Do #LLMs have mental states?
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Andrew, I don't quite understand your point? What I gave in the OP is (to the best of my knowledge) a textbook philosophical definition of mental state and involves intentionality ('aboutness').
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@UlrikeHahn @philosophy yes, I don't deny any of this, I just think these differences in complexity are irrelevant in so far the LLM wouldn't have intentionality without us using it in some way for some purpose, whereas it seems to me that to the intentionality of a mental state is more constitutive of it. It's a vague intuition, not sure how to express well. Maybe the intentionality is merely metaphorical in the case of tools? Not sure what you mean about what's not expressed in the definition
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@qruyant not expressed in the definition in the sense that you seem to me to be appealing to some richer definition of what it means to intend something than is (necessarily) implicated in the sense of 'intentional' state or 'intentionality' as aboutness?
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here is another angle on all of that, though: does it then become important for your line of argument whether LLMs can engage in `deceptive behaviour' (putting that in scare quotes as part and parcel of the same issue & not wanting to sneak in hidden assumptions), ie behaviours that are functionally goal oriented (in some sense) but are not in and of themselves desired by us as the 'tool users'?
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Seems to me if you are using intentionality as your marker of mental state you have to determine if the LLM - which does create a representation of things in the world - has a way to interpret them as a representations. Otherwise, you are left with asking whether the text of a book, which represents something in the world, is a mental state.
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@UlrikeHahn @philosophy yes it's important *whether* it could do it. In the kind of view I present, it couldn't really do it, deceiving us would be more of a side effect of a malfunction. To put it differently, I take LLM to be very similar to maps: a map is *about* a city or country, but it's not a mental state. A map can deceive us but not intentionally (unless its maker has this purpose)
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To follow up - I don’t see any evidence that LLMs interpret or understand what they write. There is plenty of evidence that they don’t- based solely on their output.
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@qruyant so the thing about the map is that it is wholly static, and the thermostat has a wholly deterministic, simple response hat is locked. But LLMs *do not* and this is exactly where I think my points about flexibility matter. LLMs, in some sense, 'select actions'.
I think that's a pretty big discontinuity, no?
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isn't the answer to that given with the capacity for action? The book is wholly inert and passive. LLMs 'do stuff' - and they now not only 'do text', ChatGPT4o can also segment images and highlight the "table", and draw a table for me.
what else is there?
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Icastico, I'm not personally convinced that 'based solely on their output, there is plenty of evidence that they understand what they write' is a great argument. *People* also get things wrong and misunderstand all the time.
And with regard to 'interpretation', what more is there to interpretation than having a representation that supports flexible, cross context, cross modality response routines in the external world?
what is the extra sauce that you see?
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An industrial robot does stuff as well. Does it have mental states? The thermostat example above applies as well - it changes/reacts/acts based on “perception” /input from the environment.
I don’t know the answer here, but the ambiguity around definitions of “mental states” makes it a tricky topic. If “aboutness” plus “action” is all you need, then maybe LLMs have mental states - but then so do lots of dynamic systems that we wouldn’t generally consider to be in this conversation.
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My gut is that you need an epistemological component as part of the “mind” for there to be “interpretation
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@icastico I think the big difference to the thermostat is that it doesn't have representations (at least on my understanding of thermostats and representations, but I could be wrong about both).
But I think available evidence suggests that LLMs *do*. Not only are those self-formed representations they are causally efficacious in generating the LLMs behaviour, including underwriting a flexible response repertoire that includes multiple modalities. That's nothing like a thermostat, no?
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@icastico this is interesting! could you say more about what you mean by 'epistemological component'?
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@twsh Thomas, could you elaborate a bit more on your thoughts to date here?
and if it's so hard, what does this mean going forward for phil. of language and phil. of mind?
is there some revision of concepts required? or more 'it is what it is', LLMs are new, 'in between' things?
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@david_colquhoun just adding this for the avoidance of doubt: By saying this is a 'specific question about a technical definition' I am *not* trying to gate keep who can respond (I'm not myself a philosopher for a start!). Your thoughts are very much welcome, but I would like this thread to remain on point.
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@UlrikeHahn yes, but is it what brings "aboutness"? If so, what's the relation between this feature and being about something else (in a more relevant sense than maps)?
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@qruyant ok, progress in as much as you earlier didn't think my point about flexibility mattered at all
a different way of putting what we're grasping at (?) is to what extent 'intentionality' itself requires 'agency'. And the flexibility seems to me to matter for that, no?
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Ulrike Hahnreplied to Ulrike Hahn last edited by [email protected]
@qruyant also, I would like to again point out that (on my limited understanding) the notion of 'intentionality' does not, as a matter of consensus, have a necessary, intrinsic connection with 'agency' or 'intending', so that this is pushing toward either a reformulation or a particular account of intentionality among many
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@UlrikeHahn interesting. I work with measuring mental states like emotions and stress using sensors ('affective computing'). Apparently we are working from different textbooks, as it were.