I agree that the terminology is useful to bracket metaphysical discussion of LLM mental states but I’d just caution us as a community to use the term ‘quasi-belief’ really carefully. Specifically, I could see it being employed to import heavyweight metaphysical assumptions that aren’t justified or are lightly argued for.
Concretely, there are two potential ways to use it:
I don’t know if LLM’s have genuine beliefs and it’s not load bearing for my argument so let me bracket the conversation by using the term ‘quasi-belief.’
LLM’s don’t have genuine beliefs, instead they have ‘quasi-beliefs’.
I think 1) is totally fine and is the intended usage. 2) is only fine if it’s backed up with some solid argument.
To be sure, your post and the Chalmers paper use it correctly as 1) but I could see its meaning slipping to 2) as it gets more widely deployed.
I agree entirely that ‘quasi-belief’ is solely a way of setting aside those questions and shouldn’t be taken as a claim about the answers, much less as a load-bearing argument in its own right.
I agree that the terminology is useful to bracket metaphysical discussion of LLM mental states but I’d just caution us as a community to use the term ‘quasi-belief’ really carefully. Specifically, I could see it being employed to import heavyweight metaphysical assumptions that aren’t justified or are lightly argued for.
Concretely, there are two potential ways to use it:
I don’t know if LLM’s have genuine beliefs and it’s not load bearing for my argument so let me bracket the conversation by using the term ‘quasi-belief.’
LLM’s don’t have genuine beliefs, instead they have ‘quasi-beliefs’.
I think 1) is totally fine and is the intended usage. 2) is only fine if it’s backed up with some solid argument.
To be sure, your post and the Chalmers paper use it correctly as 1) but I could see its meaning slipping to 2) as it gets more widely deployed.
I agree entirely that ‘quasi-belief’ is solely a way of setting aside those questions and shouldn’t be taken as a claim about the answers, much less as a load-bearing argument in its own right.