John: So there's this thing about interp, where most of it seems to not be handling one of the standard fundamental difficulties of representation, and we want to articulate that in a way which will make sense to interp researchers (as opposed to philosophers). I guess to start… Steve, wanna give a standard canonical example of the misrepresentation problem?

Steve: Ok so I guess the “standard” story as I interpret it goes something like this:

In order to respond to dualists who thought the mind was inherently non-physical, materialist philosophers wanted a “naturalistic” account of mental representation - where “mental representation” basically means the same thing as “content” or “semantics”. We tend to use the term intentionality for mental representation. This is a technical term that's not the same as the phenomenon of intending to do something; the thought “John is a researcher” has intentionality, on this usage. So [...]

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First published:
April 29th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2x67s6u8oAitNKF73/misrepresentation-as-a-barrier-for-interp

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“Misrepresentation as a Barrier for Interp” by johnswentworth, Steve Petersen 13:47 Share

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“Misrepresentation as a Barrier for Interp” by johnswentworth, Steve Petersen