Hi Gary,
I hope you will not mind that I belabor a few bit, and try to defend
the use, if not the need, of the theological vocabulary. Without
hiding the reasons of the heart :)
I put the Everything-List in cc, as some people might be interested,
sorry for the doubling for those in both lists.
On 13 Dec 2015, at 15:30, Gary Oberbrunner wrote:
On Sat, Dec 12, 2015 at 2:22 PM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
feel free to elaborate if this answer missed the point.
I don't want to belabor it, but to put it simply: go to a church. I
am not religious, I'm not defending that point of view (far from
it), but the church is for almost all humans the arbiter of what is
a soul and what has a soul. If you tell any religious person that
any machine has a soul, they will laugh at you.
Yes, at least in the Aristotelian era. But those "religious" person
will laugh at the start with the idea that a machine can be conscious,
or can think, etc.
Jacques Arsac is a french catholic who wrote a book ("the sense
crisis") where he said "I am a catholic so I cannot believe in
Artificial Intelligence".
Sometimes people infer that Mechanism is materialism, and that if some
machine can think, it means theology makes no more sense. It helps
them to see that on the contrary, Mechanism makes possible to reread
the theological texts with a transparent (mathematical) interpretation
(true or not for us). Then the shock should be re-situated in the
history of theology. The greek have introduced all the terms (god,
soul, divine, etc.) but just for making it possible to doubt the
theories about them and discuss/do-science. It is well known that the
Aristotelian metaphysics has been imposed by violence. So we have to
take distance with the dogma, once we do science.
My ten first papers did not use theological vocabulary, but this did
not prevent some people to laugh at terms like "consciousness", even
"mind", or even "philosophy" or "computer" (sic), without mentioning
"quantum"!).
The real problem is that since 1500 years, we use Aristotelian
theology (with a " Creation/universe" and with or without a Creator),
and we have forgotten that theology-the-science is born from doubting,
not God, but the Creation, the Primary Matter.
Mathematics as a science is born in that process, and was the main
prerequisite in theology.
In Occident, this has evolved and lasted 1000 years, from -500
(Pythagorus) to +500 (Damascius), then *all* sciences have been
hijacked by the pseudo-religious authorities (the Christian Roman
Empire).
With the Enlightenment Period, the (mainly natural) sciences have been
given back to the free researchers, but not yet theology.
By mocking the idea to come back to the scientific attitude in
theology, the atheists (which very often take for granted the second
God of Aristotle: "Primary Matter") are accomplices of the Churches
and the use of authoritarian attitude in theology and religion (which
is *the* blasphem in many mystical (experiential) grounded theologies,
btw).
They think you are making a category error at best.
My point is almost nobody will truly understand what you're talking
about if you use the word "soul" because that word has _way_ too
much religious baggage.
It is used by Plato and Aristotle. And the christians, despite
authoritarianism, might be much less wrong than non-agnostic atheists
(the only one which are often annoyed by the use of the greek
theological terms).
But then they mocked already the "mind-body problem" as much, or even
(when I was young) cognitive science and "artificial intelligence".
Christians are less wrong (relatively to the universal machine) thanks
to the work of St-Augustin, Jews are less wrong thanks to the Cabbala,
Muslims are less wrong thanks to Sufism: those groups have kept a part
of Platonism (which seems right with still alive in their theologies.
But they have also hidden it, ... to avoid being burned alive or
banished).
It is only when I discovered the arithmetical interpretation of Lao-ze
and Plotinus, that I decided to no more hide that what the universal
machine discover when looking inside was not just the "psyche" (soul
in greek) but a secret discourse, which is wrong when communicated,
but still points about some reality escaping reason, and for which the
machine will build approximation like "Universe", "Reality", "Truth",
"God", "the One", etc.
Some people, in fact even some atheists, have only begun to understand
what I am talking about when they get that point.
The term "theology" helps, because it concerns *all* the truth about a
machine, including the infinitely many truth *about* the machine that
the machine cannot prove but that it can still assert with
interrogation marks, and can build theories.
By the fact that the machine can prove their own incompleteness, you
can understand how reason can understand its own limitation with
respect to "the truth", or "the possible truth", etc.
The greeks, and the indians, and the chinese, they have all seen this.
It is hardly a coincidence, if computationalism is true, as *all*
machine can see this: it asks only for courage, patience, modesty,
honesty, etc.
That Parmenides, Pythagorus, Moderatus of Gades, Plotinus, Proclus,
Damascius are so close to the universal machine means probably that
they got enough courage, modesty, to introspect themselves.
And not only will they not understand you, they will have a visceral
reaction against you. Some will even consider it an attack on their
faith. That battle isn't one you need, IMHO.
They have fought before I use that vocabulary, much before.
Yet, only the fundamentalist non agnostic sort of atheists get
insulting and violent.
> I just define the soul by the knower.
My point exactly.
Except that the whole point is that incompleteness makes the knower
into a soul, with notion like the 3p-self which fits Aristotle
definition of the Soul in its "De Anima", and a notion of 1p-self
which fits the "Inner God" of the mystics, the "universal-soul" of
Plotinus, and plays the role of the subject in classical duplication
and quantum superposition.
The non-trivial fact is that the incompleteness theorem makes the
knower into a soul in the platonist theologies. From the machine's
point of view, her soul has a scientific 3p part and a necessarily non
scientific part, itself divided into a known and undoubtable part, and
a "only hoped" part, and much beyond.
