2025-06-16 at

"Cartesianism" in the Development of Anthropomorphic Machines

Chomsky has this horribly panned book called "Cartesian Linguistics" which captures very little of what Descartes is known for. 

Back to Descartes, away from Chomskian interpretations : the Modern period of European philosophy begins with an epistemology of self-awareness. One tries to anchor the concept of "an algebraic I, the speaker/thinker/doer" to which subsequent ideas are attached.

This concept is particularly important in the modelling of data in anthropomorphic "intelligent" machines. One might say that fuzzyheadedness in building "AI" begins with a poor understanding of human data structures in the first place.

I just posted something on Reddit asking about "examples of frameworks for describing grammar, which have no concept of abstract speakerless/listenerless propositions, and which are instead grounded in the concept of the speaker/listener". I hope to learn something from the good public on this. 

Meanwhile, I will simply bear it in mind as I develop the system which I am working on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesianism

Aside : I do think it's more accurate to speak of "AI" as anthropomorphic intelligence, than as artificial intelligence. Because, we don't currently have useful non-anthropomorphic concepts of intelligence.

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