Strong AI Thesis

Photo: fd / John Watson

Strong AI Thesis

A term coined by American philosopher John Searle (born 1931), representing the hypothesis that artificial intelligence possesses actual consciousness like that of a human being.

The idea is expressed as follows:

The appropriately programmed digital computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the sense that human beings have minds”

John Searle, 1998 in Dennett, Damiel C. Consciousness Explained, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1991 p. 435.

It should be noted, however, that Searle rejects the Strong AI Thesis. He believes that computer intelligence simulates but doesn’t possess real thought, a position called “Weak AI.”

Others believe that Strong AI isn’t too far-fetched when we consider that human beings are, at least in part, composed of electrochemical interactions.

If strong AI is true, we can take it down to the simplest levels and argue that even your refrigerator, toaster or iPod have some kind of unique electro-organizational consciousness that would distinguish them from, say, a pile of rocks.

» Artificial Intelligence (AI), Asimov (Isaac), Data (Commander), Hal 9000, Panpsychism

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Vanaprashta

Vashist Forest 2

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Vanaprashta (Skt: ‘home in the forest or woods’)

In traditional Hinduism this is the third asrama (Vedic stage of life) in which the male, having fulfilled his matrimonial dharma as a householder, generally retreats to the forest to study the deeper meaning of sacred texts and become adept at meditation.

A difficult path to follow, especially today, within the changing face of Hinduism its contemporary translation is more a psychosocial rather than geographical withdrawal–that is, the Hindu meditator, whether he be male or female, may withdraw into the deeper aspects of the psyche (and perhaps beyond) without necessarily leaving the household as in former times.

This shift is made evident in Pauline Kolenda’s ethnographic study conducted in Khalapur, where she notes:

Jivan Mal was a Gandhian. Like Gandhi, he tried to live his life according to the four ashramas, and when we knew him, he was in the third ashrama; he was a vanaprashta one who had retired from ordinary life to devote himself to religion. He explained that he and his wife were “like brother and sister”; he had given up sexual activity. Consistent with his religiosity and his Gandhianism was his strict vegetarian diet, but inconsistent with his Gandhianism was his inability to consort with untouchables, to be near them or to take food or drink from them or with them.

Source » Pauline Kolenda, “Micro-Ideology and Micro-Utopia in Khalapur: Changes in the Discourse on Caste over Thirty Years,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 24, No. 32 (Aug. 12, 1989: 1831-1838), pp. 1833-1834.

Of course, one may rightly ask how such unsavory snobbishness could be taken as sign of positive spirituality and in keeping with God’s will.

» Asrama, Dharma, Hinduism

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Wave

Hokusai – The Great Wave

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Wave In physics a physical wave is defined as a regular disturbance in a medium, the net result being a transfer of energy.

Electromagnetic waves, however, may travel through a medium or a vacuum.

Many contemporary New Age writers dubiously liken waves to both matter-energy and spirit. According to this view, the Holy Spirit potentially could be measured with some kind of metering system.

This perspective seems lacking because it excludes a whole realm of grace and spirit said to exist beyond but within the world of matter and energy.

And arguably those who have not experienced the uniquely numinous quality of the spirit for themselves will most likely continue to suppose that matter-energy is equivalent to spirit, or perhaps reduce all things spiritual to vulgar materialistic or purely psychoanalytic explanations.

In Christian theological terms, God’s grace is said to be immanent within but qualitatively different from experiences stemming from the natural world of matter-energy (e.g. the aesthetic appreciation of a sunset or endorphin rushes from exercise).

Again, this distinction is seems to elude some New Age enthusiasts. And to complicate matters, poets, depth psychologists and mystics make the case for different types of spiritual experience–each type being qualitatively different from the realm of matter-energy.

