I’m not going to pretend I followed all the technical details, but the overall thrust of the discussion feels a lot like the concepts of normal modes in wave mechanics, or basis sets in quantum mechanics, or quasiparticles in condensed matter physics. I understand the appeal of reaching for Dennett and Wittgenstein, the parallels are clear, but we have many other (and less controversial) examples of relying on implicit representations over explicit ones in order to be better able to describe the behavior of complex systems. Just ask anyone who makes chips how a p-type semiconductor works.
I guess you are thinking about holes with the p-type semiconductor?
I don’t think I agree (perhaps obviously) that it’s better to think about the issues in the post in terms of physics analogies than in terms of the philosophy of mind and language. If you are thinking about how a mental representation represents some linguistic concept, then Dennett and Wittgenstein (and others!) are addressing the same problem as you! in a way that virtual particles are really not
I think I was really unclear, sorry. I wasn’t so much saying physical analogies to quasiparticles are good ways to think about the issues discussed in the post. I was trying to say that the way physicists and materials scientists think about quasiparticles are an example of humans choosing among implicit vs explicit representations, based on which features each brings to the fore.
Maybe I’m still missing a central piece (or several) of the problem, but I have a hard time understanding why Dennett isn’t just flat-out, uncontestably, obviously right about this? And that his needing to argue it is a failure of the rest of the field to notice that?
I kind of agree that Dennett is right about this, but I think it’s important to notice that the idea he’s attacking—that all representation is explicit representation—is an old and popular one in philosophy of mind that was, at one point, seen as natural and inevitable by many people working in the field, and one which I think still seems somewhat natural and obvious to many people who maybe haven’t thought about the counterarguments much (e.g I think you can see echos of this view in a post like this one, or the idea that there will be some ‘intelligence algorithm’ which will be a relatively short python program). The idea that a thought is always or mostly something like a sentence in ‘mentalese’ is, I think, still an attractive one to many people of a logical sort of bent, as is the idea that formalised reasoning captures the ‘core’ of cognition.
This was really interesting, strongly upvoted.
I’m not going to pretend I followed all the technical details, but the overall thrust of the discussion feels a lot like the concepts of normal modes in wave mechanics, or basis sets in quantum mechanics, or quasiparticles in condensed matter physics. I understand the appeal of reaching for Dennett and Wittgenstein, the parallels are clear, but we have many other (and less controversial) examples of relying on implicit representations over explicit ones in order to be better able to describe the behavior of complex systems. Just ask anyone who makes chips how a p-type semiconductor works.
I guess you are thinking about holes with the p-type semiconductor?
I don’t think I agree (perhaps obviously) that it’s better to think about the issues in the post in terms of physics analogies than in terms of the philosophy of mind and language. If you are thinking about how a mental representation represents some linguistic concept, then Dennett and Wittgenstein (and others!) are addressing the same problem as you! in a way that virtual particles are really not
I think I was really unclear, sorry. I wasn’t so much saying physical analogies to quasiparticles are good ways to think about the issues discussed in the post. I was trying to say that the way physicists and materials scientists think about quasiparticles are an example of humans choosing among implicit vs explicit representations, based on which features each brings to the fore.
Maybe I’m still missing a central piece (or several) of the problem, but I have a hard time understanding why Dennett isn’t just flat-out, uncontestably, obviously right about this? And that his needing to argue it is a failure of the rest of the field to notice that?
I kind of agree that Dennett is right about this, but I think it’s important to notice that the idea he’s attacking—that all representation is explicit representation—is an old and popular one in philosophy of mind that was, at one point, seen as natural and inevitable by many people working in the field, and one which I think still seems somewhat natural and obvious to many people who maybe haven’t thought about the counterarguments much (e.g I think you can see echos of this view in a post like this one, or the idea that there will be some ‘intelligence algorithm’ which will be a relatively short python program). The idea that a thought is always or mostly something like a sentence in ‘mentalese’ is, I think, still an attractive one to many people of a logical sort of bent, as is the idea that formalised reasoning captures the ‘core’ of cognition.