The Human and the Mechanical: logos, truthfulness, and ChatGPT
Anastasia Giannakidou Alda Mari
The paper addresses the question of whether it is appropriate to talk about
`mechanical minds' at all, and whether ChatGPT models can indeed be thought of
as realizations of that. Our paper adds a semantic argument to the current
debate. The act of human assertion requires the formation of a veridicality
judgment. Modification of assertions with modals (John must be at home) and the
use of subjective elements (John is obviously at home) indicate that the
speaker is manipulating her judgments and, in a cooperative context, intends
her epistemic state to be transparent to the addressee. Veridicality judgments
are formed on the basis of two components: (i) evidence that relates to reality
(exogenous evidence) and (ii) endogenous evidence, such as preferences and
private beliefs. `Mechanical minds' lack these two components: (i) they do not
relate to reality and (ii) do not have endogenous evidence. Therefore they lack
the ability to form a belief about the world and a veridicality judgments
altogether. They can only mimic that judgment, but the output is not ground in
the very foundations for it.