» Adamski (George), Berkeley (George), Eliade (Mircea), Interference, Jung (Carl Gustav), Lenard, (Philipp Eduard Anton), Meditation, Otto (Rudolf), Particle, Particle-Wave Duality, Schrodinger (Erwin), Standing Wave, Swedenborg (Emanuel), Young (Thomas)

Image:

• Animation of standing wave in the stationary medium with marked wave nodes

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Xenophanes

Gold and Ivory Artemis(?)

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Xenophanes (c. 570 BCE)

Greek thinker born in Colophon, an Ionian Greek coastal city.

Xenophanes critiqued the cosmology of Homer, Hesiod and the popular pre-Socratic take on religion and mythology.

From his surviving fragments – and from others commenting on his work – it’s clear that Xenophanes satirized the anthropomorphic nature of the Greek pagan gods, arguing that God must be unmoving and changeless.

5. But mortals suppose that the gods are born (as they themselves are), and that they wear man’s clothing and have human voice and body. [Zeller, 524, n. 2. Cf Arist. Rhet. ii. 23; 1399 b 6.]

6. But if cattle or lions had hands, so as to paint with their hands and produce works of art as men do, they would paint their gods and give them bodies in form like their own-horses like horses, cattle like cattle. [Zeller, 525, n. 2. Diog Laer. iii. 16; Cic. de nat. Deor. i. 27.]

Arthur Fairbanks, ed. and trans. “Xenophanes: Fragments and Commentary,” The First Philosophers of Greece (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1898), p. 67.

Likewise, the early Christian writer Clement of Alexandria (2^nd – 3^rd CE) wrote in his Miscellanies 5. 109:

Xenophanes of Colophon puts it well indeed in teaching that god is one and without a body (asomatos): “There is one god, greatest among gods and men, who is not like human beings either in form (demas) or in thought (noema).”

Source » “XENOPHANES of Colophon” http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/xenophanes.html

Offering piercing criticisms of the pre-Soctratic mindset, Xenophanes nevertheless believed that we cannot be certain about anything. As such, he said that his observations were necessarily conjecture.

E. L. Hussey says that Xenophanes made the “first known attempt at philosophical theology”–i.e. thinking about faith instead of glossing over and mindlessly reproducing its cultural and historical aspects (Ted Honderich, ed., Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 1995, p. 920).

» Comparative Religion

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X-Men

X-Men

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X-Men

A fictional team of mutant superheroes with special abilities created by Marvel Comics writers Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

The original comic series has been successfully translated into a film trilogy and an animated TV series.

There is also an American and Canadian science fiction television show called Mutant X that is based on the original Marvel comic strip.

The idea of X-Men compels us to remember that genetic mutation and recombination need not always be bad.

Society’s condemnation of the X-Men and their genetically enhanced abilities is unfounded, even paranoid, and might parallel present misunderstandings and tensions between those lying in the middle and at the extremes of the so-called normal bell curve.

Quite possibly some of today’s “freaks and geeks” represent a kind of precursor to the next stage of human evolution.

It has also been argued that X-Men is a symbolic protest against current forms of racism and discrimination that different religious, ethnic and status groups may hold toward one another. » Science Fiction

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Yogi

Yogi on Meditation.

Originally uploaded by b3ni

Yogi A male practitioner of yoga. The term also connotes a male saint and teacher of spiritual knowledge.

Yogis take many different forms and various complementary and competing schools can be found within ancient, medieval and modern Hinduism.

T. S. Rukmani notes that advanced yogis like Sankara are said to have some degree of perception of past and future, although they are not equal to brahman in this respect.¹

Yogis may also possess unusual spiritual powers called siddhis. However, these are generally downplayed and even discouraged because they are regarded as a distraction to the ultimate goal of liberation through union with the godhead.

—

¹”Untitled Review of ‘The Role of Divine Grace in the Soteriology of śaṅkarācārya by Bradley J. Malkovsky’” in Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 124, No. 4, (Oct. – Dec., 2004: 813-816), p. 814.

