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AIList Digest Volume 8 Issue 072
AIList Digest Tuesday, 30 Aug 1988 Volume 8 : Issue 72
Religion:
Science, lawfulness, a (the?) god
Backward path and religions
Not Quite Re: The Ignorant Assumption
The Ignorant assumption
Giordano Bruno
God and the Universe
Pseudo-science strikes again!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 26 Aug 88 02:22:02 GMT
From: proxftl!bill@bikini.cis.ufl.edu (T. William Wells)
Reply-to: proxftl!bill@bikini.cis.ufl.edu (T. William Wells)
Subject: Re: science, lawfulness, a (the?) god
In a previous article, YLIKOSKI@FINFUN.BITNET writes:
: In AIList Digest V8 #54, T. Michael O'Leary <HI.OLeary@MCC.COM>
: presents the following quotation (without mentioning who originally
: wrote it):
: > >Science, though not scientists (unfortunately), rejects the
: > >validity of religion: it requires that reality is in some sense
: > >utterly lawful, and that the unlawful, i.e. god, has no place.
I did.
: I would say that a God needs not be unlawful. A counterexample of
: some kind could be a line by Einstein: I think he said that the
: regularity of the structure of the universe reflects an intellect. (I
: cannot remember the exact form of the quotation, but I think the idea
: was this.)
"Lawful" does not mean "following, by choice, law", rather, it
means: "constrained by law". However, religion posits "god" or
"the absolute" or what have you as that which is beyond, above,
determines, flouts, or whatever adjective you like, natural law.
This is essential to religion.
And the "quotation" from Einstein does not serve as a
counterexample; it is just a restatement of the argument from
design. This argument goes: "the universe appears to have been
designed, therefore there was a designer. I shall call it god."
How silly! In its refined form, this argument posits god as a
"primary cause": this makes god "beyond" natural law, as an
explanation for natural law. It is trivially refuted by pointing
out that it begs the question. (If the universe requires a
cause, why shouldn't god require a cause? And if not, why
presume god anyway?)
---
While I am wasting bandwidth religion-trashing, I'll share some
E-mail I received the other day. I will include the text of it
here, but I am stripping out the identifying marks so as to not
further embarrass the author.
: You are offbase in your premise. Religion (for lack of a much better term)
: is *not* based on that which is unknowable. It is simply that it is based
: on revealed knowlede/information from God.
Note the confusion in this individual: he talks about "revealed
knowledge" as if it had some relationship to knowledge; however,
there is *no* relationship. By what means do I distinguish this
"revealed knowledge" from an LSD overdose? If I am to depend
wholly on divine revalation, then I know *nothing*. If not, then
I must reject "revealed knowledge" in favor of evidence. This is
all elementary philosophy, to which religion seems to have
blinded that author.
: This knowlede transcends human
: intellect and is not deducible via human intellect.
This translates to: "this knowledge is unknowable".
: This should not present a
: problem for you as Quantuum Mechanics has demonstrated that the Universe does
: not operate via a human understandable system of logic.
And this is simple ignorance. Not to mention self-contradictory.
---
This individual has managed to illustrate in one very short note
*exactly* why religion has *no* place in scientific discussion:
the use of religion perverts reasoning by substituting "revealed
knowledge" for evidence, requires the unknowable as part of
reasoning, and uses ignorance as its justification.
---
Bill
novavax!proxftl!bill
------------------------------
Date: 26 Aug 88 10:20:30 GMT
From: quintus!ok@Sun.COM (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Reply-to: quintus!ok@Sun.COM (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Subject: Re: backward path and religions
In article <19880826025229.6.NICK@HOWARD-JOHNSONS.LCS.MIT.EDU>
LEO@BGERUG51.BITNET writes:
>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 too big.
I'm canny enough not to ask what a "self-learning" system is ...
"Building imaginary answers" sounds like hypothesis formation in general.
This is the essence of science! Or rather, science = making up stories
+ trying to knock down other people's stories.
Does anyone seriously suppose that the number of layers between sense
perceptions and SuperString theory is small? A range of diseases was
attributed to "filterable viruses" -- "virus" just being a word meaning
"poison, venom" -- on what really amounted to a stubborn faith that the
germ theory of disease could be extended beyond the range of sense data
years before viruses were "observed". Popular beliefs about the origins
of life are based on a very long series of inferences (and what is more,
as Cairns-Smith points out, are quite incompatible with the known
behaviour of the chemicals in question).
