Artificial Intelligence or Religious Hype?

I read a fabulous article in the New York Times the other day titled "The First Church of Robotics."  The author, Jaron Lanier, is a computer scientist and technology guru who recently published a book titled You Are Not a Gadget.  In the article, Lanier argues that the religious beliefs of many computer scientists often lead them to anthropomorphize technology, and as a consequence, dehumanize people.

We've all seen a movie about a robot or computer that became "self-aware," and manifested human-like characteristics.  From Terminator to Wall-E, the concept of artificial intelligence is a popular one that makes for great science-fiction.  It also serves as an effective marketing gimmick. 

The belief in A.I. rests on the metaphysical assumption that consciousness is something that simply "happens" whenever a material object (e.g. a computer) reaches a certain level of complexity.  While that assumption may or may not be true, it is certain that scientists have come nowhere near achieving it.  It is likely that they never will.  Unfortunately, you wouldn't know that from the way new technologies are marketed and hyped in the press.

By describing their products in anthropomorphic terms, computer scientists have grossly overstated the "intelligence" of their technological innovations, probably for advertising purposes.  A "smart-phone" sounds much more snazzy than a regular phone.  Doesn't it?  And who's not impressed with the i-Tunes "Genius" feature?  "It's so smart.  It's like it knows me better than I know myself."  But most of these innovations are simply algorithms.  They are not "smart" in any human sense of the word.  And scientists know this implicitly.  As Lanier points out, "Engineers don’t seem quite ready to believe in their smart algorithms enough to put them up against Apple’s chief executive, Steve Jobs, or some other person with a real design sensibility."  In other words, they would never let an algorithm design their next product.  They leave that to real people.

Marketing isn't the whole story however.  The tendency of computer scientists to anthropomorphize computers is also due to their own metaphysical assumptions, i.e. their religious beliefs.  Lanier explains:

The influential Silicon Valley institution [Singularity University] preaches a story that goes like this: one day in the not-so-distant future, the Internet will suddenly coalesce into a super-intelligent A.I., infinitely smarter than any of us individually and all of us combined; it will become alive in the blink of an eye, and take over the world before humans even realize what’s happening....Some think the newly sentient Internet would then choose to kill us; others think it would be generous and digitize us the way Google is digitizing old books, so that we can live forever as algorithms inside the global brain....Yes, it sounds nutty when stated so bluntly.  But these are ideas with tremendous currency in Silicon Valley; these are guiding principles, not just amusements, for many of the most influential technologists....which suggests something remarkable: What we are seeing is a new religion, expressed through an engineering culture. [emphasis mine]

It may seem like a harmless thing for computer scientists to believe wacky sci-fi theories and anthropomorphize technology as a result.  But Lanier thinks this has a negative effect on society.  "[B]y allowing artificial intelligence to reshape our concept of personhood, we are leaving ourselves open to the flipside: we think of people more and more as computers, just as we think of computers as people."  I agree.  And in my view, dehumanizing people is always a bad thing, even when it's unintentional.

It's sad to me that someone would even need to write a book titled You Are Not a Gadget.  One would think that would be common sense.  Unfortunately, it's not.  I'm glad we have level headed, clear thinking scientists like Lanier.  He offers some practical advice to help break the materialistic spell our culture as fallen into:

Seeing movies and listening to music suggested to us by algorithms is relatively harmless, I suppose. But I hope that once in a while the users of those services [e.g. Netflix, Pandora, etc.] resist the recommendations; our exposure to art shouldn’t be hemmed in by an algorithm that we merely want to believe predicts our tastes accurately. These algorithms do not represent emotion or meaning, only statistics and correlations.

And Lanier's advice to his fellow computer scientists?  Believe what you want, but sell technology without all the "metaphysical baggage." 

Amen, brother.

A special thanks to Jocelyn for sending me the original article.

Discovering Plato's Musical Code

The political and social commentary website Electric Politics has an excellent podcast interview with Jay Kennedy, the discoverer of Plato's musical code (I recently wrote about the discovery here at WOF).  The podcast is approximately 40 minutes long, but it's worth listening to.  Kennedy gives the backstory to his exciting discovery.

