Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 36, No. 304.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2022-12-15 23:55:47+00:00
        From: James Rovira <jamesrovira@gmail.com>
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.301: death of the author 2.0 continued, or the opaque & the different

Thanks very much, Bill, for the detailed (and very clear) response -- but I
believe this kind of thinking involves the confusion of ontology and
function. The workings of a monkey's or a dog's mind is just as opaque as a
human's, but we don't equate monkeys, dogs, and humans.

Just about two days ago I was doing some reading in Jacobi, and in it he
used the analogy of a knitted sock to describe the ego. He asked his
readers to imagine a highly detailed knitted sock, one with floral and
other patterns knitted into it. But no matter how complicated the knitting,
if you pull on the end of the thread long enough you'll wind up with the
same single piece of yarn. Ontology vs. form. I believe you've described a
new kind of functionality, but I don't believe you've described a different
kind of being. It's a computer program. It's still made out of the same
kind of yarn.

Had some fun on the ChatGPT website the other day asking questions about
Romanticism. Good, well written, Wikipedia level answers, and accurate
enough for that level.

Jim R

On Thu, Dec 15, 2022 at 2:37 AM Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org> wrote:

>
> James,
>
> If we want a computer to hold vast intellectual resources at its command,
> it’s
> going to have to learn them, and learn them from the inside, just like we
> do.
> And we’re not going to know, in detail, how it does it, any more than we
> know,
> in detail, what goes on in one another’s minds.
>
> Such things are new to us. They didn’t exist 20 years ago.
>
> Bill B
>


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