There is a serious illusion in talking about modern science: we read
instruments at least as much through theories as through our eyes, and
mistake remote inferences "5 volts across these terminals" for sense
data.
To be iconoclastic, I'd like to suggest that the main difference between
societies in which science dominates and ones in which superstition
dominates is that the former have a sufficient surplus that they can
AFFORD to check their hypotheses. In society X, there are such large
surpluses that the society can afford to force thousands of farmers out
of business in the interests of fighting inflation. Society X can afford
a lot of agricultural experiments. In society Y, there are no surpluses,
so farmer Z continues to put offerings in the spirit-house, because if he
tested his belief (by not making offerings) and he was wrong, it would
mean disaster. Society Y is not going to do much science.
To put it bluntly, if the risk from examining a practice is greater than
the risk from continuing it, it is _RATIONAL_ not to examine it. This is
the kind of thing that ethological and anthropological studies should be
able to illuminate: when will an animal explore new territory as opposed
to staying in its home range (how does the animal's "knowledge" of the
availability of food in the home range affect this), is there a detectable
relationship between the "rigidity" of a society and its surpluses?
I don't think that neural nets as such have anything to do with the case.
------------------------------
Date: Fri Aug 26 09:18:59 EDT 1988
From: sas@BBN.COM
Subject: Not Quite Re: The Ignorant Assumption
Gilbert Cockton's comment:
Admittedly they only murder rival research rather than rival
researchers. Stakes don't have to be made from wood :-<
reminded me of a story I read in the letters column of Sky and
Telescope last year.
Apparently, one powerful researcher was dead set against funding a
particular objective lens design and issued a statement that, not only
would he fight funding for the lens, but that he would fight funding
to any individual who so much as put in a good word for it.
Interestingly, Charles Babbage, felt this was a bit unfair and that a
good design shouldn't be put down so arbitrarily and made his
sentiments known. Sure enough, retribution was swift and funding for
the Analytical Engine was cut off.
Then again, this sort of thing goes on all the time ....
Seth
------------------------------
Date: 27 Aug 88 01:30:13 GMT
From: garth!smryan@unix.sri.com (Steven Ryan)
Subject: Re: The Ignorant assumption
>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.
I feel you have made the distinction between Christians and Christianity
implicitly, and I wish to make it explicit.
The ideals of Christianity, tolerance, mercy, and love, would make an
excellent system. Western Christians, on the other hand, still tend toward
out German (cultural) ancestors. (I don't know about Eastern Christians.)
I do take issue that Christians are held in checked by the wider society. In
this country Christians are the majority: it is eternal internal conflicts
between the sects that holds things in checks.
------------------------------
Date: 28 Aug 88 01:11:18 GMT
From: pluto%beowulf@ucsd.edu (Mark E. P. Plutowski)
Reply-to: pluto%beowulf@ucsd.edu (Mark E. P. Plutowski)
Subject: Re: backward path and religions
In a previous article, LEO@BGERUG51.BITNET writes:
>
>In Pattern Recognition, an intelligent system with a backward path...
>...can be used to try to find the appearance of a certain known
>pattern in an input-signal...
>
>Secondly, consider a self-learning, self-organizing neural netwerk.
>Furthermore, suppose this system is searching for answers to questions
>...[of] which it has almost no knowledge.
>...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.
A nice argument, i concur in spirit ;-}.
However, it begged a comment regarding what it means to be an
_imaginary answer_. Not to kick off
a long discussion about what it means to be imaginary, let me present
my point up front. Loosely stated:
Our answers come out of conscious thought,
otherwise they would be impossible to record or communicate.
But this conscious thought is driven by unconscious motivations,
and wholistic formulations, which may or may not fit into the
serial symbolic interface required to communicate with the rest
of the world.