The interviewer, George Kenney, is interested in the political implications the discovery may have.  What I found more interesting however, were the comments toward the end of the podcast about the implications we should draw for how to reconcile science and religion.  According to Kennedy, Plato and the Pythagoreans would both suggest that, "We should worship Nature, worship its order, and worship its beauty.  But we don't need the myths of the old religion.....Religion and science can be united and one, if we just worship what is beautiful in Nature."  In other words, we can reconcile science and religion, if we'll just adopt the religious assumptions of the ancient Greeks.  I could be wrong, but I detect some Hellenophilia in that suggestion.

Thanks to George for alerting me to the podcast.

Modern Myths of Science and Religion - Part 2

This is the second in a series of posts to critically examine popular misconceptions of the relationship between science and religion.  The first post examined the "Myth of Religious Neutrality."  This post will examine what historian David Pingree called "Hellenophilia" - the myth that the ancient Greeks invented science.

Like many young college students, I was taught during my undergraduate that the ancient Greeks were the first people to think scientifically about the world, because they were the first civilization to jettison religious explanations of nature.  There were concrete benefits to this Greek new way of thinking, no doubt.  It's good that we don't still attribute lightning to the finicky moods of Zeus.  However, the more I study the history and philosophy of science the more I think the popular view I was taught in my undergraduate is wrong.

The late historian of science David Pingree was particularly annoyed by the popular bias in academia toward the ancient Greeks.  In fact, he made up his own word for it - "Hellenophilia."  In an article in the history of science journal, Isis, he explains what he means by this:

...[A] Hellenophile suffers from a form of madness that blinds him or her to historical truth and creates in the imagination the idea that one of several false propositions are true.  The first of these is that the Greeks invented science; the second is that they discovered a way to truth, the scientific method, that we are now successfully following; the third is that the only real sciences are those that began in Greece; and the fourth...is that the true definition of science is just that which scientists happen to be doing now, following a method or methods adumbrated by the Greeks...[1]

In my experience, the reasoning employed by the typical "Hellenophile" goes something like this:  "Science can only offer natural explanations.  No theories involving gods, spirits, or any other kinds of superstition are allowed in what we call 'science.'  If a theory does involve one of these prohibited explanans, then it is not science.  It is religion.  And since the ancient Greeks were the first people to stop explaining nature in religious ways, and to start offering natural explanations, then they were the first people to do real science."  As I see it however, this view is wrong for two primary reasons.

First, it is philosophically prejudiced.  As I explained in my last post, no one's view of the world is completely free of religious commitments.  Everyone has metaphysical assumptions about what holds divine status (yes, even atheists).  And these assumptions will inevitably have some influence on how we interpret reality.[2]  The ancient Greeks were no different.  For instance, their metaphysical assumptions about the nature of the heavenly (divine) realm led them to incorporate "a strong prejudice in favor of circles or spheres rotating with uniform motion" into their astronomy.[3]  In other words, their religious assumptions influenced the kinds of theories they allowed into their science.

Unfortunately for the Greeks their assumptions were wrong, and their science suffered because of it.  Hellenistic astronomy had deep flaws which led to inaccurate predictions.  It was not until later - when the Greeks began to compromise their metaphysical commitment to circular and uniform motion - that their science was able to improve in its level of accuracy.[4]  Thus, the Greeks did not completely jettison "religious" explanations from their science, as the Hellenophiles say.  They simply exchanged one kind of religious assumption for another.  To say that the Greeks were the first people to think "scientifically" is merely to express a philosophical preference for the particular kind of religious assumptions that the ancient Greeks held.

