Semantika ja analüütiline filosoofia

Code: ITV9070 Link: http://lambda.ee/wiki/Semantika_ja_anal%C3%BC%C3%BCtiline_filosoofia Title: Semantics and Analytical Philosophy Archive: year 2024 archive Lecturer: Tanel Tammet Contact: tanel.tammet@ttu.ee, 6203457, ICT 426 "A sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie." --Umberto Eco “I’m writing a book on magic,” I explain, and I’m asked, “Real magic?” By real magic people mean miracles, thaumaturgical acts, and supernatural powers. “No,” I answer: “Conjuring tricks, not real magic.” Real magic, in other words, refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic. --Lee Siegel

Recordings

Several recordings will be available, but we do not plan to record most lectures/seminars.

Time, place, credits

Time: Every Friday 13:00 - 15:15

Normally we will have student presentations during the lecture time, along with planning following presentations and brief intros by the lecturer. Location:

• Normally: SOC-314
• Sometimes: telco over teams (these will be announced a week earlier)

Credits: 6

The lectures will be in English, unless everybody understands Estonian, in which case they will be in Estonian.

The presentations in practice sessions can be given in English or Estonian, as you prefer.

The contents of practice sessions are presentations by students and their discussion. For all students, presence in the practice sessions is important and is accounted for in the final grade.

We will probably succeed with saving the videos of lectures: will check out during the first weeks.

The course will finish with a written exam. The materials below marked with a red E will be critical for studying for the exam, while the materials marked with blue L are also used but less important. Materials without such marks will not be used for the exam questions.

In order to be allowed to take the exam,

• each Ph.D student should give at least four presentations.
• each master student should give at least two presentations. In case it turns out we will have enough time, an additional third short presentation might be asked for.

Presentations are not graded, but when they are determined not to be satfisfactory, they should be re-done.

The lecture times will be used for both

• Short intros to thematic blocks by Tanel
• Student presentations

NB! Presence at student presentations will be registered: failing to participate at many presentations will have a negative effect on the final grade.

Initial course plan, materials and topics

We consider several topics in the wider fields of semantics and analytic philosophy, like philosophy of language, mind and A.I., starting from general and classical ones and moving to more specific and modern.

The main goal of the lectures is to make it easier to understand the concepts and ideas in the topics, in order to better understand the reading materials.

Intro, semiotics and classical analytic philosophy

• Source for the first round of presentations: Tähendus, tõde, meetod.. Separate original articles can be found by googling.

Main materials:

• Semiotics for beginners. first half is obligatory. E
• Quine: Two Dogmas of Empiricism. E
• what is analytic philosophy.
• analytic/synthetic. E
• logical positivism.
• Problem of universals nominalism/realism. L
• functionalism. E
• phenomenology.
• Propp.

Useful to read/listen:

• philosophy bites podcasts. Start with this strongly recommended episode.
• Sam Harris with David Chalmers
• L Philosophy of Metzinger: background reading Self models and look, for example: Metzinger video
• Tractatus andTractatus: structured full text. L. Wittgenstein. Read a bit, along with a commentary
• Philosophical investigations: read the first 100.A A small summary of early vs late Wittgenstein

About the alphabet:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Chinese
• comparison ja wiki and unicode
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_uniliteral_signs
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumae_alphabet

Notes on structuralism, deconstruction and friends:

• structuralism L, dekonstruktivism, dekonstrueerimise kiirõpetus, Derrida section, hermeneutics
• insheeption
• sympathetic magic: wiki, Frazer

Notes on Propp:

• narrateems

Notes on the Vienna circle and logical positivism:

• Main ideas: "First, experience is the only source of knowledge; second, logical analysis performed with the help of symbolic logic is the preferred method for solving philosophical problems."
• taust: analüütiline/sünteetiline, apriori/aposteriori
• classical positivism as the background: more here
• Vienna circle: good short overview ja a longish paper from the Stanfordi encyclopedia of philosohy and Vienna circle manifesto
• Logical positivism: good overview
• wiki logical positivism

Evolution of brain, intelligence and society

Sociobiology, evolutionary psychology and memetics.

