First, I think that the theory of agents is a more useful starting point than metaphilosophy. Once we have a theory of agents, we can build models, within that theory, of agents reasoning about philosophical questions. Such models would be answers to special cases of metaphilosophy. I’m not sure we’re going to have a coherent theory of “metaphilosophy” in general, distinct from the theory of agents, because I’m not sure that “philosophy” is an especially natural category[1].
Some examples of what that might look like:
An agent inventing a theory of agents in order to improve its own cognition is a special case of recursive metalearning (see my recent talk on metacognitive agents).
There might be theorems about convergence of learning systems to agents of particular type (e.g. IBP agents), formalized using some brand of ADAM, in the spirit of John’s Selection Theorems programme. This can be another model of agents discovering a theory of agents and becoming more coherent as a result (broader in terms of its notions of “agent” and “discovering” and narrower in terms of what the agent discovers).
An agent learning how to formalize some of its intuitive knowledge (e.g. about its own values) can be described in terms of metacognition, or more generally, the learning of some formal symbolic language. Indeed, understanding is translation, and formalizing intuitive knowledge means translating it from some internal opaque language to an external observable language.
Second, obviously in order to solve philosophical problems (such as the theory of agents), we need to implement a particular metaphilosophy. But I don’t think it needs to has to be extremely rigorous. (After all, if we tried to solve metaphilosophy instead, we would have the same problem.) My informal theory of metaphilosophy is something like: an answer to a philosophical question is good when it seems intuitive, logically consistent and parsimonious[2] after sufficient reflection (where “reflection” involves, among other things, considering special cases and other consequences of the answer, and also connecting the answer to empirical data).
I think that philosophy just consists of all domains where we don’t have consensus about some clear criteria of success. Once such a consensus forms, this domain is no longer considered philosophy. But the reasons some domains have this property at this point of time might be partly coincidental and not especially parsimonious.
Circling back to the first point, what would a formalization of this within a theory of agents look like? “Parsimony” refers to a simplicity prior, “intuition” refers to opaque reasoning in the core of a metacognitive agent, and “logically consistency” is arguably some learned method of testing hypotheses (but maybe we will have a more elaborate theory of the latter).
My informal theory of metaphilosophy is something like: an answer to a philosophical question is good when it seems intuitive, logically consistent and parsimonious
“Intuitive” is a large part of the problem: intuitions vary, which is one reason why philosophers tend not to converge.
Second, obviously in order to solve philosophical problems (such as the theory of agents), we need to implement a particular metaphilosophy.
Metaphilosophy doesn’t necessarily give you a solution: it might just explain the origins of the problem.
First, I think that the theory of agents is a more useful starting point than metaphilosophy. Once we have a theory of agents, we can build models, within that theory, of agents reasoning about philosophical questions. Such models would be answers to special cases of metaphilosophy. I’m not sure we’re going to have a coherent theory of “metaphilosophy” in general, distinct from the theory of agents, because I’m not sure that “philosophy” is an especially natural category[1].
Some examples of what that might look like:
An agent inventing a theory of agents in order to improve its own cognition is a special case of recursive metalearning (see my recent talk on metacognitive agents).
There might be theorems about convergence of learning systems to agents of particular type (e.g. IBP agents), formalized using some brand of ADAM, in the spirit of John’s Selection Theorems programme. This can be another model of agents discovering a theory of agents and becoming more coherent as a result (broader in terms of its notions of “agent” and “discovering” and narrower in terms of what the agent discovers).
An agent learning how to formalize some of its intuitive knowledge (e.g. about its own values) can be described in terms of metacognition, or more generally, the learning of some formal symbolic language. Indeed, understanding is translation, and formalizing intuitive knowledge means translating it from some internal opaque language to an external observable language.
Second, obviously in order to solve philosophical problems (such as the theory of agents), we need to implement a particular metaphilosophy. But I don’t think it needs to has to be extremely rigorous. (After all, if we tried to solve metaphilosophy instead, we would have the same problem.) My informal theory of metaphilosophy is something like: an answer to a philosophical question is good when it seems intuitive, logically consistent and parsimonious[2] after sufficient reflection (where “reflection” involves, among other things, considering special cases and other consequences of the answer, and also connecting the answer to empirical data).
I think that philosophy just consists of all domains where we don’t have consensus about some clear criteria of success. Once such a consensus forms, this domain is no longer considered philosophy. But the reasons some domains have this property at this point of time might be partly coincidental and not especially parsimonious.
Circling back to the first point, what would a formalization of this within a theory of agents look like? “Parsimony” refers to a simplicity prior, “intuition” refers to opaque reasoning in the core of a metacognitive agent, and “logically consistency” is arguably some learned method of testing hypotheses (but maybe we will have a more elaborate theory of the latter).
“Intuitive” is a large part of the problem: intuitions vary, which is one reason why philosophers tend not to converge.
Metaphilosophy doesn’t necessarily give you a solution: it might just explain the origins of the problem.