\documentclass[12pt]{article} \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} \usepackage{graphicx} \usepackage[authoryear]{natbib} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{hyperref} \setlength{\parindent}{0pt} \setlength{\parskip}{0.5\baselineskip} \title{\bf Anthropological Arguments on the Symbolic Nature of Interpretability} \author{ Greg Coppola \\ {\em coppola.ai} } \date{\today} \begin{document} \maketitle \section{Abstract} A common complaint with neural networks--including large language models--is that their internal {\em representation structures} are not ``human interpretable''. This is arguably the most serious practical concern in the development of the field of {\em artificial intelligence} today. The increasing capabilities of artificial intelligence mean that they are increasingly taking on higher levels of ``decision-making'', and indeed the goal of many right now is in fact to increase the amount and the scope of the decisions being given to fully automatic {\em agents}. In order for machine thinking to be ``interpretable'' to humans, we must understand how humans ``interpret'' things in the first place. In this project, we investigate the nature of the term ``interpretable'' in an interdisciplinary empirical way, drawing on insights from psychology, anthropology, language study, and other aspects of historical, empirical, human data that illustrate just what it means for a system or a message to be ``interpretable'' by humans. We argue that, ``interpretability to humans'' is largely to be identified with the use of: {\bf symbols}, {\bf logic} and {\bf probability}, and in that order of relative importance. In general, we argue that ``interpretability'' is a major advantage of our {\em Logical Bayesian Network} \citep{coppola2024__theory_experiments} over many other model classes. \section{Dynamic Online Project} The dynamically updated content—documents, code, and diagrams—for this project can be found at the {\em GitHub} project at \citep{coppola2025__interpret}. We intend to package any applicable contributions as focused contributions to refereed papers. \begin{thebibliography}{99} \bibitem[Coppola, 2024]{coppola2024__theory_experiments} Coppola, G. (2024). \newblock The Quantified Boolean Bayesian Network: Theory and Experiments with a Logical Graphical Model. \newblock arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.06557, \newblock \url{https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.06557}. \bibitem[Coppola, 2025]{coppola2025__interpret} Coppola, G. (2025). \newblock Anthropological Arguments on the Symbolic Nature of Interpretability. \newblock GitHub repository, \newblock \url{https://github.com/gregorycoppola/interpret}. \end{thebibliography} \end{document}