Main material:

• Evolution: intro lecture.
• Sociobiology in wikipedia. E.
• Evolutionary psychology in wikipedia. E. You may also want to read more details in primer ja conceptual grounds
• Memetics in wikipedia. E
• Universal grammar L theory of Chomsky

Recommended overviews:

• wiki on the theories of origin of language
• overview of Chomsky theories of language evolution
• wiki on horizontal gene transfer

Recommended books:

• The Selfish Gene
• Guns, Germs and Steel
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
• Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Important papers:

• BRAIN EVOLUTION AND NEUROLINGUISTIC PRECONDITIONS L
• pdf version and textual: CO-EVOLUTION OF NEOCORTEX SIZE, GROUP SIZE AND LANGUAGE IN HUMANS L
• Precis of Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition L
• DNA seen through the eyes of a coder
• Epigenetics vt ka seda artiklit

Additional notes and recommendations, not obligatory:

• natural language and natural selection
• Language as an Adaptation to the Cognitive Niche
• Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?
• Agner Fog: cultural selection
• Buss lab publications
• Changizi publications: vt allpool peatükk ARTICLES AND BOOKS ntx Economically organized hierarchies in WordNet and the Oxford English Dictionary, citybrain, colorface, xray vision
• the brain from 25000 feet
• John Eccles: Evolution of consciousness

Brain science

Intro material

For exam:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_neuroscience L
• https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cognitive_Psychology_and_Cognitive_Neuroscience/Memory L
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_theory_of_mind E

Good general overviews:

• background reading for further reading or listening about brain
• https://grey.colorado.edu/CompCogNeuro/index.php/CCNBook/Main
• https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cognitive_Psychology_and_Cognitive_Neuroscience
• Neurons are Now More Complex than We Thought

Important podcasts:

• Brain Inspired: a podcast where neuroscience and AI converge. A somewhat newer and somewhat technical podcast. Also based on interviews, but with currently active top researchers about their current work.
• Brain science (see also the episodes page) : an old podcast series, still going strong. Basically interviews with important people in the field, many of them classics. Not very technical (mostly); recommended podcasts in BS, youtube lectures and background for these
• Some of the Lex Fridman podcast episodes are relevant, like Jeff Hawkins, Karl Friston, David Eagleman

General notes:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_neuroscience
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_theory_of_mind
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Workspace_Theory
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmother_cell

Read also:

• nootropics
• phantom limbs

Infinity, logic and philosophy of mathematics

The first topic is intro to the philosophy of mathematics, mainly the questions of infinity and unsolvability.

Materials to read:

• English intro: infinity, limits of computation and undecidability E
• in parallel, the same themes supporting text, written by the lecturer as an afterword to the book about Gödel's incompleteness theorems. You may try to use Google translate or some such for the English version: however, it is not a an obligagtory material.
• numbers, infinity and metaphors (in Estonian, very short, metaphorical)
• Ordinals: read from 6.2 Classifying the ordinals
• Russell paradox from wikipedia

Videos have heads down:

• Intro lecture: 6. oct 2022, in Estonian.
• Seminar lecture: 6. oct 2022, in Estonian.

More about infinity and computability:

• Salvestus teamsis, 13. oktoober, in Estonian.

Helpful read: cardinality wikipedias. Read more about Gödel's incompleteness theorem from SEP: a part of a larger incompleteness-article.

A longer story about the philosophy of mathematics from SEP.

Nonclassical logics, related to the philosophy of mathematics:

• In Estonian: mitteklassikalised loogikad. Siin on pealeloetud jutuga variant: E downloadi ja vaata normaalses täisekraan-vaatamisreziimis, siis kuuled slaidide juures minu juttu.
• A good technical read from SEP about intuitionist logic.
• Estonian material and videos about modal logics: modaalsed loogikad L ja vaata eelmise aasta teamsi salvestust samast loengust
• Good half-hour presentations about axioms of modal logic and kripke semantics / possible worlds. A more philosophical take available in the series (playlist) from the same author, but long. Additionally useful presentation . SEP has good articles om modal logic and related philosophy, both highly technical.