Secondly, it is historically ignorant to say that the Greeks invented science.  Ancient Babylonian astronomers carried out the longest scientific research program in human history, and achieved a level of quantitative prediction that far surpassed the ancient Greeks.  Moreover, they did this nearly 400 years prior to Hellenistic astronomy.[5]

From approximately 740 BC to 60 BC, Babylonian scribes observed the daily motions of the celestial bodies, and recorded their observations in the Astronomical Diaries.  Within this huge set of observed data, Babylonian astronomers discovered mathematical patterns that allowed them to successfully predict future astronomical events, to a great degree of accuracy.[6]  If this is not science, then I don't know what is.  There's one problem though:  Babylonian astronomy was highly superstitious and largely motivated by astrology.  Can we still call it science?  According to the popular Hellenophilic view we cannot, even though it was more quantitative and had greater predictive power than Greek astronomy.

What do you think?  Must a theory be completely void of "religious" or superstitious assumptions in order to be considered "scientific?"  Was Greek astronomy completely void of religious assumptions?  Which was more scientific, Greek or Babylonian astronomy?  These are very difficult questions to answer.




Endnotes


1.  David Pingree, "Hellenophilia versus the History of Science," Isis, Vol. 83, No. 4 (Dec., 1992), p. 555.

2.  See Roy Clouser (2005), The Myth of Religious Neutrality.

3.  David Pingree, "Hellenophilia versus the History of Science," Isis, Vol. 83, No. 4 (Dec., 1992), p. 557.

4.   Apollonius (c. 220 BC) and Hipparchus (c. 140 BC) introduced "eccentric models" of orbital motion in an attempt to correct the inaccuracies of Greek astronomy.  This was an aesthetic compromise however - a step away from the metaphysical commitment to geometric beauty held by their predecessors.

5.  The Hellenistic period of astronomy seems to begin around the time of Eudoxus, Plato, and Aristotle - all of which lived c. 370 BC.

6.  For an in-depth treatment on this, see N.M. Swerdlow (1998), The Babylonian Theory of the Planets.

Modern Myths of Science and Religion - Part 1

This is the first in a series of posts to critically examine popular misconceptions of the relationship between science and religion.  These misconceptions can rightly be called myths, because they continue to be believed and perpetuated in popular culture, despite being debunked by the latest scholarship.  The myth I will address in this post is what philosopher Roy Clouser has called "The Myth of Religious Neutrality."

There is a widely held belief today that science and religion are fundamentally opposite ways of explaining reality.  As Stephen Hawking recently put it, "[R]eligion...is based on authority, science...is based on observation and reason."  This view can be summarized in the "Faith vs. Reason" dichotomy, and it is ubiquitous throughout our culture.[1]  Examples of it can be found in everything, from popular TV shows such as "House," (which I love) to bestselling books like The God Delusion.

A part of this popular view is the idea that religion has historically kept people in the dark - the darkness of superstition and ignorance - while science has progressively liberated society from that darkness.  For instance, people used to think lightning came from Zeus, until we discovered static electricity.  We believed disease was punishment from the gods, until we developed germ theory.  You get the idea.  Thus, most people think science and religion are either in conflict, or don't overlap, or both.  Christopher Hitchens gives a biting articulation of this view, in his book God Is Not Great:

...[Science] offers the promise of near-miraculous advances in healing, in energy, and in peaceful exchange between cultures.  Yet millions of people in all societies still prefer the myths of the cave and the tribe and the blood sacrifice [Religion].  The late Stephen Jay Gould generously wrote that science and religion belong to "non-overlapping magisteria."  They most certainly do not overlap, but this does not mean that they are not antagonistic.  Religion has run out of justifications.  Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important.[2]

The take away message from Hitchens and others is that if religion has anything left to say, it is irrelevant in the light of science.  It's important to notice that, within the view I've been describing, there is a tacit assertion that science is entirely objective and free of religious assumptions.  As we will see however, that is not exactly the case.

C.S. Lewis once wrote, "What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience."[3]  Lewis's point was that everyone holds certain metaphysical assumptions - beliefs we assume to be true without verification.  And those assumptions influence how we interpret the world.  This is certainly the case with religious believers.  It is equally true of scientists.