You'll lose every judeo-christian believer right there at the
beginning.
I lose only the fundamentalist, those who cannot doubt. But I lose
them even more with any other vocabulary.
The point is that incompleteness makes the notion of knower obeying
the generally admitted ideas on the soul. I don't just define soul by
knower, I show that the knower in the sense of theaetetus ("well
known" by the philosophers) when define in the logic of machine's self-
reference, leads to entity satisfying what the theologian say on the
soul, doubly so with the platonist theologians.
Maybe you don't care? Ask a religious person, they'll say something
like "the spiritual, immaterial part of a human"
Excellent, except it is ambiguous if that is the 1-soul (the conscious
subject from its private personal point of view), or the 3-soul (the
software, what is teleported ...). The 3-soul *is* an immaterial part
associated to the human or to the machine, but the spiritual is only
in the 1-soul. It is connected to something highly non computable, and
even undefinable: truth (as enough big to encompasse itself). We get
it, by the incompleteness "miracle" simply by connecting the 3p self-
believer []p to the truth of the proposition he believes it: []p & p.
or "the divine energy animating us"
The term "divine energy" is spiritual materialism, and there are
excellent tibetan books explaining how much this is wrong, a bit like
dualism.
or "our immortal connection to God" or some such stuff.
The God of Plato is Truth. Hirchberger concludes so in its tutorial on
the History of Occidental Philosophy.
And it makes our immortal connection to God, indeed. Just by using the
greek-indian-chinese definitions, starting from Gödel's beweisbar
predicate, which applies to all platonist machine (meaning that such
machine agrees on classical logic).
I don't pretend this to be true, but it follows from classical
computationalism.
I'm not saying that your definition is worse, in fact I like it a
lot -- but you need to be aware when you're hijacking the language.
I am not. I just come back to the scientific attitude on the mind-body
problem, without taking any theology for granted, but by using
computationalism (that is mainly Church-Turing thesis, and an
invariance of consciousness/soul for some transformation) and a tiny
part of arithmetic, we get quickly a reasonable and testable
arithmetical interpretation of Plato.
The problem is perhaps that
1) I have developed that theory in an environment of free-thinkers
which have encouraged such analysis, even the vocabulary (like
"consciousness" which at that time, was taboo in some circles, at that
time. Well, even "Gödel" was a taboo term for a local mathematician).
2) they didn't know that there are was an influent (and secret!) group
of fundamentalist non-agnostic atheists, .... oh, well, without
counting moral harassment, and that type of things of life, jealousy,
etc.
I don't know Gary. The type of person which are visceral about the
theological notions, are already visceral on thought experiments, on
"consciousness", on "mind", and they are visceral against anything
capable of generating a bit of a doubt on Aristotle theology (with or
without a "creator").
The God/Not-God debate hides the real original debate Universe/Not-
Universe, that is the debate between the Aristotelian conception of
Reality or the Platonist conception of Reality (put under the rug by
violent means since 1500 years).
I like to say that science has begun in -500 and ended in +500. Since
then we live in the Middle-age, despite some progress in the half
Enlightenment Period. Today we live the fear selling period, and we
invest in people credulity, instead of the constructive doubt.
Theology must go back to the faculty of science, with or without the
help of the religious institutions. If not, obscurity will continue,
with its bloody consequences. I think. I don't see any other way to
fight against the fundamentalists, on *all* sides.
Computationalism is theological: it is honesty to admit this: as no
scientist can ever tell you that your survival can be a demonstrated
fact, so it is a belief in a sort of re-incarnation. This implies the
important ethic which is in the right to say "No" to the doctor, and
that computationalist practice cannot be enforced by laws, nor can
their interdiction.
When we discovered that Earth is not flat: we didn't say "Earth does
not exist". And that is science. So if we discover that in some theory
(like computationalism) God is not omnipotent, nor omniscient, nor
good, etc. We don't have to say God does not exist, we let the notion
evolve, as it is the only way to make progress. If we don't allow
refutable theories in a field, that field cannot evolve. Then in the
case of the machine, accepting mechanism or strong AI,we don't have
the choice: what is true about them escapes what they can believe and
know, and they already know that.
I have participated recently to a meeting between theologians and
scientists, and I was very glad seeing that many are very open
minded(*). Very few theologians are unaware of Plato and Pythagorus,
and of the insidious sort of blaspheme of those using violent means to
"convince" the others. So let us try the modest non violent science,
in principle at least, and let us get the courage to doubt our
certainties in that domain too, and let the concepts evolve and adapt.
Sorry for the long post. But I love so much theology. One fourth of
my books at home are by theologians, ancient and contemporary, from
West and East, (and the remaining are: one fourth on number theory,
one fourth on mathematical logic, one fourth on quantum mechanics.
It is really the theology which fits the best the puzzle and put some
light on the mystery. Oh! I forgot to mention my books on bacteria,
protozoans, invertebrates, and molecular genetics, and plants of all
sorts.
Bruno
(*) I wrote a paper on that occasion: "NeoNeoplatonism: can we do
theology with the scientific attitude?"
http://www.dialogo-conf.com/archive/?vid=1&aid=2&kid=170201-30
(NeoNeoPlatonism is Neoplatonism + Church-Turing thesis (the original
mathematical one)).
--
Gary
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