I wanted to get a feeling for the distinction philosophers used between "syntax" and "semantics", as well as exploring what someone in that camp would say about "concepts" and "understanding". The conversation seemed rational; just to make sure it wasn't way off base, I sent it to a friend of mine who had trained in philosophy, and he said he agreed with GPT-4 (and specifically, he didn't say "that's not what those terms mean in philosophy at all").
Now consider the sentence:
$SUBJECT $VERB the philosophical $NOUN of syntax and semantics well enough to apply it to my example of an adder circuit.
If $SUBJECT was "my nephew", then the most natural words to use for $VERB and $NOUN are "understood" and "concepts". What words should we use when $SUBJECT is "GPT-4"?
I submit to you that the most natural words to use in the context remain the same.
And in fact, "Of all places on the internet", I'd expect a forum filled with programmers to be very "functionalist". We spend our entire lives bridging the gap between "syntax" and "semantics" -- taking mechanical interactions and creating meaning out of them.
Go read this discussion I had with GPT-4:
https://gitlab.com/-/snippets/2594242
I wanted to get a feeling for the distinction philosophers used between "syntax" and "semantics", as well as exploring what someone in that camp would say about "concepts" and "understanding". The conversation seemed rational; just to make sure it wasn't way off base, I sent it to a friend of mine who had trained in philosophy, and he said he agreed with GPT-4 (and specifically, he didn't say "that's not what those terms mean in philosophy at all").
Now consider the sentence:
$SUBJECT $VERB the philosophical $NOUN of syntax and semantics well enough to apply it to my example of an adder circuit.
If $SUBJECT was "my nephew", then the most natural words to use for $VERB and $NOUN are "understood" and "concepts". What words should we use when $SUBJECT is "GPT-4"?
I submit to you that the most natural words to use in the context remain the same.
And in fact, "Of all places on the internet", I'd expect a forum filled with programmers to be very "functionalist". We spend our entire lives bridging the gap between "syntax" and "semantics" -- taking mechanical interactions and creating meaning out of them.