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AIList Digest Volume 8 Issue 066
AIList Digest Friday, 26 Aug 1988 Volume 8 : Issue 66
Religion:
The Godless Assumption
The Ignorant assumption
backward path and religions
Why Bruno was burned
Science vs. 'Religion' -- not all religions have a problem
Linking Cogsci and Religion
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Date: Thu, 25 Aug 88 09:23:43 HOE
From: ALFONSEC%EMDCCI11.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
Subject: The Godless Assumption
In a previous article, John McCarthy says:
> Burning Giordano Bruno presents problems for many religions that Hiroshima
> doesn't present for science. Science doesn't claim that scientific
> discoveries can't be used in war.
Isaac Asimov (in "The sin of the scientist") contends that Science knew
sin when the first product was developed that could be used ONLY in war.
If I recall correctly, this product was mustard-gas (used in WWI).
> A religion that claimed that the Catholic Church was protected
> from doing evil by God, that the Catholic Church was responsible
> for the killing of Bruno and that killing Bruno was a crime
> have problems.
The Catholic Church never claimed that its members (whatever their
hyerarchy level) were protected from doing evil. The "infallibility
of the pope" has nothing to do with that. It affects not deeds, but
sayings, and only very special ones (only twice in the last 150 years).
In a previous article, sas@BBN.COM says:
> To my knowledge there is no scientific litmus test which can determine
> the good or evil of a particular thought of action.
True. From premises in the indicative mode ("this is so") you can never
deduce a conclusion in the imperative ("you shall do so"). You need at
least a premise in the imperative (i.e. a moral axiom).
In a previous article, Surya M Mantha says:
>In a previous article, ALFONSEC@EMDCCI11.BITNET writes:
>>
>>burned in Hiroshima in 1945. In actual fact, neither Religion nor Science
>>are discredited because of that, only people who do things can be discredited
>>by them. Theories are discredited by negative evidence or by reason.
>>
> Not surprising!! This line of reasoning I mean. It is one that is
>mostly commonly used to defend institutions that are inherently unjust
>undemocratic and intolerant. The blame always lies with "people". The
>institution itself ( be it "organized religion", "socialism", "state
>capitalism") is beyond reproach. Afterall, it does not owe its existence
>to man does it?
I was not defending institutions. Religion and Science are not
institutions. A Church or a University are. Institutions are made out of
people. If people can be blamed, obviously the institutions can, too.
I was not even attacking people. Who am I to pass judgment on people
who lived at a place, a time, an environment, and who had a background
very different from mine?
Finally, in a previous article, Thomas Grossi says:
>In a previous article, ALFONSEC@EMDCCI11.BITNET writes:
>> .... If Religion is discredited because Giordano Bruno was burnt at
>> the stake in 1600, then Science is discredited because 120,000 people were
>> burned in Hiroshima in 1945.
>No, World Politics is discredited: the bomb was dropped for political reasons,
>not scientific ones. Science provided the means, as it did (in a certain
>sense) for Religion as well.
Agreed. But it was also World Politics that was discredited when
Bruno was burnt. There was a lots of politics involved in that.
M. Alfonseca
(Usual disclaimer)
------------------------------
Date: 23 Aug 88 09:51:04 GMT
From: mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!gilbert@uunet.uu.net (Gilbert
Cockton)
Subject: Re: The Ignorant assumption
In reply to two separate comments from Marvin Minsky in comp.ai.digest
>Yes, enough to justify what those who "knew" that they were right did
>to Bruno, Galileo, Joan, and countless other such victims.
>More generally, let's see more learning from the past.
Take care when there are trained historians on the net :-)
It is not beliefs that kill, but the power to act on them. Where
"scientists" have had power, notably in Nazi Germany and Stalinist
Russia, they have killed to suppress heresy, just as the religious
leaders of pre-modern Europe killed the early scientists to put down
particularly annoying heresies. Of course, you will say, these people
in Germany and Russia were not scientists. As a trained historian, it
is enough for me that they called themselves scientists, just as the
Inquisition were undoubtedly Christian. But as a historian, I would
exercise great caution in extending the facts of a previous time into
the present. One thing one can learn from the past is that this went
out of fashion years ago :-)
The way to analyse what a scientist or Christian would do now, given
the absolute power enjoyed by the Inquisition, is to examine their
beliefs. Neither group are democrats, nor would they respect many
existing freedoms. Note that I am talking of roles of science and
religion. As these people live in democracies, the chances are that
the values of the wider society will repress the totalitarian
instincts of their role-specific formal belief systems. Do not take
this analysis personally. The way to attack my argument is to
demonstrate that scientific or christian AUTHORITY are compatible with a
liberal democracy.
Any scientist who believes in a society regulated by scientific reason
(which would rule out the need for consultative subjective democracy)
would, given the power, introduce gulags, mental hospitals and other
devices for the control of the irrational and the heretical.
If anyone finds this unreasonable, consider how scientists wield power
when they do have it in academic organisations and funding bodies.