In his book, The Myth of Religious Neutrality, philosopher Roy Clouser argues that religious belief is necessarily among the assumptions that all people have.  According to Clouser, everyone believes in a self-existing entity - i.e. something that does not depend on anything else for its existence.  For some people, this entity is God.  For others, it is the universe itself, or simply energy.  Either way, we all hold to some assumption about what is 'ultimate' or 'prior' to everything else.  Clouser says this is what we mean by "the Divine."

Some scholars have criticized Clouser's definition of the divine, but it seems to agree with the view held by many philosophers - everyone from Aristotle, to Leibniz and Spinoza - that whatever metaphysical 'substance' is 'ultimate,' or exists 'on its own' is what we mean by "God."  If this is the case, then all scientists have an assumption of what is divine.  Whether they are like Newton and believe the divine entity is a personal God, or they are like Stephen Hawking and believe the divine entity is the embodiment of the laws of nature, their assumptions will likely influence the way they interpret the world (i.e. the theories they formulate to explain reality).

If Clouser's thesis is correct, then religious assumptions have played a major role in scientific theories from the very beginning.  In the next post, I will discuss how religious assumptions heavily influenced the theories of what many scholars say were the first people to think "scientifically" about the world - the ancient Greeks.
  



Endnotes


1.  I think the "Faith vs. Reason" dichotomy is a false one.  To see why, read my previous post here.

2.  Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Toronto: McCelland & Stewart, 2007) page 282.

3.  C.S. Lewis, Miracles (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1996) page 2.

Plato's Secret Music: Science and the Divine

According to a recent NPR report, historian and philosopher of science Jay Kennedy has discovered a hidden musical code embedded in the writings of Plato.  NPR is not the only news organization to report on Kennedy's findings.  However, the report concludes with some interesting comments from Kennedy, on what he thinks the implications are for science and religion.  His remarks provide the perfect opportunity for me to share some things I've been learning in my graduate studies.

In his research, Kennedy discovered there was a reference to music every twelfth line of Plato's manuscripts.  He also knew that ancient Greek music was based on a twelve-note scale, instead of the eight-note scale we use today.  Thus, he reasoned that the pattern found in Plato's writings was not merely a coincidence.  Rather, it was put there deliberately.

Music is mysterious and beautiful; it is also mathematical.  The Pythagoreans - followers of the philosopher-mystic-mathematician Pythagoras - believed math, and consequently music, held divine status.  They literally worshiped numbers.  Kennedy proposes that Plato was a closet Pythagorean, and that he wanted to convey this divine message to discerning readers by embedding a secret code in his writings.

The idea that math holds divine status is still around today.  Recall the comments from Stephen Hawking, discussed in my previous post, when he said, "What could define God [is thinking of God] as the embodiment of the laws of nature" (i.e. the mathematical laws of physics).  Judging from his comments, I suspect Hawking may be a modern day Pythagorean.  In fact, this view seems increasingly popular among those who want to reconcile science and religion, without allowing room for belief in a personal God.  Hence, Kennedy's remarks:

'Plato's philosophy shows us one way to combine science and religion,' Kennedy says.  'The culture wars we're having today — about evolution for example — see science and religion as two polarized opposites.  Plato's hidden philosophy shows us that he combined an emphasis on mathematics with an emphasis upon beauty, music, art and divinity.  The founder of western culture, in fact wanted us to combine science and religion.'

Kennedy sounds hopeful that promoting the Pythagorean view might help calm the war between evolutionists and creationists.  Given the politicized nature of the debate however, I can't see many creationists being soothed by the suggestion that God is simply a math equation.  Nevertheless, Kennedy's research touches on a larger body of historical facts, which, if taken seriously, could change the way we think about the relationship between science and religion.

In the next few posts, I will share some things I've been learning in my graduate studies about the historical interaction of science and religion - i.e. how science and religion have interacted.  It will surprise you.  It may even change your view on how science and religion should interact.

Stephen Hawking is Wrong on Religion

Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking is arguably the smartest man in the world right now.  His book, A Brief History of Time, has sold millions of copies and made him a veritable icon of scientific knowledge.  Despite all that, Hawking's view on the relationship between science and religion is unfortunately mistaken.