» James (William), Karma, Karma Transfer, Mythic Eternalization, Rajas, Shakti, Yogini, Watts (Alan)

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Yoni

LINGGA & YONI at CETO Temple

Originally uploaded by *Gabisa Motonia

Yoni In Hinduism this is the female organ of all creation.

In Hindu temple art female genitalia are often emphasized to symbolize the Great Mother’s crucial meta-physical role in giving birth to all that is.

F. A. Marglin notes that, on a more personal scale, the yoni is said to invigorate the male through sexual intercourse.

Popular Hindu Indian folk belief maintains that during intercourse vaginal fluids enter the male generative organ, symbolically known as the linga (roughly parallel to the phallus of the Western mythos). This mingling of bodily fluids is believed to give the male his wife’s spiritual power (shakti).

Ancient Kings thus had several concubines as their divine right–this not only for the gratification of lust but also, so the belief goes, for an increase in spiritual power.¹

As the yoni and especially sexual-erotic scenes appearing on Hindu temple engravings are often interpreted by outsiders as an inferior, crass type of spiritual representation, Hindus (and Jungians) tend to say that those who see it that way are merely projecting their own shadow.

The yoni is sometimes depicted as a triangle with apex facing downwards. V. K. Chari says

These geometrical figures have symbolic meanings: the triangle with the apex turned upwards (called vahni kona or cone of fire) may represent male energy, the one with the apex turned downwards female energy (yoni), the matrix of creation, and so forth-which the adept are to meditate upon.²

» Jung (Carl Gustav), Linga, Siva

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¹F. A. Marglin in The Encyclopedia of Religion. Eliade, Mircea (ed). New York: 1987, Collier Macmillan, Vol. 15, pp. 530-535.

²V. K. Chari, “Representation in India’s Sacred Images: Objective vs. Metaphysical Reference” in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 65, No. 1, 2002: 52-73, pp. 65-66.

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Evil

Evil The idea of evil has several meanings and different types of arguments try to explain its existence.

Some materialists and scientists scoff at the notion of evil as if it were an antiquated legacy from a superstitious past.

Violent criminals are usually explained away on the evening news in medico-psychiatric terms. Murderers are often reported as ‘mentally-ill’ rather than ‘possessed by the devil.’

Sometimes attempts are made to integrate these two perspectives and other times not. Meanwhile, tyrants and warmongerers are often viewed through a historical or perhaps political lens.

A basic theological distinction exists between natural evil and moral evil. Natural evil includes “acts of God” such as floods, earthquakes and avalanches. Moral evil is a conscious human choice to turn away from God’s will and participate in some action harmful to self and possibly others.

Duns Scotus classified “intrinsic evil” as acts that are inherently evil and accordingly prohibited. But intrinsically evil acts are not evil because they are prohibited.

In Christian theology evil is often seen as a necessary component of God’s plan of salvation. Here one accepts as an article of faith that God permits evil for some greater good, beyond the comprehension of mere mortals (see Isaiah 55:8-9).

One school of thought, begun by Irenaeus and popularized by John Hick, argues that evil is permitted but not caused by God.

Why, one might ask, would a good and all-powerful God permit evil?

According to the Irenian school the answer lies with the idea of ’soul making.’ A soul freely choosing to abstain from evil is of greater value than one that automatically avoids evil like a robot. The free soul apparently better glorifies God than a sinless automaton.

Although evil may ravage, test and torment good souls living on earth, the true goal of our finite, earthly life is to be made worthy of eternal heavenly life.

According to this perspective the evils of the world act as a crucible. Souls not succumbing to but resisting evil are purified and strengthened towards the good. Evil, then, is necessary. It acts as a kind of ‘hammer’ that pounds out the soul’s impurities.

St. Thomas Aquinas, in keeping with the final winnowing of the Apocalypse (Luke 3:17, Matthew 3:12), writes that

God permits some evils lest the good things should be obstructed.