Admittedly they only murder rival research rather than rival
researchers. Stakes don't have to be made from wood :-<
P.S. Sure, move this discussion somewhere else :-)
--
Gilbert Cockton, Department of Computing Science, The University, Glasgow
gilbert@uk.ac.glasgow.cs <europe>!ukc!glasgow!gilbert
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 88 14:23 N
From: LEO%BGERUG51.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: backward path and religions
In Pattern Recognition, an intelligent system with a backward path in his
reasoning, can be used to try to find the appearance of a certain known
pattern in an input-signal. The system will probably always see this
required pattern if it tries hard enough, even if it is not there. On the
other hand, the Backward Path is a very usefull tool in the recognition of
patterns, in the presence of noise and defects. After forward-backward
resonance, eliminating the noise and correcting the defects, the system can
recall the complete pattern. When using this system in a real-world
environment, how and/or when can we know that the pattern recognition is
false? How are human or animal brains dealing with this problem? (This is
almost a discussion like subjective versus objective.)
Secondly, consider a self-learning, self-organizing neural netwerk.
Furthermore, suppose this system is searching for answers to questions in a
field from which it has almost no knowledge. In this case, the system might
ask for things that it can never find. But, because of the self-learning,
self-organizing character, it will build answers, imaginary ones, if it
keeps asking long enough. To my opinion, this is the essence of religions
and superstitions. I presume that the number of layers or the 'distance'
between the sense perception and the abstract thinking level is to big.
Hence, when we have to deal with an extensive neural network, like the
human brain, that is working far beneath its capabilities, it will be able
to create imaginary 'objects' and speculations.
I think that we can also put this feature in an other perspective. Animals
with small brains are able to make a distinction between good and bad
circumstances. A lot of animals with greater brains are able to make a
distinction within the good circumstances, and chose a leader : the best.
Humans can go further : they are able to create a leader or leaders, only
excisting in there thoughts.
If we would be able to build large neural networks, with these self-
learning and self-organizing features, what is then the influence of the
structure of this system to these problems? How can we avoid or use them?
Building models or making suppositions is a very important part of
intelligence, but how can we control an AI-system in this, when we are only
able to control the dimensions of the system and the features of the basic
parts, the neurons?
I don't want to insult religious people, or being the cause of a discussion
about religion or believing. I should only appreciate it, if somebody,
having a more clear vieuw or some good idea's about these subjects, should
reply...
L. Vercauteren
AI-section Automatic Control Laboratory
State University of Ghent, Belgium
e-mail LEO@BGERUG51.BITNET
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 88 17:17 PST
From: HEARNE%wwu.edu@RELAY.CS.NET
Subject: Why Bruno was burned
For heaven's sake, Bruno was burned for butting up against
established authority.
Jim Hearne,
Computer Science Department,
Western Washington University,
Bellingham Washington
------------------------------
Date: 25 Aug 88 03:33:56 GMT
From: voder!pyramid!cbmvax!snark!eric@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (Eric S.
Raymond)
Subject: Science vs. 'Religion' -- not all religions have a problem
Perhaps Dr. Minsky's remarks were intemperate. But the responses of his
opponents make the error of identifying 'religion' with one particular
*style* of religion, the monotheist-dualist-antimaterialist kind that
happens to dominate Western culture.
Within the context of the Judaism and the two most important Zoroastrian-
influenced religions (Christianity and Islam) it is essentially correct
to describe 'religion' as either a) opposed to science, or b) self-consciously
about things held to be metaphysically 'beyond' scientific inquiry.
These religions depend for critical parts of their belief systems on the
historicity of various 'miraculous' occurences, and so must respond in one
of the above two ways to science's claims to the even *potential* of
universal explanatory power through the notion of unbreachable 'natural law'.
However, there are other kinds of 'religion' (underrepresented in this culture
at present) for which none of this is an issue. Some non-theistic varieties
of Buddhism, for example, are nearly pure psychological schemata with little
or nothing to say about cosmology (Zen is perhaps the best-known of these).
There are many other forms (collectively called 'mystery religions') in which
the religion is not at all concerned with what is 'true' in a physical-
confirmation sense, only what is mythopoetically effective for inducing certain
useful states of consciousness.
To people involved in the shared *experience* of a mystery religion or Zen-like
transformative mysticism, the whole science-vs.-'religion' controversy can seem
just plain irrelevant to what they're doing.
Someone operating from this stance might say: "The gods (or the Vedanta, or the
Logos, or whatever) are powerful in human minds -- who cares if they 'exist'
in a material sense or not?" At least one great Western thinker -- Carl Jung --
would have agreed. Religions come and go, but the archetypes are with us
always.
I bring all this up to point out that the 'religion-vs.-science' debate is a
good deal more parochial and culture-bound than either of the traditional sides
in it recognizes -- that scientists who get drawn into it often implicitly
accept the (usually Christian-inculcated) premise that the validity of a
religion hangs on its cosmological, historical and eschatological claims.
It doesn't have to be that way. I, for example, can testify from ten years
of experience that it is sanely possible to be both a hard-headed materialist
and an ecstatic mystic; both a philosophical atheist and an experiential
polytheist.
Further discussion (if any), however, should take place in talk.religion.misc,
and I have directed followups there.
--
Eric S. Raymond (the mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews)
UUCP: ..!{uunet,att,rutgers!vu-vlsi}!snark!eric @nets: eric@snark.UUCP
Post: 22 South Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355 Phone: (215)-296-5718
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 88 07:33 EST
From: Thomson Kuhn <KUHN@wharton.upenn.edu>
Subject: Linking Cogsci and Religion
Fo an incredibly tight linking of cognitive science and religion see a book
by Julian Jaynes called, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of
the Bicameral Mind.
Thomson Kuhn
The Wharton School
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End of AIList Digest
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