I’ll just direct you to this link: vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/april/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060406_xxi-wyd_en.html
Care to explain how that makes sense?
That certainly hasn’t been demonstrated. Ever.
It explains things including why we are here, what is our purpose, etc.
Easy to say when you already reject the existence of God.
Right. Fortunately it’s not merely an “if”, but an “is”.
That is your prerogative. I am sure you have some reason for it, but until you share those reasons, I am not in the position to evaluate them. If you had no direct revelation then you probably base in on the bible written by humans, or the church/magisterium comprised by humans, or something else. Since all these - including the existence of the holy spirit - are dependent on the opinion of fallible humans I see no reason to trust them.
I am sure you do not… but the question is: **WHY **don’t you? Probably because you find the evidence unsatisfactory. Well, I see no evidence for God. The only “evidence” is hearsay.
His answer indicated that he did not understand my argument. Your basic premise was that deterministic hardware cannot **in principle **exhibit “free behavior”. I proved that this principle is incorrect. On the same deterministic hardware using the same “and” or “or” gates in the same manner you cannot determine if a word-processor is being executed or spreadsheet, or anything else. The working of the hardware does NOT determine the working of software (or wetware). You forgot to specify what do you mean by the phrase “freedom of thought”.
Nonsense. Magic - by definition is some non-natural method. You may assert that the natural explanation is deficient for some reason, but you cannot say that it is “magic”, if you wish to be consistent in rationality. You assert that God requires no explanation - so where is the difference? At least the existence of the universe can be demonstrated, while God’s existence is pure speculation. The sequence of explanations must stop somewhere, there can be no infinite descent.
Very good. Now we are back to the topic of the thread: “can God’s existence be demonstrated by purely rational grounds, without relying on faith or revelation of any kind”?
I can counter it by expressing the same sentiment about theism. The whole creation story is sheer mythology.
One of these days I would like to see a method of how to demonstrate the lack of something. Most atheists find the supporting evidence for God’s existence unsatisfactory, and therefore they do not believe. Now you may say that they are all imbeciles (“A fool says in his heart: there is no God”), but that is not much of an argument. There are atheists who are most definitely NOT fools, who have a very respectable intelligence, and STILL find the evidence unconvincing.
Explanation requires to show the “HOW”, not the alleged “why”. “Why” did a potter create that pot is his business, irrelevant to others. “How” did he create it - is important.
Even if there is God, it does not follow that there ever was a “revelation”. How do you prove that the biblical text was a revelation, and not just some human concoction?
Good that we can agree on this. It baffles me when some assert otherwise.
I would suggest that you read Feser’s articles on this:
No informed Catholic would argue otherwise. The message of the creation story is not how the world was made, but that the world was made by God. It uses the familiar cosmology of its time to express this message. As Pope John Paul II reminded us, “the scriptures do not tell us how the heavens go, but how to go to heaven.”
'Let there be light.’ See also:
So then if society interacts with a lump of material, a rock for instance,
Interesting that the evidence for the existence of the universe depends on your rational mind, yet you cannot explain the impetus for, and the process by which, you came into existence. “My parents had sex” is no explanation whatsoever, as you are unique. If “two people having sex” explains your existence, there would be billions of you, and there are not.
Oh, I understood the argument just fine thank you, which is likely the reason you haven’t typed a single word to directly respond to it.
You are correct that merely relying on the physical configuration of the hardware says nothing about the executed results because those results depend entirely upon the (name removed by moderator)utted information which the hardware cannot distinguish, even though the results are distinct. The indeterminism is added by the ostensibly free agent manipulating the (name removed by moderator)ut device, ergo that the hardware is indiscriminate with regard to results does not mean the hardware is indeterministic. The results are at the discretion of the agent (name removed by moderator)utting the selection and the hardware designers who intentionally designed the open ended attributes of the electronic architecture.
Yes, but again you are hiding your lack of argument behind an ambiguous term - in this case “environment.” What you mean is isolating a human being from an environment rich with other personalities and intelligent agents will result in a deterioration of intelligence and personality. A human being living among rocks will certainly be less intelligent and personable than one raised by wolves or in a human community replete with intelligent moral agents.
This is question begging, clearly. The uniquely human form of social interaction that leads to authentic intelligence may, in fact, only be possible because of the intelligence of “immaterial” souls. That immaterial intelligence may be embedded, imparted or transferred or otherwise “called out of” the child through the social interaction, meaning that if the child did not possess the immaterial soul to begin with the intelligence could not arise. Dogs do not become as intelligent as humans merely by hanging out with them.
Partial agreement is better than none.
Sorry, I am interested in **your **views, not Feser’s. If he ever logs on to the system and presents his views directly, not by some long-winded blog, I will be interested in reading them. If you would care to elucidate your position, and quote a few supporting sentences (with a link, of course) that would be fine. But I read too many of his blogs which were unworthy to read to go on a wild-goose chase.
I wish it did. But that is a different topic.
It’s about whether or not it is reasonable to doubt God’s existence. I suppose I would grant that it could be reasonable to doubt, reason can be used, but certainly it’s not the direction or end that reason will lead you to.