More on nonclassical logics:

• modal logic in wikipeda
• philosophy around modal logic from SEP
• philosophy around intuitionistic logic from SEP L

Thinking and AI

Notes for the overview talk

Classic ideas about the main questions of AI philosophy (close to the questions about functionalism):

First, a somewhat old interview with a classic:

• Steven Pinker from the lex fridman ai podcast.

Read the wiki pages of main issues:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_artificial_intelligence L
• Functionalism E
• SEP artikkel AI-st: read partially, could be partially boring

Technical stuff from Graziano about neuroscience related to consciousness:

• Graziano on consciousness and neuroscience

Detailed arguments and counterarguments for the

• chinese room L

Some good core stuff

• For starters Rodney Brooks's small AI series part 1, part 2 , part 3 , part 4 and predictions scorecard 2020, scorecard 2024

• Importantly, two interesting essays by Rodney Brooks from 2023 What Will Transformers Transform? L and Three Things That LLMs Have Made Us Rethink L

• Listen to Stuart Russell on AI dangers

Living classics from the lex fridman podcast:

• https://lexfridman.com/david-ferrucci/
• https://lexfridman.com/gary-marcus/
• https://lexfridman.com/david-silver/
• https://lexfridman.com/tomaso-poggio/
• https://lexfridman.com/richard-dawkins/
• https://lexfridman.com/noam-chomsky/
• https://lexfridman.com/nick-bostrom/
• https://lexfridman.com/jeff-hawkins/
• https://lexfridman.com/judea-pearl/

Semantics of natural language

We will look into both

• Vector semantics
• Semantics based on world model

Details will be added when the block starts

Dialog, pragmatics, uncertain knowledge

The first subject is dialogue pragmatics. Several related branches (have a brief look, but no need to read deeply unless you become interested):

• Speech acts L sentences doing something, not just conveying information
• Implicature L with Grice's maxims as a central theme
• Relevance theory further development of Grice's maxims

To start, certainly look/listen these short lectures:

• pragmatics and speech acts 11 minutes intro to the whole subject
• Grice's Maxims, Implicature, Presupposition: especially nice 12 minute more detailed lecture about Grice maxims
• Deceiving with words in case you did not listen before, do it now!

In case you just want to read original Grice:

• Logic and conversation: Grice himself about the maxims
• further examples, analyzed quite deeply

Have a look at

• Relevance theory, ie further development: 32 pages by main folks working on the subject
• Jurafsky & Martin chapter 26 Dialogue Systems and Chatbots the practical pre-LLM systems from their extremely good NLP book

Additionally, nice to listen and :

• NLP podcasti episode 89 about pre-LLM dialog systems
• Implicature Calculation, Pragmatics or Syntax, or both: more detailed analysis of implicature
• implicature with experiments
• very detailed with some focus on automatization
• dialogue pragmatics from SEP
• implicature from SEP

The next theme is uncertain information and probabilities: how to understand, write down and make conjectures.

Read this intro: Numeric uncertainty (L as explained next):

• Certainly up the the section "Different ways to encode confidences in logic", also looking at the wikipages pointed to
• Briefly look into the following sections, but do not focus or spend much time on these. The Numeric uncertainty intro was originally made for this course.

Then read the first parts and have brief looks at the SEP articles:

• Interpretations of Probability
• Logic and Probability
• Probabilistic Causation

Here are some of our papers on our system, about confidence and reasoning with exceptions.

