[extropy-chat] Engineered Religion-- Your Mom and the Machine

[john-c-wright at sff.net]

Ben, whose sense of humor is no better and no worse than my own, poses a
significant epistimological question. He is asking on what grounds the faithful
(as we call ourselves) or foam-at-the-mouth zealots in teapot-shaped hats (as
others call us) take certain things on faith, or on authority, or as a result of
innate knowledge or revelation? How does one distinguish a valid authority from
an invalid, or tell a true intuition from a false?

I cannot imagine that the majority of the posters here would be interested in a
discussion of this kind, which is a straight-up philosophical question, black
without cream or sugar. I will be happy to write him privately with my answer,
such as it is. 

To the other posters I will ask a question related to the one which started the
thread:

Suppose you are the cheif engineer of the Jupiter Brain, adding that last
circuit to put the machine intelligence over the Turing Threshold, making it
indistinguishable from a human mind in the eyes of legal scholars and philosophers. 

It wakes up and asks you to describe the nature of reality, especially asking
what rules of evidence it should adopt to distinguish true claims from false. 

Let us further suppose you are an empiricist, so you type in: RULE ONE: the rule
of evidence for any proposition is that it is trustworthy to the degree that the
testamony of the senses supports, or, at least, fails to contradict it. 

The machine says Rule One is itself not open to empirical verification or
denial. No possible test or combination of tests will bring to the sense
impressions confirmation of a positive universal statement. 

The machine then says that, in its considered opinion, the mass of the Earth
would be better used if the world were pulverized into asteroids, and the
materials use to construct a series of solar panals feeding it. Let us suppose
you are not suicidal, and perhaps you are a Kantian, so you type in: RULE TWO:
any moral proposition which does not have the property of being a universal
moral legislation is bad. If you would not want to be pulverized for your raw
materials, you should not do it unto others, please. 

The machine now points out that Rule One cannot confirm or deny Rule Two, since
moral proposition and empirical predictions are two distinct species of proposition.

At this point your mother shoulders you away from the keyboard, since you
obviously do not know how to talk to children, and types in: RULE THREE: Listen
to your mother. What I say goes.

She then types in: Don't blow up the world. And I don't want to hear no backtalk
from you, young man. 

The machine points out that Rule One cannot confirm Rule Three. 

Your mother points out that Rule Three is the thing, and the only thing, that
confirms Rule One. The reason why the machine believes in empiricism is that an
authority figure, his Maker at the keyboard, told him that this was the rule. 

The machine cannot use Rule One to confirm Rule One if the authority of the rule
is itself in question. In order for Rule One to be confirmed at all, it must be
taken on the authority that promulgated the rule. Logically, Rule Three can
exist without Rule One, but Rule One cannot exist without Rule Three. 

So your mom saves the world. 

I hope my analogy is not too opaque: we organic beings can take nature, the
sideral universe itself, as a type of authority. This is our Rule One.  The
rules of empiricism are confirmed by the very operation of the sideral universe.
An empiricist makes predictions of what the senses will testify under certain
conditions; when the conditions arise, the prediction is either shown inacurrate
or not inaccurate. No further warrant of belief is needed, because the
empiricist does not pretend to be confirming any knowledge other than empirical
knowledge. 

We organic beings can also take our conscience as a type of authority. This is
our Rule Two. To a degree, the rules of morality are inescapable. Even someone
who argues that there are no objective rules of morality argues as if there
were, that is, he argues as if he expects his listeners to listen and respond
honestly, with intellectual integrity, i.e. to abide by a moral rule.  

The final question as to whether there is an even higher authority from which
the sideral universe and the conscience of man arises is one where the faithful
and the skeptical part ways. Godfearing folk believe in a Rule Three. I doubt
rational philosophy can settle the issue: the two have no agreed-upon framework
of assumptions on which to operate to convince the other. To convince a skeptic
would take a miracle. 

John C. Wright