Our Theory: De-Anthropocentrized Externalism
Herman Cappelen, Josh Dever · 2021
Abstract This chapter introduces the central claim of the book about AI communication. It argues first that we should understand AI communication in terms of externalism, the thought that the semantic content an entity can express is determined to a large extent by the environment it finds itself in, rather than by its internal states. It then argues that existing externalist theories are too human-centric: they concentrate on peculiarities of human beings not shared by AI systems. It accordingly proposes to abstract from those human peculiarities when developing theories of communication for AI. The chapter ends by discussing how to decide between competing metasemantic frameworks such as externalism and internalism.