happened because it’s a good way for L to reduce its loss function.
(Then you say: “Ah, but what if that astronomical coincidence comes to pass?” Well then I would say “Huh. Funny that”, and I would shrug and go on with my day. I never claimed to have an airtight philosophical theory of about-ness or representing-ness or whatever! It was you who brought it up!)
Other times, there isn’t a veridical correspondence! Instead, the predictive learning algorithm builds an M, no part of which has any straightforward structural resemblance to T. There are lots of reasons that could happen. I gave one or two examples of non-veridical things in this post, and much more coming up in Post 3.
M is some data structure stored in the cortex. If I don’t know that Scott is Yvain, then Scott is one part of M, and Yvain is a different part of M. Two different sets of neurons in the cortex, or whatever. Right? I don’t think I’m saying anything deep here. :)
I’m not sure how much “structural resemblance” or “veridical correspondence” can account for representation/reference. Maybe our concept of a sock or an apple somehow (structurally) resembles a sock or an apple. But what if I’m thinking of the content of your suitcase, and I don’t know whether it is a sock or an apple or something else? Surely the part of the model (my brain) which represents/refers to the content of your suitcase does not in any way (structurally or otherwise) resemble a sock, even if the content of your suitcase is indeed identical to a sock.
But Scott and Ivan are an object in the territory, not parts of a model, so the parts of the model which do represent Scott and Yvain require the existence of some sort of representation relation.
I could start writing pairs of sentences like:
REAL WORLD: feet often have socks on them
MY INTUITIVE MODELS: “feet” “often” “have” “socks” “on” “them”
REAL WORLD: socks are usually stretchy
MY INTUITIVE MODELS: “socks” “are” “usually” “stretchy”
(… 7000 more things like that …)
If you take all those things, AND the information that all these things wound up in my intuitive models via the process of my brain doing predictive learning from observations of real-world socks over the course of my life, AND the information that my intuitive models of socks tend to activate when I’m looking at actual real-world socks, and to contribute to me successfully predicting what I see … and you mix all that together … then I think we wind up in a place where saying “my intuitive model of socks has by-and-large pretty good veridical correspondence to actual socks” is perfectly obvious common sense. :)
(This is all the same kinds of things I would say if you ask me what makes something a map of London. If it has features that straightforwardly correspond to features of London, and if it was made by someone trying to map London, and if it is actually useful for navigating London in the same kind of way that maps are normally useful, then yeah, that’s definitely a map of London. If there’s a weird edge case where some of those apply but not others, then OK, it’s a weird edge case, and I don’t see any point in drawing a sharp line through the thicket of weird edge cases. Just call them edge cases!)
Right, if I don’t know what’s in your suitcase, then there will be rather little veridical correspondence between my intuitive model of the inside of your suitcase, and the actual inside of your suitcase! :)
(The statement “my intuitive model of socks has by-and-large pretty good veridical correspondence to actual socks” does not mean I have omniscient knowledge of every sock on Earth, or that nothing about socks will ever surprise me, etc.!)
Oh sorry, I thought that was clear from context … when I say “Scott is one part of M”, obviously I mean something more like “[the part of my intuitive world-model that I would describe as Scott] is one part of M”. M is a model, i.e. data structure, stored in the cortex. So everything in M is a part of a model by definition.
Okay, but then this theory doesn’t explain how we (or a hypothetical ML model) can in fact successfully refer to / think about things which aren’t known more or less directly. Like the contents of the suitcase, the person ringing at the door, the cause of the car failing to start, the reason for birth rate decline, the birthday present, what I had for dinner a week ago, what I will have for dinner tomorrow, the surprise guest, the solution to some equation, the unknown proof of some conjecture, the things I forgot about etc.
What you’re saying is basically: sometimes we know some aspects of a thing, but don’t know other aspects of it. There’s a thing in a suitcase. Well, I know where it is (in the suitcase), and a bit about how big it is (smaller than a bulldozer), and whether it’s tangible versus abstract (tangible). Then there are other things about it that I don’t know, like its color and shape. OK, cool. That’s not unusual—absolutely everything is like that. Even things I’m looking straight at are like that. I don’t know their weight, internal composition, etc.
I don’t need a “theory” to explain how a “hypothetical” learning algorithm can build a generative model that can represent this kind of information in its latent variables, and draw appropriate inferences. It’s not a hypothetical! Any generative model built by a predictive learning algorithm will actually do this—it will pick up on local patterns and extrapolate them, even in the absence of omniscient knowledge of every aspect of the thing / situation. It will draw inferences from the limited information it does have. Trained LLMs do this, and an adult cortex does it too.
I think you’re going wrong by taking “aboutness” to be a bedrock principle of how you’re thinking about things. These predictive learning algorithms and trained models actually exist. If, when you run these algorithms, you wind up with all kinds of edge cases where it’s unclear what is “about” what, (and you do), then that’s a sign that you should not be treating “aboutness” as a bedrock principle in the first place. “Aboutness” is like any other word / category—there are cases where it’s clearly a useful notion, and cases where it’s clearly not, and lots of edge cases in between. The sensible way to deal with edge cases is to use more words to elaborate what’s going on. (“Is chess a sport?” “Well, it’s like a sport in such-and-such respects but it also has so-and-so properties which are not very sport-like.” That’s a good response! No need for philosophizing.)
That’s how I’m using “veridicality” (≈ aboutness) in this series. I defined the term in Post 1 and am using it regularly, because I think there are lots of central cases where it’s clearly useful. There are also plenty of edge cases, and when I hit an edge case, I just use more words to elaborate exactly what’s going on. [Copying from Post 1:] For example, suppose intuitive concept X faithfully captures the behavior of algorithm Y, but X is intuitively conceptualized as a spirit floating in the room, rather than as an algorithm within the Platonic, ethereal realm of algorithms. Well then, I would just say something like: “X has good veridical correspondence to the behavior of algorithm Y, but the spirit- and location-related aspects of X do not veridically correspond to anything at all.” (This is basically a real example—it’s how some “awakened” (Post 6) people talk about what I call conscious awareness in this post.) I think you want “aboutness” to be something more fundamental than that, and I think that you’re wrong to want that.