Another argument, influenced by Plato’s idea of the Forms, is forwarded by St. Augustine. Augustine sees evil as a privatio boni–the absence of good. According to this view, since God is good, evil must be where God is not present. Therefore God doesn’t create evil. It’s a choice.

The theological debates get complicated here and some ask whether Augustine’s theodicy holds up for both natural and moral evil.

Different branches of Christianity hold different views about the afterlife condition of the evil soul. Some damn sinners eternally. Martin Luther, for instance, believed that some souls are predestined for hell.

Meanwhile many contemporary religious persons pray for the liberation of souls in hell. And the Catholic Purgatory is neither heaven nor hell but a difficult preparation for heaven.

Evil in Islam is similar to that of Christianity. But for Muslims it is evil to suggest that Christ is one with God (John 10:30). And the prohibitions in the Koran differ from those of the New Testament. Notably, killing is permitted in the Koran in some circumstances (see http://www.yoel.info/koranwarpassages.htm and http://www.islamreview.com/articles/jihadholywarversesinthekoran.shtml), whereas the very thought of killing is denounced in the New Testament.

Many branches of Christianity do, however, entertain the idea of a Just War.

In Hinduism a different view of evil is presented. Evil is permitted to maintain a proper balance of sacred heat or power (tapas) within the universe.

Aspects of Hinduism speak to the reality of hell for evildoers. But evil in Hinduism is mostly viewed in terms of ignorance and spiritual evolution, making punishment temporary instead of eternal.

According to this perspective, the evil soul reincarnates on earth until it is cleansed of the ignorance that influenced it to commit bad deeds.

The Hindu aspires to transcend relative ideas about good and evil through an experiential knowledge of universal truth.

Accordingly, the goal of Hinduism differs from both Christianity and Islam. For the Hindu, heaven is akin to a halfway house on the road to ultimate realization. The reincarnating soul may enjoy periodic visits to different heavens but though the round of rebirth it eventually transcends all heavens and ultimately achieves the greatest good of the Brahman.

A similar but in some ways different view of evil is presented in Taoism. It remains uncertain as to whether Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Taoist and Hindu heavens and hells are identical in character.

Mircea Eliade notes that heavens and hells are described differently among world religions. And it seems that we cannot know if these are experientially equivalent across the board.

Most global cultures at some point in history have seen evil as a cause of mental or physical illness. This view is prevalent in Shamanism. And some religious writers, such as the Catholic Michael Brown, claim to feel the presence of evil almost anywhere.

On the inferiority of evil as compared to good, W. H. Auden writes in A Certain World:

Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.

» Determinism, Free-will, Shamanism, Siva, Suffering, Trickster

On the World Wide Web:

• That Religious Studies Website: The freewill defense (St. Augustine of Hippo): Part 1

Image Credit:

• “Sauron’s eye : my church is turning evil !” originally uploaded to flickr.com by AmUnivers / Amelie » http://www.flickr.com/photos/amunivers/199008242/, Creative Commons Share Alike License

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Yin-Yang

Yin yang, Dali

Originally uploaded by Alexandra Moss

Yin-Yang (yin=umbral, yang= bright)

This is the Chinese idea that all transformations arise from a dynamic interaction of two basic and complementary modes of existence.

The Yin-Yang cosmology harkens back to ancient Chinese philosophers (c. 500-200 BCE) who saw the world as an organic totality in which subject and object, self and other were essentially interrelated.

As John S. Major puts it:

The cosmos was “organic”; everything was related to and affected by everything else, without regard for mathematically or mechanically demonstrable cause and effect. No distinction was drawn between physical and mental phenomena, or between the “human” and “natural” worlds.

John S. Major in The Encyclopedia of Religion. Eliade, Mircea (ed). New York: 1987, Collier Macmillan, Vol. 15, p. 515.

The Chinese characters Yin and Yang originally referred to the dark and bright sides of a sunlit riverbank.

