AI and Materialism

     Recently I read John C. Wright's series of posts about artificial intelligence called "The Cabinet of Wisdom."  This topic is connected with many others such as science, materialism, and the connection of the mind to the body.  Richard Cocks of the Orthosphere also has several good posts on these topics as well: "Godel's Theorem", "the Halting Problem", and "AI and the Dehumanization of Man."  This post was inspired by those posts but is not a response to any of them.

    In this post, I am using the term "artificial intelligence" to mean mimicking human behavior by a machine.  In theory, I believe AI could be developed to a greater degree than it currently is, in the sense that a great deal of human behavior could, in principle, be mimicked.  However, I do not believe that this will actually happen.  One reason is the absence of scientific geniuses.  Translating human behavior into a form such that it can be imitated by a machine requires creative genius.  

    But not only that, genius requires strong motivation and I think AI has reached a point now that very few geniuses would be really motivated to work on it.  Deliberately trying to design a machine so that you can replace human workers is literally dehumanizing work.  Most scientific geniuses have historically been motivated by a desire to understand nature, not to replace it with something worse.  Presumably an evil genius who was paid well and expected power or social prestige would work on such a project, but the vast majority of geniuses simply would not or even if forced to do so would not have the motivation to perform genius level work.  

    Furthermore, artificial intelligence is such a difficult task that it would require multiple geniuses working together and making breakthroughs that build on each other.  It would also be necessary to have many people at the other high levels of the "pyramid of technology" such as the creative and intelligent "sub-geniuses" as well as skilled technicians.  Yet, exactly what has declined since the 1970s is this kind of organized science.  In the modern world, we have had multiple geniuses working on projects that support each other.  And this is exactly what you need for the really big projects, like the Manhattan Project or the Moon Landing.  But, from a historical perspective, this is a rare phenomenon.  Most scientific geniuses worked either alone or with a few collaborators (possibly separated by large geographic distances).  And I believe that this is what the science of the future will return to.  How far AI development will progress, I am not sure, but it will not go anywhere near as far as its proponents believe it will. 

    But there are other issues at the theoretical level.  Every development of artificial intelligence and computers requires human intelligence.  The fact that computers are as sophisticated as they are now doesn't prove that machines can think; it proves that human beings can design machines to perform many functions.  The human intelligence and creativity is the motive force behind the development.  The machines do nothing spontaneously; they only do what they have been designed to do.  So, even though the issue is presented as something that dispenses with human consciousness, that is mere philosophical sleight of hand: the human beings are there, they have simply been moved offstage.  

    I do not believe that true artificial intelligence, that is, a self-aware machine, is actually possible because I believe the mind and body are connected by a spiritual means.  It is a top-down, not bottom up process.  Valentin Tomberg says something suggestive of this in his book Meditations on the Tarot: 

    "matter is only condensed energy and energy is only 'condensed' consciousness"

    But there is another matter related to artificial intelligence.  Many proponents of it will make arguments of this type, "Just you wait, we'll build an AI and then you'll have to believe."  Now, as a theoretical argument, this has no force whatsoever.  The fact that a machine can be made to mimic human behavior does not mean that the machine is thinking.  However, this type of argument is psychologically powerful.  The reason is that in our current age, we are forced to think mechanically and bureaucratically (at least some of the time) because of how our world is structured.  We are surrounded by machines that affect our lives in ways great and small and mechanical thinking is required of us, in ways both conscious and unconscious. 

     In contrast to materialist thinking which is embodied in the system of our world and presses upon us every day,  anti-materialist arguments are rather subtle: they cannot coerce, they can only persuade.  I have been wondering, why is that?  One reason is related to how scientific genius works.  Part of the power of scientific genius is that a scientific genius can perceive truths about nature and then translate them into a form that can be understood and used by the rational mind.  Both the initial perception and the translation are important.  I believe that the genius apprehends these truths by intuition (which may come after years of hard work) and then they filter down into the rational mind and can be set down on paper.  

    Once these truths are translated, they can be understood and used by non-geniuses.  However, it still requires a high level of thinking and understanding to make use of science.  Technology goes one step further.  It translates these scientific facts into machines that require minimal to no understanding or thinking to be used.  If technology convinces people that science is a correct description of reality, then what if someone could change the world by use of spiritual means, wouldn't that convince people the spiritual is real?  Could we imagine a "spiritual technology" to accomplish this? 

    Well, first of all, there would still be people who would explain everything away.  But even more than that, such a spiritual technology wouldn't really be spiritual in its motivation.  Many people would think of the immaterial as just one more thing to be manipulated to satisfy their desires.  And if misuse of science has led to disaster, misuse of spiritual power would be much, much worse.  Fallen human beings will never be permitted anything like that.  

    Another reason is that we must raise ourselves up to the spiritual, not try to bring it down to our level.  If we must raise ourselves up to know the spiritual, then we come to appreciate it, but if not, then we regard the spiritual as, to paraphrase a turn of phrase from John Fitzgerald, "a different part of Plato's cave."

    So, there are two questions before us: 

1. How can we know that materialism is false? 

2. How can we live out this truth?  

    To do 1. will be different for each person.  Since no argument can coerce, people must seek for themselves.  I have put forward one idea that has helped me in a previous post.  Another thing I found very helpful is C.S. Lewis's essay Transposition.  The was one of the first things I read that helped me understand how the immaterial could exist.  In this essay, Lewis explains that the immaterial does not displace the material, but acts through it.  Those who only look at the motions of matter will only see that but those who look to what is higher will be able to discern the true causes.  The immaterial is a higher dimension of reality, not simply unaccountable behavior of matter.

    For 2., we also have to find our own ways.  True religious practice, where we consciously think about and seek the spiritual is one means.  Another is primary thinking.  Galileo said that the book of nature was written in mathematics.  But imagine a different book, a deeper book written within Nature herself.  But this book cannot be translated into the lower mind.  We must raise ourselves up every time we want a glimpse.  But, the beauty of this book is that it can never be co-opted, as technology has been.  Let us develop Romantic Christianity and read that book, which is in Nature but goes beyond.