Recommended podcasts

• The Gradient: a good AI podcast, relatively deep, several philosophical themes / episodes. Discontinued, but archives present.
• Brain Inspired: real neuroscience with focus on AI related themes.
• Philosophy bites: real philosophers conveying ideas rather clearly in ca 15 minutes
• Robinsons podcast: Really good stuff with famous philosophers and related thinkers. One example: Donald Hoffman.
• Making sense by Sam Harris sometimes does deep interviews with philosophers, like the following highly recommended Andy Clark episode (predictive brain, embodied cognition, and the extended mind) full version. If that does not work for some reason, check out the shorter version here.
• Highly popular Lex Fridman podcast has sometimes deep interviews with AI and comp sci peaople. Specifically about AI I'd recommend some widely different views from Francois Chollet, Yann LeCun, Gary Marcus, Demis Hassabis, Ilya Sutskever, Ben Goertzel.
• The Mindscape podcast of an important physicist has often quite philosophically interesting or cognitive science and AI interviews. Some recommendations: Blaise Agüera y Arcas, David Krakauer, Christoph Adami, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Yejin Choi, Hugo Mercier, Andrew Pontzen.

Some themes for selection

Classical analytic philosophy

• Kant's theory of judgement.
• Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus vs Philosophical Investigations. Also: background and influences (like, for PI pragmatism via Ramsey). Tanel has done a very brief intro to the topic, so we can continue from there. I.e recall Tractatus, but do not spend much time there, assuming we have already looked into this. Spend more time on PI and especially the comparison between the Tractatus phase (early Wittgenstein) and PI phase (late Wittgenstein). This is a popular topic, easy to google.
• Putnam: tähendus ja osutus. Meaning and reference. Lisaks tasub vaadata ülevaadet. Vaata ka Social_constructionism wikis ja ntx siin ja taustaks kindlasti Functionalism (SEP), Functionalism (wiki): Googelda artiklile juurde seletusi/analüüse.
• Quine: empirismi kaks dogmat. Linke: siin, siin. Vt ka taust/analüüs wikis.
• Frege: Frege tähendusest ja osutusest. Read an overview/background from wikipedia and Frege's own paper On Sense and Reference. There is a youtube video about the paper. See SEP on Frege, Frege's logic and wikipedia about Begriffsschrift (the book inventing predicate calculus).
• Tarski: semantiline tõekontseptsioon. About Tarski. The original paper and the SEP explanations/details/background
• Strawson: tähendus ja tõde (meaning and truth). One fulltext here. Look at SEP about Strawson. There is a Robinson's podcast video episode about the Strawson approach (at ca 1:21) and another podcast episode about the context of Strawson/Austin debate on theme.
• Dennett: kvaalide kvainimine (quining qualia). Full text here. About the views of Dennett by himself and others. Some discussion on reddit. Wikipedia about qualia.
• Dummett: Truth. One fulltext here. You may also want to read comments like this and background like this
• Pragmatism. Start with the SEP article and search for more.
• Paul Grice: "meaning" and overview of other important parts of Grice claims and theory. This is also so widely discussed that it is easy to google. Start with SEP. Some nice intros to implicatures: here and this wikipage. Grice himself about this stuff. More detailed stuff. Check also the relevance theory. Certainly look through a very nice video about flouting/violating the maxims in relation to irony, sarcasm and jokes.

Brain science and evolution

• Neurons are more complex than we thought, see here and here for starters.
• Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor?
• Karl Friston and the free energy principle . A usefulpodcast episode and the homepage.
• Antonio Damasio and the origin of important stuff in homeostasis. Interview and a ted talk. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_marker_hypothesis
• Donald D. Hoffman and the user interface (MUI) theory of mind. Easy to google, highly popular.
• Main points from Clark in the Andy Clark episode (predictive brain, embodied cognition, and the extended mind) full version from the Making sense podcast by Sam Harris. If the full version link does not work for some reason, check out the shorter version here and ask Tanel for help. You may also want to google papers by Andy Clark and/or select for reading some papers from the scholar site or his own site.
• Randy Gallistel on memory interview 1 and maybe also interview 2. Some additional background: here
• Confirmation bias, start with this article and search for more. Vaata lisaks wikist.
• Mike Frank: Early Language and Cognition. Interview and perhaps a longer paper 1 and paper 2
• Evolution of morals. alusta siit ja otsi ise edasi. Vaata ka wiki põhiartiklit ja lähedalt seotud altruismi teemat. Important background is sociobiology and evolutionary psychology.
• Anil Seth on consciousness. A useful podcast episode and a homepage.
• Symbolic_interactionism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
• Main points of Chomsky's theories of language. This is so widely discussed that it is easy to google. You may want to listen to some podcasts with Chomsky himself: for example, this and this. Certainly read about criticism. You may want to listen to this episode with a critical analysis of Chomsky.
• How do bacteria and simple organisms communicate. Start with this TED talk and search for more. For example, a SciAm article, this is an in-depth paper, this handles bacteria working through insects.
• Neuroimaging, auditory hallucinations, and the bicameral mind.pdf start here and download pdf
• Mirror Neurons

