Bounding Reason. Inferentialism, Naturalism, and the Discursive Agency of LLMs

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F67985955%3A_____%2F25%3A00638727" target="_blank" >RIV/67985955:_____/25:00638727 - isvavai.cz</a>

Alternative codes found

RIV/62690094:18460/25:50022617

Result on the web

<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-025-09761-6" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-025-09761-6</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10516-025-09761-6" target="_blank" >10.1007/s10516-025-09761-6</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Bounding Reason. Inferentialism, Naturalism, and the Discursive Agency of LLMs

Original language description

Recent discussions of Artificial Intelligence (AI) safety often invoke the orthogonality thesis—the idea that intelligence and final goals can be independent variables, allowing for the possibility of radically alien AI agents. This paper challenges this view by examining the relationship between language, intentionality, and rational agency against the background of how we now think about Large Language Models (LLMs). Drawing on Robert Brandom’s normative inferentialism and accounts of LLMs as role-playing dialogue agents, we argue that the linguistic competence demonstrated by LLMs suggests significant constraints on their artificial agency. We contend that participation in human discursive practices, which has an inherent normative dimension, may bind specific artificial agents to forms of rationality that are continuous with human reasoning. By analysing recent work on LLM linguistic behaviour, we demonstrate how these systems engage with human normative practices in ways that complicate AI sceptics’ dismissal of LLM capabilities and AI safety theorists’ speculations about future AI agents. We defend Brandom’s approach against charges of insufficient naturalism that could be put forward by the AI safety theorist camp while arguing that his account of language and rationality as inherently social practices provides crucial insights into the nature and potential limits of artificial agency. Our analysis suggests that the development of language-capable AI systems may be constrained by the normative structure of human discursive practices in ways that bind specific quadrants of the space of possible artificial minds.

Czech name

—

Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

—

OECD FORD branch

60301 - Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology

Project

<a href="/en/project/GA23-07119S" target="_blank" >GA23-07119S: MEANING AS AN OBJECT – PRINCIPLES OF SEMANTIC THEORIES</a><br>

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2025

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Global Philosophy

ISSN

2948-152X

e-ISSN

2948-1538

Volume of the periodical

35

Issue of the periodical within the volume

5

Country of publishing house

NL - THE KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS

Number of pages

27

Pages from-to

25

UT code for WoS article

001562585700001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-105018598892