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by strangeloops85 476 days ago
This is perhaps a simplistic observation, but Bhartrihari’s linguistic idealism connects with how LLMs and their apparent intelligence is fundamentally language-driven. He would argue that is sufficient since our reality is fundamentally linguistic in nature:

“ Bhartrihari tells us, ordinary language is a crystallization of something already implicit in reality. Reality itself is fundamentally linguistic, and what we think of as language—ordinary language, with its words and conceptual divisions—is just a devolution or fragmentation of this more primordial linguistic totality. This is precisely why, for Bhartrihari, the ultimate reality is shabdabrahman, a linguistic absolute. So this is a strong form of idealism: things in our experience, and all things in existence, are fundamentally linguistic. We have no access to anything outside of language and therefore no reason to assume that there is, or ever was, anything separate from it.”

2 comments

This is the fundamental conflict behind the linguistic turn in the west, no?
Nice mapping; certainly something to think about.