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

[Dirk Bruere]

john-c-wright at sff.net wrote:

>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. 
>
>  
>
RULE 4 - no rule is absolute and inviolable.
[Esp since I suspect that somewhere Godel is running around in Rules 1 
and 3]

-- 
Dirk

The Consensus:-
The political party for the new millenium
http://www.theconsensus.org



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