Paper Discussion: The Philosophy of Language Models

SF Philosophy Club Monthly Meeting
Join us for our June philosophy discussion at Rad Radish.

We'll be reading the open-access article "The Philosophy of Language Models" and exploring some of the broader questions surrounding AI, language, and mind.

Reading: The Philosophy of Language Models
https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/phc3.70095
When: Sunday, June 28, 1 PM - 3 PM.
Where: Rad Radish. 301 Hayes St, San Francisco, CA 94102.

Newcomers welcome. Come prepared for thoughtful conversation and friendly debate.

Abstract: The success of large language models (LLMs) across many domains of AI research has generated intense debate. Some attribute their impressive performance on complex tasks to human-like linguistic and cognitive capacities, whereas others ascribe it to shallow pattern matching. These disputes stem from deep-seated philosophical disagreements about the nature of language and cognition. We provide an opinionated survey of these disagreements across core topics in the philosophy of mind and language, including syntactic competence, compositionality, linguistic meaning, representation, attitudes, reasoning, agency, and consciousness. We contend that progress on these issues requires not only clarity about background philosophical commitments but also, in many cases, close engagement with emerging empirical evidence.