Can Atheism Account For Rationality

[carpedm9587]

Computers/AI will inevitably attain that sort of rationality and powers of reasoning. In principle they are no different from Homo sapiens in this regard. Every animal, including us is an assemblage of organic algorithms shaped by natural selection over millions of years of evolution. Hence, there is no reason to think that non-organic organisms such as AI will never be able to replicate and surpass human intelligence.

Agreed.

[tabibito]

In simple terms, what is "the singularity" in this context?

[carpedm9587]

Take the sentence,"Cats are mammals". It's a human construct as the universe doesn't designate things as mammal or non-mammal but humans do. That we assign a true value to that sentence is also a human construct. To then consider that the rules of logic is how the universe operates would be soundly stupid.

So I have two responses. First, while the symbol "mammal" is indeed a human term, it reflects an underlying reality: a group of animals that actually exist and have a common set of characteristics. By the way, so is "cat," and its characteristics make it a member of that group. If all sentient life disappears, that symbol will disappear; the group of animals with common characteristics (presumably) will not. This is akin to what I said earlier about Pluto's membership in the list of planets orbiting this star.

And my second answer: of COURSE the universe designates things as mammals. After all, we are part of the universe, right? So as soon as we created the concept "mammal," we added that to the universe.

[carpedm9587]

I think that one of the faculties - however we acquired it - that is very much overlooked, is the imagination. One of my gripes with a materialist ontology is a form of imaginative destruction that in a sense closes off different worlds.

When I said I am talking to you, and not your brain - I meant it in two distinct ways. The first one is obvious - I am not talking to your brain because, that would be weird, it would be like talking to a table. Just as I am not talking to your ears.

The second is that my intentional object is a being that is quite a lot more than their brain, consisting of an embeddedness in a world that extends into your commitments, your relationships, your understanding, one that comes out of your past and extends into your future. That intentionality is also extended well beyond viewing you as a merely a material entity, I treat you as a being that is rational, can make commitments, with a sense of being that extends from that thrown past into a future that is meaningful to both of us. To be clear, this is not that you're super-natural, but that you are a being first, with its particular temporal structure, and a material thing second. A material thing which doesn't really interest either of our attention in everyday conversation.

Why does this matter? Well, because that being which you have chosen to be can transcend material determinations through the imagination. We can, for instance, have God as an intentional object - we hold this being to exist through directing our intentionality towards it through our imagination. The effect of such a transcendence is more than merely imagining it to be so-and-so, it changes how the phenomena in the world show up to us, they are disclosed in their aspect as a creation. We treat them differently, we may have a profound wonder at them, we might treat them with respect and love, rather than as things to be used or etc. The relationship we have with ourselves and other people also changes.

Do we know if God is real? In a sense it doesn't matter, as the world still takes on its meaning specific to that transcendence. The ontological naturalist will have a different transcendence based on their imagination of how things are, which will unconceal the world in light of that - the world takes on a material essence, with phenomena including humans showing up as things. They claim that their form of transcendece has priority, because it is based on 'the truth'. It isn't, it is merely one of the ways of unconcealing the world, there are many others - and it is by no means clear that their form is even remotely good for us. Since in the end, deeper and deeper reductions take place down to the essence, whereby everything is the same dead matter, which is progressively stripped from meaningfulness.

I am not saying that a transcence towards God is good, and that science and materialism is bad. The issue is more complex than that. This is certainty not aimed at converting a follower to God. It is merely to show that you shouldn't close yourself off from possible ways of being with yourself, others and entities in the world by picking an ontology, a way of disclosing things, that is effectively nihilistic if driven to its, logical conclusion. A conclusion that beings that make the world, shouldn't be driven to at all.

Out of curiosity, what are you talking to when you say, "Siri (or Alexa), play the "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" podcast?"

[Zara]

In simple terms, what is "the singularity" in this context?

- spoiler alert to The Foundation Series by Issac Asimov -





It is the eternals - but then probably without what happens in the books. The robots in the series became not only sentient but became so intelligent that they surpassed all human standards of intellect and power. In the end they leave space/time as understood by us, and based on their four laws of robotics, which compels them to protect humanity, they decide that the best possible world for humans is one in which there are no robots and technological progress is stagnant. So they make that the possible world in which the story is set. The books are more than this, but it is one of the background conditions for the story.

[Zara]

Out of curiosity, what are you talking to when you say, "Siri (or Alexa), play the "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" podcast?"

A corporate entity that is mining me for data so it can sell me stuff. But, of course, I don't talk to Siri, for the reason just noted. Corporates are clever though, using basic human language games against us.

[seer]

So this confirms that your are adding "free thought" to the concept of "rational," which is why we do not agree that a computer is rational device. I am using the dictionary definition, which would include computers as rational devices because they operate in accordance with the principles of logic. I have been fairly clear that I do not believe they have achieved sentience (yet) nor have I suggested they are anything but the deterministic devices they are (so far). So Sparko was right, we appear to be talking past each other.

Yes Carp, like my quote said:

If there is no free will, then no one is capable of choosing to believe something becausebecause.

If you believe something because you were determined to you are not believing it because of good reasons, and that takes rationality out of the picture as far as I'm concerned. Unless you believe we can come to rational conclusions without good reasons.

[carpedm9587]

In simple terms, what is "the singularity" in this context?

The term was coined by Vernor Vinge in "The Coming Technological Singularity," an essay he wrote in the early/mid 1990s. It was popularized by Ray Kurzweil in "The Singularity is Near." It identifies the moment when we create a sentient computer. Right now, cognitively, the computer has two advantages over us: speed and scope of memory. Where we have the advantage over the computer is sentience and abstraction. But what would happen if we developed a computer that was sentient and was facile at abstraction, and it retained its advantage in speed and memory scope? We would be, in effect, creating a sentience superior to our own, which would then be capable of continuing its own evolution at a pace faster than we humans could sustain. And since a computer does not have the biological limitations of a human, space travel would be a non-issue for machine intelligence, so he speculates that intelligent machines would ripple out into the universe in ways we cannot.