In a recent interview with Diane Sawyer, Hawking made some comments that implied science and religion are fundamentally opposed, and that science will win.  Here's a brief excerpt from the article:

[E]xploring the origins of time inevitably leads to questions about the ultimate origins of everything and what, if anything, is behind it all.

"What could define God [is thinking of God] as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God," Hawking told Sawyer. "They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible."

When Sawyer asked if there was a way to reconcile religion and science, Hawking said, "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works."

The line that separates science from religion is not as clear as Hawking's comments make it seem.  Here's why:  scientific knowledge depends entirely upon reason.  But, as it turns out, reason cannot be explained scientifically.  Any attempt to do so only ends up defeating itself.

As Hawking correctly pointed out, science is based on observation and reason.  No scientific theory is formed without the employment of human reasoning.  Thus, the validity of reason is crucial to the practice of science.   Now, if it turned out that we had good reasons to suspect human reasoning is unreliable, then the validity of science would be in question; since the validity of science is dependent on the validity of human reasoning.  C.S. Lewis made this same point in his book Miracles, and then took it a step further:

All possible knowledge, then, depends on the validity of reasoning....Unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true.  It follows that no account of the universe can be true unless that account leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real insight.  A theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid, would be utterly out of court.  For that theory would itself have been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of course, be itself demolished.[1]

Lewis' point is this:  for any scientific theory, if that theory calls into question the validity of human reasoning, then the theory fails; because that same theory will involve the use of reason.  And if we can't trust reason, then we can't trust the theory.  Thus, the theory will have defeated itself.

It is clear from the interview that Hawking believes science has shown God's existence is "most impossible," because the universe is so big, and human life so apparently insignificant.  In other words, for Hawking, a scientific view of the world will be atheistic.  However, if science really entails the belief that God's existence is "most impossible," as Hawking says, then we have reason to doubt the validity of human reasoning, and therefore reason to doubt Hawking's claim.

If there is no God, then our reasoning abilities are the result of some material process of nature - such as Darwinian evolution.  In other words, if God does not exist, then our rational faculties were most certainly built through irrational means.  This is a problem for the following reason:  whenever we suspect that a person's belief is not based on reason, but instead is based on some material or irrational process, we reject his belief as unjustified.

For instance, when people say things like, "You only think this is the best sandwich you've ever had because you're so hungry," or "She believes I am her son because she has Alzheimer's," or "You only believe in God because it makes you feel safe," they are rejecting a particular belief because they suspect it is based on material/irrational processes - hunger, brain deterioration, a feeling of safety.  In other words, most people would agree that if a belief is based on something irrational, then the belief is unjustified.  If Hawking's view of the universe is correct however, then this is not only true of the particular beliefs just mentioned, it is true of all our beliefs, including Hawking's!

If there is no God, and Darwinian evolution is true, then human reason came about through a blind irrational process of nature that simply preserves things that give organisms a better chance of surviving and reproducing.  If that is the case, then human reason is invalid.  Think about it.  If you asked someone why they believe the earth is round, and they answered, "because it will help me to stay alive and produce more offspring than my competitors" you would say their belief was unjustified.  If Hawking's view of the universe is correct, then any belief we may hold - our rational process in its entirety - is ultimately based on its ability to help us survive and produce more offspring.  This calls into question the validity of all human reasoning.  But, as we established earlier, scientific theories depend on reasoning.  If we can't trust human reasoning, then we can't believe any scientific theory.  Thus, if Hawking's view is correct, then we should doubt it.  His view defeats itself.[2]

If science cannot adequately explain human reason - lest it undercut its own validity - then what is left as an explanation?  It will be some view that leaves open the possibility of the supernatural - some view that doesn't see God's existence as "most impossible."  Religion then becomes a valid option.  Science and religion are not fundamentally opposed.  In fact, they need each other.



Endnotes


1.  C.S. Lewis, Miracles (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1996) pages 21-22.

2.  For an in depth treatment of this argument, see Alvin Plantinga's "Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism," in his book Warrant and Proper Function.