I don’t think Penrose is at all trying to recapitulate Plato but add to it. The Greeks didn’t separate consciousness from nous or the material world. I think that’s quite useful.
I like investigating Platonic ideas with modern concepts like Darwinism and entropy. He was obviously brilliant; rather than throwing out his ideas, we can dialogue with them to challenge our own.
Now, what’s different about LLMs is that they can work with concepts, rather than just compute through them. Our conceptual facility lets us navigate the noetic realm. Otherwise, we are just subject to it (like a planet is subject to sphericalness—vs being able to think about the concept of spheres and their qualities). Ouch, this stuff is hard to put into words. But I do think there is something to it.
I like investigating Platonic ideas with modern concepts like Darwinism and entropy. He was obviously brilliant; rather than throwing out his ideas, we can dialogue with them to challenge our own.
Now, what’s different about LLMs is that they can work with concepts, rather than just compute through them. Our conceptual facility lets us navigate the noetic realm. Otherwise, we are just subject to it (like a planet is subject to sphericalness—vs being able to think about the concept of spheres and their qualities). Ouch, this stuff is hard to put into words. But I do think there is something to it.