{Given a neural network coupled to a symbolic interface,
which is used to explain the actions of the network:
the neural net perceives the optimum, and behaves in a way
that exploits this perception. The symbolic interface
tries to explain this behavior as it is able. Sometimes
it's capabilities are sufficient, sometimes, however, the
networks behavior falls into no neat semantic category, other
than it "got the desired results," ie, it perceived the optimum.}
>From our unconscious thought, feelings, hunches, and intuition are
expressed consciously as "common sense" "mathematically interesting" or
"symmetrical" "elegant" and "beautiful." These concepts may be
"felt" in a way uncommunicatable to others in a rational fashion.
(Although this individual may indeed be perceiving a profound truth,
since it is unscientific in nature, it is given a low certainty factor
by the rest of the population.) This individual uses
this perception to motivate the discovery of provable truths which can
be written in a form communicatable to the general population.
Then, it becomes science. Until then, it remains only personal belief,
an imagination of what is possible.
Aside: Einstein believed that imagination was the key to _his_
brand of science, as opposed to the 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration
mix which was apparently the motivation of Edison's brand of science.
P.S. thanks to the author of the posting i quoted above, for adeptly
bringing this argument back to AI.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Plutowski INTERNET: pluto%cs@ucsd.edu
Department of Computer Science, C-024 pluto@beowulf.ucsd.edu
University of California, San Diego BITNET: pluto@ucsd.bitnet
La Jolla, California 92093 UNIX: {...}!sdcsvax!pluto
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"it was as small as the hope in a dead man's eyes." (radio ad)
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 88 13:03 O
From: Antti Ylikoski tel +358 0 457 2704
<YLIKOSKI%FINFUN.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Giordano Bruno
The case of Giordiano Bruno has occurred several times in AIList. I
hope that the readers of AIList forgive me that I give some
information involving Bruno and his philosophy even if this is outside
the real scope of AIList.
Giordano Bruno lived from 1548 to 1600.
According to him, the space is infinite and contains innumerable solar
systems where there can be various kinds of beings, possibly even more
developed than humans. The boundless, eternal and immutable universe
is the only thing that exists; its soul, the force which has an effect
in everything that there is, is the god. Its elementary parts, which
can be combined and separated but not come into existence or vanish,
are monads, which are simultaneously spiritual and material. Even the
human soul is an indestructible monad. Studying the laws of the
universe is the most valuable kind of service of the god that there
is.
It is easy to understand that the contemporaries of Bruno formed the
opinion that from the point of view of Christianity, Bruno was a
heretic. They believed, and they believed that they had very good
reasons to believe, that the soul of a heretic is condemned to the
hell, which means eternal torture; which is even worse, a heretic
tends to make others to commit heresy. (Bruno taught in universities
in France, Germany and Great Britain.)
With the abovementioned background in mind, the very strong reaction
of those who condemned Bruno might be more understandable. Moreover,
I would estimate that very few readers of the AIList would accept
Bruno's theories - pantheism and the monad theory are probably not
very popular nowadays.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Antti Ylikoski
Helsinki University of Technology
Digital Systems Laboratory
Otakaari 5 A
SF-02150 Espoo, Finland
tel : +358 0 451 2176
YLIKOSKI@FINFUN (BITNET)
OPMVAX::YLIKOSKI (DECnet)
mcvax!hutds!ayl (UUCP)
This sentence is false with probability 0.5.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 88 16:35:30 PST
From: Stephen Smoliar <smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu>
Subject: God and the Universe
Andy Ylikoski made reference to a remark which he attributed to Einstein to
the effect that "the regularity of the structure of the universe reflects an
intellect." I believe that about a year ago a book was published entitled
THE BLIND WATCHMAKER which presents a rather powerful counter-argument to
this assertion.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 88 16:44:28 PST
From: Stephen Smoliar <smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu>
Subject: Pseudo-science strikes again!
Thomson Kuhn cited Julian Jaynes' THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN
OF THE BICAMERAL MIND for "an incredibly tight linking of cognitive science
and religion." I don't want to sound harsh; but I take a dim view of any
use of the word "science" when the only empirical evidence an author can offer
comes from introspection while under the influence of hallucinatory drugs.
Jaynes certainly provided some imaginative literary criticism with regard to
Homer (although he remains vastly inferior to Albert B. Lord); but to assume
that anything he has done can be related to cognitive science without first
seeking out more substantive evidence is a sign of the sort of naivete which
science has always tried to transcend.
------------------------------
End of AIList Digest
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