We can know God’s existence through the material world. But if you a priori reject everything that is not scientifically verifiable, of course you have no chance at accepting God’s existence. What is yet to be demonstrated is that everything that exists is subject to the scientific method.
Life isn’t only about the “how”.
Very true. Although it does seem probable and fitting that there would be a revelation.
The love of the saints. That’s what every proof (miracles) ultimately comes down to, whether the proof is historical (are they credible?) or through beauty (what they have given us or shown in their lives). But in the end, it is the only truly reasonable option for humanity to accept.
Yes, and I see a parallel here with the general confusion about whether computers ‘think’ or ‘understand’. Of course they do not. A computer just processes (name removed by moderator)ut according to certain algorithms that are programmed, and it produces an output. However, it does not in any way understand what it is doing or what the output means. A computer cannot even self-reflect and check if its output is right. Instead of being programmed to calculate 9 x 7 = 63, a computer could just as easily be programmed to calculate 9 x 7 = 126, also obeying the laws of physics. It would not know the difference. The output of computers is only meaningful to humans, not to computers. The functioning of computers is wholly dependent on human rationality – even if they are induced to ‘learn’ and in the process to create output ‘on their own’ – since they are programmed by humans according to the rules of logic and reason that these apply.
What about learning algorithms, which change and evolve? Humans do the same. We have very few in-born capabilities, and we learn to “understand” the world as we progress.
What is “understanding”? If you perform a Turing-test, and the “other party” exhibits a behavior which we would consider to be “understanding” with a human partner, then on what grounds would you deny “its” ability to understand? If you ask the same question twice with different wording, and the second time the reply is: “but I just answered it”, then it **understood **that there was no significant difference in the wording. And that is what we call “understanding” - to separate the **significant **difference from the **insignificant **one.
This is true, and it shows that “deterministic” hardware can produce results contrary to the laws of physics. As such you just proved that the deterministic brain can create a “free though”, independent from the hardware. And children can be trained to produce such results.
That is a very weak argument. Children learn from the teachers, their parents and from the environment, but no one says that their “seeming” understanding is just programmed by the external factors. The question of “nature” vs. “nurture” cannot be decided in a general sense, both are needed in human (and other) development.
Watson is still extremely “primitive” in its algorithms. Human children do not exhibit any kind of “intelligence” for quite a long time in their early ages. No wonder that they are “trained” and not “educated” during those years.
The problem here is that you are relying on a rather superficial view of human responses. When first relating to another person, the way they respond and the way you read their responses will resemble the manner in which a Turing-competent computer might respond, but the similarity will end as soon as you spend a great deal of time with another person - years or decades.
How would you know that? The Turing test does not limit the time to any specific value. It merely says that as long as the responses are indistinguishable from the responses of a “known” human partner, it is unreasonable to deny that the “other party” (may be a human or a computer!) also has understanding. That is why I ask the fundamental question: “what IS understanding”? You do not have access to the “black box” representing the other entity (human? computer?), you only have access to the responses. Using the immortal analogy of Forrest Gump: “stupid is as stupid does” - which is translated into: “understanding is as understanding does”.
Do not limit your thoughts to the current, very limited AI of Watson or other artificial intelligence programs. You mention “imitation”, which is the crucial point of the question: “where does imitation” or “emulation” end and “real” understanding begin? A rather clumsy analogy would be: “birds can fly, by slapping their wings. Humans can fly by using artificial means, like airplanes.” There is a difference in the method, but both achieve “flying”.
The problem with your last claim is that you don’t know whether a lobotomy actually robs them of their personhood, or only that it robs them of the tools with which to express their personhood. You, personally, could not draw such a conclusion without actually having a lobotomy and then reverting back to personhood to describe what it is you did lose. Unfortunately, if your personhood were, indeed, lost, how would you as a person be aware of that loss?
Well, that all depends on what you are willing to allow to qualify as “flying.” If “flying” becomes defined a la Turing as “simply leaving the ground,” then I am flying when I ballon about in my tutu. Basically, that is what Turing has done by redefining thinking to mean “giving the appearance of thinking.”
A while ago I heard an interesting story on NPR in their science hour. There is an annual meeting on artificial intelligence and the Turing test, where they have judges in a blind test who have to decide if they are having a conversation with a human person or a computer. In 2008 or 2009 for the first time 25 % of the judges where fooled by a computer, dangerously close to the threshold of 30 % that Turing had proposed (the discussion on NPR then also was, why not 50 or 51 % ?).
Yes, thank you, it was very nice.
When you have time, I will be interested in your answers to those specific questions, but for the time being, let’s consider the question of understanding.The judge did his job well, but it is premature to “bury” the computers. One of the problems we need to consider is that the human learning process is much more complicated then just participating in conversations and reading books. The overwhelming majority of information we process comes from all the senses - which the computers lack - for the time being. Not to mention that humans spend many years to accumulate the very small amount of knowledge they exhibit at the age of 5 or 6. No one would blame someone on the tropics who has never experienced “snow” to be ignorant of about questions concerning snow. And you can “fool” a simple, dumb person with a non-sequitur remark. Does that make him less human? All the judges proved that the computer was still too “dumb” to pass as a human.
