Language is a empirical phenomenon. It's something happening between some animals, namely at least, us. It is how we coordinate in a shared environment. It does things.
Language isnt symbols on a page, if it were, a shredder could speak. Is there something we are doing the shredder is not?
Yes, we are talking about things. We have something to say. We are coordinating with respect to a shared environment, using our capacities to do so.
NLP models are fancy ways of shredding libraries of text, and taking the fragments which fall out and calling them "language". This isnt language. It isnt about anything; the shredder had no intention to say anything.
Mere words are just shadows of the thoughts of their speakers. The words themselves are just meaningless shapes. To use langauge isnt to set these shapes in order, its to understand something; to want to say something about it; and to formulate some way of saying it.
If I asked a 5yo child "what is an electron?" and they read from some script a definition, we would not conclude the CHILD had answered the question. They have provided an answer, on the occasion it was asked, but someone else answered the question -- someone who actually understood it.
An NLP model, in modelling only the surface shapes of language *and not its use* is little more than a tape recorder playing back past conversations, stitched together in an illusory way.
We cannot ask it any questions, because it has no capacity to understand what we are talking about. The only questions it can "answer", are like the child, those which occur in the script.
Language is a empirical phenomenon. It's something happening between some animals, namely at least, us. It is how we coordinate in a shared environment. It does things.
Language isnt symbols on a page, if it were, a shredder could speak. Is there something we are doing the shredder is not?
Yes, we are talking about things. We have something to say. We are coordinating with respect to a shared environment, using our capacities to do so.
NLP models are fancy ways of shredding libraries of text, and taking the fragments which fall out and calling them "language". This isnt language. It isnt about anything; the shredder had no intention to say anything.
Mere words are just shadows of the thoughts of their speakers. The words themselves are just meaningless shapes. To use langauge isnt to set these shapes in order, its to understand something; to want to say something about it; and to formulate some way of saying it.
If I asked a 5yo child "what is an electron?" and they read from some script a definition, we would not conclude the CHILD had answered the question. They have provided an answer, on the occasion it was asked, but someone else answered the question -- someone who actually understood it.
An NLP model, in modelling only the surface shapes of language *and not its use* is little more than a tape recorder playing back past conversations, stitched together in an illusory way.
We cannot ask it any questions, because it has no capacity to understand what we are talking about. The only questions it can "answer", are like the child, those which occur in the script.