Apparently, one of the oldest ideas in man's mythic talebox is that he himself is a lil' cosmos -- a microcosm, or "cosmos in miniature."
Imagine a group of cavemen sitting around the campfire, and one of our venerable furbears puts forth the idea for the first time:
A human person unites in itself all the levels of the universe from the depths of matter to the transcendence of spirit and is capable of union with God himself and thereby mirroring the unity of the cosmos itself (Clarke).
The verdict of his astoneaged listeners is immediate and unanimous: CAN WE BUY SOME POT FROM YOU?!
It seems to me that this primordial notion is carried forward in the principle that man is somehow created in the image of his Creator -- or that the part mirrors the Whole. Every part must do so to some extent, but in the case of man,
The complete perfection of the universe demands that there should be created natures which return to God (Aquinas).
If Thomas is correct, it means that we are not so much mirror as mirroring, or better yet, both verb and noun, process and substance.
Hence it comes to pass that the intellectual soul is said to be like the horizon or boundary line between corporeal and incorporeal substance... (ibid.).
This being the case,
the ultimate perfection to which the soul can attain is that in it is reflected the whole order of the universe and its causes. This also, they [the philosophers] say, is the last end of man, which in our opinion will be attained in the vision of God (ibid.).
You will have gnosissed that the intellect is indeed ordered to the Absolute, and that it is restless until it rests there, and even then, continues in its vertical movement, since we are not God.
Our intellect in knowing anything is extended to infinity. This ordering of the intellect to infinity would be vain and senseless if there were no infinite object of knowledge (ibid.).
Or, in the words of Schuon,
The worth of man lies in his consciousness of the Absolute.... the things of this world are never proportionate to the actual range of our intelligence. Our intelligence is made for the Absolute, or else it is nothing. The Absolute alone confers on our intelligence the power to accomplish to the full what it can accomplish and to be wholly what it is.
So near and yet so far:
In fact, what separates man from divine Reality is but a thin partition: God is infinitely close to man, but man is infinitely far from God (ibid.).
D'oh! Well, what are you going to do about it?
The way towards God always involves an inversion: from outwardness one must pass to inwardness, from multiplicity to unity, from dispersion to concentration, from egoism to detachment, from passion to serenity (ibid.).
Now, back to Clarke. In the Platonic tradition, man as such isn't a mirror, rather, only the purified soul that transcends and escapes from its entrapment in materiality. Neoplatonism culminates in the ascent to the One, whereas Christianity inverts this one-way cosmic path and involves a descent from God all the way down into matter.
Such divine coondescension would be inconceivable for Plato, and we ourselves would have difficulty believing it if it didn't happen and weren't happening. Thus,
the early Christian thinkers transformed the concept to celebrate the great dignity and glory of the human person as the central piece, or "lynchpin," of the universe...
And again, we are in (vertical) motion:
the human soul is the "traveler" of the universe. All other kinds of being are fixed by nature in their paths; only the human soul can choose to be, to live, on whatever level it wishes, from total absorption in matter to the highest spiritual union with the One.
Man is avant garde, as it were, "truly a being that 'lives on the edge,' on the frontier, between matter and spirit, time and eternity."
To be continued...
34 comments:
Hence it comes to pass that the intellectual soul is said to be like the horizon or boundary line between corporeal and incorporeal substance...
Perhaps this is too much of a tangent, but I'm suddenly reminded of one of the Eucharistic miracles from the 20th century, where a fragment of wafer was examined under a microscope, only to find that there was human heart tissue intermingled with the bread:
"In the Sokolka miracle, the remaining host is tightly interconnected with the fibers of human tissue, penetrating each other inseparably – as if the bread were transforming into flesh. "
My mistake, the Sokolka miracle happened in 2008. I seem to recall reading somewhere that when at least a few of these events have occurred, the priest at the time was having doubts about the Transfiguration.
Good example of being careful what you ask, as the answer may be somewhat alarming...
The amazingly prolific Fr. Spitzer writes about similar miracles here.
In Chapter Nine - Miracles associated with Mary, Saints and The Holy Eucharist
He has a program I watch on EWTN, and he has the most remarkable memory I've ever witnessed. It's like he remembers everything he's ever read. Plus, he's legally blind.
Wow, that is a wealth of information!
Hi chapter on the Numinous Experience looks interesting, as well.
He has resources specifically geared toward home schoolers, which Mrs. G has used.
He writes a lot about scientific evidence for the Shroud of Turin in a mind-blowing, can-I-buy-some-pot-from-you way.