Philosophy of math

• Intuitsionistlik loogika: näited teoreemidest, mis kehtivad klassikaliselt, kuid mitte intuitsionistlikult. Näiteid tõestustest, millel lihtne klassikaline, kuid keeruline intuitsionistlik tõestus (standardnäide: ruutjuur kahest on irratsionaalne, vt näiteks siit ja googelda juurde). Vaata intuitsionisliku loogika kohta wikist ja SEPist. NB! Intuitsionistlik loogika on oluline teema matemaatika filosoofias: Tanel teeb sellele hilisemates loengutes eraldi sissejuhatuse.
• Infinity: Ordinaalid ja kardinaalid. Maybe start with a good exposition at in this discussion. Continue with cardinals and ordinals in wiki, check out Russell's paradox, read about transfinite ordinals
• Kripke semantics of modal logics. Also, check out the relevant materials from the section "Infinity, logic and philosophy of mathematics" above.

Specifically A.I.: in a narrow sense

• Frame problem. Good stuff to read, maybe in that order SEP, Dennett, Blocks world example, Morgenstern. Beware that none of the various "solutions" are not really satisfactory: they should be considered as possible approaches, not solutions.
• About the paper "Computational irreducibility and compatibilism: towards a formalization". Free will issues connected to computation.
• Statistical machine translation, incl major waves/paradigms of machine translation.

Complexity, probabilities, motivation, causation and friends

• Ramsey subjektiivne tõenäosusteooria. Full text of his paper. Important background: interpretations of probability, esp "The Subjective Interpretation" and specifically about Ramsey's views.
• Assembly Theory. See also a Nature paper. Recommended: especially, a good discussion with Sara Walker, and another with Lee Cronin.
• Kahneman & Tversky: briefly about Prospect theory and more on System 1 and System 2 thinking
• Judea Pearl on causality. A useful podcast episode and another and yet another and homepage.
• David Deutsch and the probabilistic (or rather, not) nature of scientific theories. A useful podcast. Also the homepage. Here is one complicated paper on constructor theory, as a potential additional deep source.

Various ideas about the world

• antroopsusprintsiip. See the take by SEP. A good listen by a theoretical physicist is here. You may want to have a look at the book by Nick Boström, the classic full paper by Brandon Carter, and the full book by Barrow and Tipler. Related tidbit: there is a very early paper about the anthropic principle in microcosmos by Tanel, closely related to Boltzmann brain.
• Nick Boström Are we living in simulation. Vt taustaks Nick Boström (wiki) ja taust/analüüs wikis. Googelda juurde veel analüüse/arvamusi/vastuväiteid.
• David Krakauer about complex systems. See https://davidckrakauer.com/ and listen to https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/10/242-david-krakauer-on-complexity-agency-and-information/
• panpsychism and Philip Goff. A useful podcast episode. Also, have a quick intro look into the "hard problem of consciousness" of Chalmers.
• Max Tegmark and the mathematical multiverse. A useful podcast episode.
• Wolfram's theory of the world, using hypergraphs. A useful podcast and ted talk and some earlier writings
• Solipsism. Certainly consider several types of solipsism, starting from wiki. See also methodological solipsism and methodological individualism in contrast to externalism of Putnam etc