Author: Jeremy Hadfield
Why Large Language Models Will Not Understand Human Language
Even with the incredible performance of LLMs and the tsunami of research into these models, LLMs will not be able to understand human language.
Reclaiming Slurs through Conceptual Engineering
Introduction Ideology can leave us “stuck in a cage, imprisoned among all sorts of terrible concepts.”[1] Slurs are linked to an especially harmful kind of concept. Successfully reclaiming slur terms requires understanding and rejecting these concepts. Linguistic reclamation of slur terms, when combined with critique of the underlying concept, can put an oppressive weapon out…
How Imagining Can Set Us Free
Imagining gives us our freedom. Or so I argue in this paper, which aims to describe the neural basis of imagination and its role in free will perceptions. First, I review imagination on all three of Marr’s levels of analysis: its computational function, its algorithmic structure, and its neural implementation (Marr, 1982). Then, I argue…
The Critique of Spiritual Reason
What are spiritual experiences, and what is faith? Can spiritual experiences justify faith, and can faith guide or justify belief or action?
Why We Need Emotion to Interpret the World
An explanation of Heidegger’s understanding of moods and attunement, and some methodological critiques of his approach – the existential analytic. How is his phenomenology relevant for the modern science of emotion?
The Sparks of Generative Creativity in Mental Disorders
how some disorders magnify the creative process and what we can learn from them
The Psychological Representation of Imagination
What determines the things we can imagine? How does imagination affect the possibilities we consider?
The Conceptual Engineering of Mental Illness
Should we change the mental illness concept?
The Paradoxes of Joy and Suffering Abolition in Nietzsche
How can we reconcile suffering and joy? And should suffering be abolished?