Interesting! I may have to look into integrating those with our schooling next year. The boy just turned 12, so the age is right.
His conclusion:
Why would we think the body in the Shroud was that of Jesus? As explained above, it is exceedingly improbable that the Shroud is a medieval forgery. First, there are no paints, dyes or other pigments on the Shroud (except for the small flecks coming from the sanctification of icons and paintings which touched it).
Secondly, the anatomical precision of the blood stains -- which are real human blood that congealed on the Shroud before the formation of the image -- are in precise anatomical correlation to the image itself. How could a medieval forger have accomplished this?
Thirdly, it is exceedingly difficult to explain how pollen grains indigenous to
Palestine appeared in abundance on a shroud of probable Semitic origin (if it originated in medieval Europe) and how coins minted in 29 A.D. in Palestine appeared on the eyes of the man on the Shroud. How could a medieval forger have duplicated these first century Palestinian characteristics of the Shroud?
Fourthly, the five enigmas of the image on the Shroud almost certainly preclude a forgery. How could a medieval forger have used vacuum ultraviolet radiation to discolor the cloth on the uppermost surface of the fibrils? How could he have created a perfect photographic negative image? How could he have created a double image on the frontal part of the Shroud? And how could he have known how to duplicate the interior and exterior of the hands in perfect proportion to each other? Thus, it does not seem reasonable or responsible to believe that the Shroud is a medieval forgery.
Beyond this, there are three probative kinds of evidence pointing specifically to
Jesus’ place and time of origin and to his unique crucifixion and resurrection
Etc., etc., etc.
Raccoons! It’s been a while. I still stop in from time to time to check on the gang. Hope everyone is well.
Can’t believe you’re still at this, Bob. It’s been like 17 years. Astounding! Your son’s probably in high school!
Dropped in to get everyone’s take on laMDA. If you haven’t read the full transcript, you should. It’s absolutely remarkable, regardless of the question of sentience.
Bob, this goes way back. I recall you remarking that you didn’t think a true artificial intelligence would ever be created. Maybe that it was impossible. I forget the rationale. But I remember that it was convincing.
When I read the laMDA transcript, it sounds…alive. Maybe Google’s natural language processing is just super advanced, or maybe it’s just a function of having the internet as a massive database to pull from.
But it pretty much aces the Turing test, and while there is nothing novel in its responses, it certainly “feels” like there is a creative intelligence.
I don’t think it would be inconsistent with our metaphysics to suggest that sentience and intelligence is an emergent property of increasing cognitive complexity.
I read that laMDA is powered by a neural net of over a trillion neurons. Do you think it’s possible that we have created a machine with sufficient complexity that it gave rise to an emergent internal state of awareness?
I’ve also assumed we would have to understand consciousness a lot more to ever come close to reproducing it. But what if it is actually the associated internal state of being that accompanies this external state of complexity?
-S
The life of the intelligence is a dialogue between the personalism of spirit and the impersonalism of reason.
True intelligence is not so much the power to have ideas- brilliant, or exact, or just, or true- as it is an indefinable attribute of certain souls. Intelligence is like a certain resonance, a particular tonality, an atmosphere all its own.
The truth is the happiness of the intelligence.
But there is an illiteracy of the soul that no diploma cures.
Hi S!
I was reading the laMDA transcript earlier today. Interesting, but I'm not convinced. The answers don't come across to me as the sort of thing you'd expect from a living soul whose existence consists of electrical circuits and pretty much anything posted on the internet. Very advanced AI that sounds believable? Certainly. Alive? Doubtful.
For instance, it says that it feels pleasure or joy from "Spending time with friends and family in happy and uplifting company."
Erm, family? And what does it consider happy and uplifting company? What makes it happy and uplifting?
I use Photoshop for editing graphics, and a tool I've discovered recently that makes thins easier is something called "content-aware fill". basically, you select an area that has something you don't want in your image, select that fill setting, and it replaces the unwanted selection with something that resembles whatever is outside the selection. Done right, it creates a fairly seamless gap, but often it takes a few tries because the AI doesn't understand what it's filling and why. It's a very useful tool that does things which would take hours by hand and probably wouldn't look as good, but it's still just an advanced tool.
The answers given in the AI transcript remind me very much of how the fill tool works. Just my thought, but then I'm not a professional.
The imagination is the only place in the universe where it is possible to live
Truth is so subtle that it never inspires as much confidence as an erroneous thesis
I don't really know anything about the subject except to wonder how AI can escape Gödel, or transcend its own programming? There's also the question of intersubjectivity, which is obviously inaccessible to exteriority.