How would this sentience perceive us? Creator gods? Allies? Children to be tolerated? Threats? Inconveniences? Irrelevancies to be ignored? Would we be living the "Star Trek" scenario, or the "Judgement Day" scenario?

It's an interesting read, and more than a little humbling. Are we indeed playing with forces we cannot even truly understand?

[carpedm9587]

Yes Carp, like my quote said:

If there is no free will, then no one is capable of choosing to believe something becausebecause.

I actually don't disagree with this observation. I disagree with you adding "free will required" to the definition of "rational" or "rationality." Free will is required, AFAIK, for sentience and free decision-making (by definition). A choice freely made is free - and one determined is just that, determined.

If you believe something because you were determined to you are not believing it because of good reasons, and that takes rationality out of the picture as far as I'm concerned. Unless you believe we can come to rational conclusions without good reasons.

That takes rationality as you are defining it out of the picture. By the dictionary definition, a concept can be "rational" and it does not have free will. A computer is "rational" for the reasons previously stated. A human is also capable of being rational if the choices/decisions they make are made in accordance to the principles of reason and logic. When they make their choices, they do so (presumably) because they have free will - so their rational AND irrational AND nonrational choices are freely made.

Free will does not ensure rationality.
For a thing to be rational does not require it to have free will. It merely needs to be in accordance with the laws of logic/reason.

This is how we have used the term. Your definition requires to never ever again utter the following sentences:

The argument put forward in that paper is a rational one (an argument has no free will, so it cannot be rational)
Where rational cultivation has been introduced, it has almost always been by women (cultivation does not have free will, so it cannot be rational)

We'll also have to ditch fields like "rational psychology," "rational cosmology" and "rational theology," since a field or discipline does not have free will and cannot be rational.

In short, Seer, I'm not arguing with your idea in general. I'm resisting your re-definition of a particular word to suit your needs. Rational means what rational means: based on or in accordance with reason or logic. You want to use "rational" as if it is synonymous with "the ability to reason freely." The word is not so limited.

ETA: You also still have the problem that you have no way of proving that YOU are making rational choices any more than I do. As with the naturalist who cannot show that their grasp of truth is actual - they could simply be programmed to grasp it that way - you too cannot show that your entire worldview was not simply "how you were programmed to believe." This "we cannot prove we are not a brain in a vat" type of argument, which you seem somewhat disposed to, is more than a little pointless, IMO. I'd recommend dropping it.

[tabibito]

- spoiler alert to The Foundation Series by Issac Asimov -





It is the eternals - but then probably without what happens in the books. The robots in the series became not only sentient but became so intelligent that they surpassed all human standards of intellect and power. In the end they leave space/time as understood by us, and based on their four laws of robotics, which compels them to protect humanity, they decide that the best possible world for humans is one in which there are no robots and technological progress is stagnant. So they make that the possible world in which the story is set. The books are more than this, but it is one of the background conditions for the story.

Ah yes. Not in the series itself, but it was always something of a disappointment that there was never a story about Pope R Daneel Olivaw.
As a precis of how prophecy works (with a few not quites), Sheldon was a good example.

[carpedm9587]

- spoiler alert to The Foundation Series by Issac Asimov -





It is the eternals - but then probably without what happens in the books. The robots in the series became not only sentient but became so intelligent that they surpassed all human standards of intellect and power. In the end they leave space/time as understood by us, and based on their four laws of robotics, which compels them to protect humanity, they decide that the best possible world for humans is one in which there are no robots and technological progress is stagnant. So they make that the possible world in which the story is set. The books are more than this, but it is one of the background conditions for the story.

I had completely forgotten about that series and its association with the singularity! Nice catch!


ETA: I have to wonder if the "Replicators" (Stargate) are another foray into that general domain.

[tabibito]

The term was coined by Vernor Vinge in "The Coming Technological Singularity," an essay he wrote in the early/mid 1990s. It was popularized by Ray Kurzweil in "The Singularity is Near." It identifies the moment when we create a sentient computer. Right now, cognitively, the computer has two advantages over us: speed and scope of memory. Where we have the advantage over the computer is sentience and abstraction. But what would happen if we developed a computer that was sentient and was facile at abstraction, and it retained its advantage in speed and memory scope? We would be, in effect, creating a sentience superior to our own, which would then be capable of continuing its own evolution at a pace faster than we humans could sustain. And since a computer does not have the biological limitations of a human, space travel would be a non-issue for machine intelligence, so he speculates that intelligent machines would ripple out into the universe in ways we cannot.

How would this sentience perceive us? Creator gods? Allies? Children to be tolerated? Threats? Inconveniences? Irrelevancies to be ignored? Would we be living the "Star Trek" scenario, or the "Judgement Day" scenario?

It's an interesting read, and more than a little humbling. Are we indeed playing with forces we cannot even truly understand?

Hmmm. I recall a story where such a computer was constructed. First question it was asked, "Is there a god?" Reply, "There is now."

[carpedm9587]

Hmmm. I recall a story where such a computer was constructed. First question it was asked, "Is there a god?" Reply, "There is now."

Yeah...that's pretty much it.

[Sparko]

However complex and intricate it's behavior and "learning" becomes it will still just be a dead lifeless box that simply reacts in a mechanical fashion to input it's given.

Wait, not Alexa!!?? She sings me songs.

[tabibito]

Wait, not Alexa!!?? She sings me songs.

It's all fun and games until she calls you Dave.