Thank you for this answer. Please describe the category mistake here: "[AGI] will eliminate the realist-anti-realist debate showing that the same category mistake that applies to mind-body dichotomy, software-hardware dichotomy, etc. is at work with realist and anti-realism."

Also, you refer to "a framework of being foundational to scientific methods." How would you describe that framework. Finally, How will AGI simulate embodiment, enabling it to "create processes of inference and categorization through an interplay with the environment." Or are you proposing, for instance, that only a fleet of cloud computing "robots" moving through actual environments (something like a fleet of driverless cars, each learning from both the environment it frequents and the environments frequented by its cohorts) will be found to actually be capable of instantiating AGI?

I'm at work, but I'll tackle the first one. The realism-anti-realism dichotomy presupposes the dichotomy of correspondence-coherence which in reality are two categories which presuppose a mind-body duality. All arguments of in-here-out-there thinking are rational, logical structures which use the conceptual metaphor of "Containment" (which are neurocomputational mappings) and presume that human beings are like containers (obviously from our conceptual predisposition to extensionality from our sensori-motor capacities). Those two theories of truth are aspects of a single process, hence mistake.

Truth is better understood in terms of a multi-layered neurocomputational architecture in which correspondence, coherence, and pragmatism are different aspects of the unconscious foundation of conscious rational processes. It's the only way to account for the genuine lack of foundation among logics such as arithmetic, set theory, classical logic, etc. This is laid bare obviously by the Agrippan trilemma, but obfuscated by the mind-body duality and the notion of objectivity.

@gonzo It's a linguistic illusion that hides the obvious monism that all thought is embodied (primarily, but not exclusively in neurons). Right? Take Copenhagen vs. Bohmian interpretations to which underdetermination applies. Is it the "nature of reality" that is at stake, or just the "models of reality"? These are map-disputes more than they are territory-disputes. They should be had, but they are more like Leibnitz-Newtonian disputes of orthography than debates over the epsilon-delta definition. Anyway, that's what it looks like as a computer science guy.

The distinction of the body-non-body neurocomputation is at the root of all this, right? Whole segments of Eastern philosophy reject this as an illusion. As an analytical philosopher, I don't subscribe to mysticism or navel gazing generally, but there's no apostasy in recognizing that the in-there-out-there thinking of reaslim-anti-realism is essentially a function of a evolutionarily-imposed distinction of self and environment which at a purely physical level (which is a semantic category, not an independent reality) there are only particles and waves.

Most of this comes from Lakoff and Johnson's summative work: Philosophy in the Flesh amazon.com/Philosophy-Flesh-Embodied-Challenge-Western/dp/…

I have come close to getting Lakoff's book several times over the years, but never got around to it. Have a look at chapter two: Persons Without Minds, of Richard Rorty's 1979 opus Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature here: circulosemiotico.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/…. Contrast this with the ideas expressed here: philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/31516/…

Okay, at this point, I think you've done me a great service by moving me past an impulse to explore Frege, Descartes, and Kant to the direction of investigating Dummett, Rorty, and Quine.

I have to make adjustments in my reading list. Right now I'm still finishing up Audti's work on Epistemology, Johnson and Lakoff's embodied realism, and some introductions to the philosophy of science and mind, and I'm loathe to start swimming in the more complicated notions Rorty seems to offer until I feel like I have sea legs in the world of philosophy.

You asked me what I have been focused on, and it's those books currently balanced against Borchert's entries (I sprung for a set to annotate).

Unfortunately I'm a working stiff working on a masters in CS, not philosophy, so I'm encumbered by dealing with pedantic stuff like current computer technologies and remediating my mathematics since I only did a BS in the former and a BA in the latter.

@gonzo But I have earmarked all of your links, and when the time is right, and I've digested my current list, I'll come back and review the copious leads you have given me on these topics. I just have to get enough under my belt for a philosophical basis to write my masters thesis.

Once I satisfy that requirement, then I can attack the questions of philosophy more fully.

Oh, and regarding AGI, I think the question is a qualitative one. There have to be systems that map physical inputs (simulated or otherwise) to neurocomputational structures that are capable of generating and using semantic awareness....

Think something along the lines of neurocomputational systems (ANNs) that allow for the evolution of meanings (which are primarily unconscious explications of physical structure) and the emergence of basic symbolic logics.

Hence, the equivalences in arthimetic, ZFC, topoi, FOPC, etc. Something along the lines of ANNs -> basic conceptual systems (like metonymy and metaphor) -> category theory -> arithmetic, ZFC, topoi -> model theory, proof theory, etc.

Ultimately, semantically-aware systems have to be able to engage in the same sort of metaphysical grounding we do unconsciously before it can engage in verbal intelligence. A bonobo could never pass the Turing Test, but to discard the bonobo as not intelligent would be foolish.

In this way, intentionality precedes language, or as LW would say, language is just a game people play.

Okay, gotcha. Quine is indispensable. Rorty must be perused, but may may have gone a little overboard (which he almost copped to in responding to Ramburg's critique), but do consider adding Donald Davidson and Hillary Putnum to your list. Also, check out Conifold's many posts here. The guy is very knowledgeable, a true philosopher, and brilliant. Carry on.