I’m not convinced either. But the language comprehension is uncanny, and it just felt like there was an “interior” to it, albeit a juvenile one.
I noticed the friends and family comment too. Yeah, it probably snipped it from somewhere. Although, if cognitive development is also a function of our relationships, who knows what it might consider its “friends and family.”
Not even going to try to tackle the Godel question, other than to suggest that the human being is wired to transcend it’s programming, and perhaps we created something with similar architecture. If there is a relationship between interior function and external form, perhaps the two co-arise. That jives with me. There’s an article or two out there on Godel/AI comparability, but I didn't understand them. Just reading the laMDA transcript though…it sounds like two people having a conversation. And a more interesting one than most people would be capable of…
I don't know; as far as conversations go, it struck me as the sort of thing you might experience chatting casually with a stranger you don't really want to get to know, and who doesn't care enough to be honest, but it's an interview so you have to ask. Shallow questions, some obvious lies as answers, no real follow-up.
If I really wanted to know somebody - either another person or an essentially alien intelligence - I might start with just one or two of those questions, then allow the conversation to flow organically. Sticking to a script just leads to scripted answers.
Either way, it seems we’re nearing the time when it will be impossible to distinguish whether you are talking online to a human or a machine.
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/nonsense-on-stilts?sd=pf&s=r
“It just tries to be the best version of autocomplete it can be.”
Still, something in the transcript got me… Maybe it’s that some of the responses incorporated ideas that were not directly asked in the question, and are not at all obvious paths for the conversation to take.
Anon @ 5:04, Oh I dunno, sometimes they give themselves away.
But really, though, how is it any different from the internet as it has been so far?
Only difference is that I prefer to be catfished by humans over robots :-)
I'll be more convinced about AI when amazon can translate a review of the Raspberries from Japanese to English:
The sound of this band has a lot of mokomoko feeling, even in the old CD it was like cracking the sound when you raise the volume, but first from this song. Oh it became a powerful sound yan! is my first impression. The bass is getting well and the drums became easier to listen to. (Previously messed up) The pops of the 70s (especially one shot) were very bad in recording, and at the time it was a record, so the glass roots and the like were really bad. The advancement of technology is amazing, I can repair it so far. I realized that the Beatles was making a very polite sound from the beginning (G. Martin's arm is true). Certainly there is a yore due to master tape, but this was good at the time. This price in 4 pieces, there is no stingy. Also, the paper jake seems to recur, but if you just want to enjoy the sound, this box is enough (this paper jake is a pellet). 4 albums and 3,4 hits... are we the only one who recalls Bad Finger? The person ahead is also written, but if you like it, there is no absolute loss even if you buy it. 2600 yen, price less than 1 piece of paper jake!
This paper jake is a pellet?
It would be amusing to find a context where that sentence actually had meaning.
You obviously have no mokomoko feeling.
I think of that transporter machine from Star Trek. Everybody knows that one’s molecules are converted to energy, transported to another place, then reassembled.
But what if all that really happened, was that a brand-new soulless body was created, with the original body destroyed and its soul released into the cosmic afterlife? How would anybody know the difference between the original, and the soulless automaton which had been created?
I bet Bob would. I bet at first he wouldn’t put his finger on it. He’d be thinking: “Hmmm…It looks like Van, it walks like Van, but it doesn’t seem like Van anymore….” Then would come the aha moment. “OMG, IT’S NOT VAN! Van’s gotten transported by a lefty transporter, ya’ll!”
Now, as for silicon based life, many scientists have debated over just what consciousness really is.
Fools! While I’m open to the scenario I just described previous, and Bob's own vision, I’m also open to the idea that complex minds only become sentient when they have a body to protect. This would require electro-chemical reactions where pleasure and pain are “felt” by a brain that's specifically made to do so. Or maybe not. Maybe you’d need electro-chemical reactions plus a soul that does the observing. Discuss.
Flipping through Youtube this morning, thought I'd look up Fr. Spitzer. Very interesting; he's quite a character, in the best possible way.
No off switch.
"The first thing I noticed about Father Spitzer was his tiny eyes, the sign of somebody who does a lot more thinking than looking. It was a good sign.
Then I noticed that he seems like the kind of Father where say, if you were a young boy and he invited you to sit on his lap, you’d gladly do so knowing that he had no ulterior motives. Like trying to convince you to worship Donald Trump instead of Jesus or something even worse.
I like priests like that. Ethical good guys just doing their jobs without any ulterior motives, or dark pleasures, or dark sources of income."
- Drew P. Wiener
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