A definite Yin-Yang school of philosophy arose around 305-240 BCE, attributed to Tsou Yen.

By the time of Confucius, the Tsou Yen school had acquired scholarly and philosophical significance.

Yin represented the Earth and, according to this schema, the associated elements of darkness, passivity, femininity, negativity and destruction.

Yang came to be associated with Heaven and all the associated elements of light, activity, masculinity, positive forces and creativity.

Kevin at GreatVessel.com adds:

I think the feminine and passivity were actually Confucian additions. Confucius was pretty much a misogynist.

A core quality of Yin in the bright and shadow / strong and subtle paradigm, was of manifestation.

A very good example of this is procreation – the man fertilises (Inspiration / Yang) but the woman manifests the life in growing the embryo. Seen like this Yin is very powerful and not at all passive. (Though of course it can be passive at times).

Similarly all the running about working and commuting or whatever that many of us do in the modern world is actually manifestation and is Yin energy activity, not Yang as many suppose.

I am not sure equating the quality ‘destruction’ to Yin entirely does the quality justice. Yin manifests and un-manifests by withholding nurture. So a harsh frosty spell cutting back the verdant growth is very Yin.

Destruction is much more a Yang principle. The lightening which the ancient Chinese believed shook into being the new was a ‘positive Yang Force whereas over done it becomes the lightening which strikes down the tree.

Both Yin and Yang therefore have positive and negative valences which are not to be confused with good and bad. That hard frost which clears the ground makes way for new growth too.

Similarly Yin is not the negative of Yang (another bit of spin implied by Confucians) – The two exist in creative harmony.

Studying the Dazhuan (The Great Treatise approx. 3rd Century BCE) clarifies a lot of this as does studying the First two hexagrams of the Yijing which are the two exponents of these principles.

The Yijing predates Ying Yang theory… indeed the Ying Yang principle probably grew out of it and in turn replaced the shadow / light names within it. This is certain when one realises that all of the hexagrams are in pairs (in the King Wen sequence which is the one commonly used). Thus hexagrams 1 and 2 are a pair as is 3 and 4 etc. It only takes cursory study to see that these are in fact Yang / Yin pairs. Pairs of inspiration and manifestation. The King Wen sequence is between 1600 and 1200 BCE depending on which historian you subscribe to. » Source

Apart from the ongoing scholarly debates, perhaps most important from a contemporary perspective is the idea of dynamic complementarity. The two complementaries of Yin and Yang are said to be in a constant interplay and all phenomena may be explained through their interaction.

One interesting aspect of this process occurs when one modality in a sense eventually flows into its apparent ‘opposite,’ which in the field of psychology C. G. Jung called enantiodromia.

To sum, the Yin-Yang cosmology underscores the unity of mankind and nature, as well as the importance of transformation. In fact, for the ancient Chinese the idea of change was key, as we find with the oracle of the I Ching (Book of Change), from which Yin-Yang theory likely developed. » Gemini, Siva, Tai Chi, Taoism

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Zarathustra

Zarathustra (c.1200 BCE ?) was an ancient Persian prophet who fled his homeland because his teachings were controversial. He ended up in eastern Iran under the protection of King Vishtaspa who embraced his teachings.

Zarathustra’s dialogue with the Lord, Ahura Mazda, is recorded in the Holy Book The Avesta, a set of scriptures based on an oral tradition of roughly 1000 years.

The surviving scripture we have today is somewhat fragmentary, seemingly contradictory in places and only a part of the original.

Greek writers called Zarathusra Zoroaster.

Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra, used in the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, was influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosphical work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which itself was influenced by the prophet. » 2001: A Space Odyssey, Avesta, Ahriman, Zoroastrianism

Image Credit:

• “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” by kian Elyassi Bakhtiari at http://flickr.com/photos/kian1/1390286041/ , Creative Commons License

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