Alex Grzankowski
Biographic Data
| ID | 1490128 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alex Grzankowski |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alex |
| FAMILY NAME | Grzankowski |
| SIGNATURE | GRZANKOWSKI A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Birkbeck, University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0751-1706 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 8 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
LLMs are not just next token predictors
LLMs are statistical models of language learning through stochastic gradient descent with a next token prediction objective. Prompting a popular view among AI modelers: LLMs are just next token predictors. While LLMs are engineered using next token prediction, and trained based on their success at this task, our view is that a reduction to just next token predictor sells LLMs short. Moreover, there are important explanations of LLM behavior and c…
Do emotions represent values and how can we tell
Do emotions represent values? The dominant “content view” has it that they do. But there is a newcomer on scene: the “attitude view”. According to it, rather than representing value properties, there is a value‐relevant way you represent the targets of emotion. For example, in feeling angry with someone, you stand to them in the relation of representing‐as‐having‐wronged you. But the central considerations in favour of these competing views are l…
Moods: From diffusiveness to dispositionality
The view that moods are dispositions has recently fallen into disrepute. In this paper, we want to revitalise it by providing a new argument for it and by disarming an important objection against it. A shared assumption of our competitors (intentionalists about moods) is that moods are ‘diffuse’. First, we will provide reasons for thinking that existing intentionalist views do not in fact capture this distinctive feature of moods that distinguish…
Real sparks of artificial intelligence and the importance of inner interpretability
The present paper looks at one of the most thorough articles on the intelligence of GPT, research conducted by engineers at Microsoft. Although there is a great deal of value in their work, I will argue that, for familiar philosophical reasons, their methodology, 'Black-box Interpretability', is wrongheaded. But there is a better way. There is an exciting and emerging discipline of 'Inner Interpretability' (and specifically Mechanistic Interpreta…
The essence of the mental
Your belief that Obama is a Democrat would not be the belief that it is if it did not represent Obama, nor would the pain in your ankle be the state that it is if, say, it felt like an itch. Accordingly, it is tempting to hold that phenomenal and representational properties are essential to the mental states that have them. But, as several theorists have forcefully argued (including Kripke (1980) and Burge (1979, 1982)) this attractive idea is se…
Content pluralism
How fine-grained are the contents of our beliefs and other cognitive attitudes? Are the contents of our beliefs individuated solely in terms of the objects, properties, and relations that figure in their truth conditions, or rather in terms of our concepts, or modes of presentation of those objects, properties, and relations? So-called Millians famously maintain the former whereas their Fregean rivals hold the latter. Though much ink was spilled …
Navigating Recalcitrant Emotions
In discussions of the emotions, it is commonplace to wheel out examples of (for instance) people who know that rollercoasters aren’t dangerous but who fear them anyway. Such cases are well known to have been troubling for cognitivists who hold the emotions are (at least in part) judgments or beliefs. But more recently, it has been argued that the very theories that emerged from the failure of cognitivism (perceptual theories and other neo-cogniti…
Non-Propositional Attitudes
Intentionality, or the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for things, remains central in the philosophy of mind. But the study of intentionality in the analytic tradition has been dominated by discussions of propositional attitudes such as belief, desire, and visual perception. There are, however, intentional states that aren't obviously propositional attitudes. For example, Indiana Jones fears snakes, Antony loves Cleopatra, a…
Non-Propositional Attitudes
Intentionality, or the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for things, remains central in the philosophy of mind. But the study of intentionality in the analytic tradition has been dominated by discussions of propositional attitudes such as belief, desire, and visual perception. There are, however, intentional states that aren't obviously propositional attitudes. For example, Indiana Jones fears snakes, Antony loves Cleopatra, a…
Non-Propositional Attitudes
Intentionality, or the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for things, remains central in the philosophy of mind. But the study of intentionality in the analytic tradition has been dominated by discussions of propositional attitudes such as belief, desire, and visual perception. There are, however, intentional states that aren't obviously propositional attitudes. For example, Indiana Jones fears snakes, Antony loves Cleopatra, a…
Navigating Recalcitrant Emotions
In discussions of the emotions, it is commonplace to wheel out examples of (for instance) people who know that rollercoasters aren’t dangerous but who fear them anyway. Such cases are well known to have been troubling for cognitivists who hold the emotions are (at least in part) judgments or beliefs. But more recently, it has been argued that the very theories that emerged from the failure of cognitivism (perceptual theories and other neo-cogniti…
Content pluralism
How fine-grained are the contents of our beliefs and other cognitive attitudes? Are the contents of our beliefs individuated solely in terms of the objects, properties, and relations that figure in their truth conditions, or rather in terms of our concepts, or modes of presentation of those objects, properties, and relations? So-called Millians famously maintain the former whereas their Fregean rivals hold the latter. Though much ink was spilled …
The essence of the mental
Your belief that Obama is a Democrat would not be the belief that it is if it did not represent Obama, nor would the pain in your ankle be the state that it is if, say, it felt like an itch. Accordingly, it is tempting to hold that phenomenal and representational properties are essential to the mental states that have them. But, as several theorists have forcefully argued (including Kripke (1980) and Burge (1979, 1982)) this attractive idea is se…
Real sparks of artificial intelligence and the importance of inner interpretability
The present paper looks at one of the most thorough articles on the intelligence of GPT, research conducted by engineers at Microsoft. Although there is a great deal of value in their work, I will argue that, for familiar philosophical reasons, their methodology, 'Black-box Interpretability', is wrongheaded. But there is a better way. There is an exciting and emerging discipline of 'Inner Interpretability' (and specifically Mechanistic Interpreta…
Do emotions represent values and how can we tell
Do emotions represent values? The dominant “content view” has it that they do. But there is a newcomer on scene: the “attitude view”. According to it, rather than representing value properties, there is a value‐relevant way you represent the targets of emotion. For example, in feeling angry with someone, you stand to them in the relation of representing‐as‐having‐wronged you. But the central considerations in favour of these competing views are l…
Moods: From diffusiveness to dispositionality
The view that moods are dispositions has recently fallen into disrepute. In this paper, we want to revitalise it by providing a new argument for it and by disarming an important objection against it. A shared assumption of our competitors (intentionalists about moods) is that moods are ‘diffuse’. First, we will provide reasons for thinking that existing intentionalist views do not in fact capture this distinctive feature of moods that distinguish…
LLMs are not just next token predictors
LLMs are statistical models of language learning through stochastic gradient descent with a next token prediction objective. Prompting a popular view among AI modelers: LLMs are just next token predictors. While LLMs are engineered using next token prediction, and trained based on their success at this task, our view is that a reduction to just next token predictor sells LLMs short. Moreover, there are important explanations of LLM behavior and c…
Epistemology (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (4 works) · Cognitive science (3 works) · Emotions and Moral Behavior (3 works) · Metaphysics (3 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (3 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (3 works)