ant wrote:

DWill wrote:Flann 5 and Ant are extremely dissimilar personalities. One likes to disagree agreeably while the other is a flamethrower. I'd never confuse the two.

Youre way off. Flann is very cordial here. He's not a flamethrower in any sense whatsover.
You shouod apologize to him for saying that.

You mean you find flamethrower to be negative? I wouldn't have thought.

How about "troll army"?

There's a dilemma for intellectual skeptics of neo-Darwinism like Thomas Nagel and Noam Chomsky. Their philosophical naturalism commits them to excluding the solution of God.


Nagel thinks consciousness is not explicable by the commonly touted route. Chomsky's understanding of linguistics likewise engenders skepticism. He also has expressed boredom with the whole A.I. project as being incapable of producing anything really interesting.

It's not surprising that materialists who believe matter if complex enough will cause consciousness to "emerge" have similar hope's for A.I.
If it does which I seriously doubt,it will be due to human intelligence and design which is the ultimate irony as ant said.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intellig ... om-darwin/

later

Flann 5 wrote:There's a dilemma for intellectual skeptics of neo-Darwinism like Thomas Nagel and Noam Chomsky. Their philosophical naturalism commits them to excluding the solution of God.


Nagel thinks consciousness is not explicable by the commonly touted route. Chomsky's understanding of linguistics likewise engenders skepticism. He also has expressed boredom with the whole A.I. project as being incapable of producing anything really interesting.

It's not surprising that materialists who believe matter if complex enough will cause consciousness to "emerge" have similar hope's for A.I.
If it does which I seriously doubt,it will be due to human intelligence and design which is the ultimate irony as ant said.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intellig ... om-darwin/

Chomsky is right that language ability in humans is innate. I don't think that's very new information. E.O. Wilson discusses it at length in his book, The Social Conquest of Earth, from an evolutionary perspective. Beyond that, Chomsky's arguments closely resemble the Creationist idea of irreducible complexity. The human brain is very complicated and we are only beginning to understand how it works. if there is irreducible complexity, it is only in our limited brain's ability to understand it.

"For many years, Chomsky himself refused to speculate about this matter, stating that “[e]volutionary theory…has little to say, as of now, about questions of this nature” (1988:167). Other theorists have not been so reticent, and a large literature has grown up in which the selective advantages of having a language are adumbrated."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/innat ... ge/#LanEvo

The idea that scientists should not assume material explanations always boggles my mind since science is a methodical study of the natural world. There seems to be an element of the sacred with certain areas of scientific exploration—especially with respect to the beginnings of the universe and the beginnings of life on earth. Some believers must feel that it's almost sacrilegious to subject these sacred realms to the taint of scientific understanding. There's an element of 'Here There Be Dragons', as if to explore them will incur the wrath of God.

Geo can you tell me which Theistic scientist(s) do not assume materialistic explanations during the course of their scientific work?

Who are these scientists?

I just want names and evidence that corroborates your claim.

geo wrote:Chomsky is right that language ability in humans is innate. I don't think that's very new information. E.O. Wilson discusses it at length in his book, The Social Conquest of Earth, from an evolutionary perspective. Beyond that, Chomsky's arguments closely resemble the Creationist idea of irreducible complexity. The human brain is very complicated and we are only beginning to understand how it works. if there is irreducible complexity, it is only in our limited brain's ability to understand it.

"For many years, Chomsky himself refused to speculate about this matter, stating that “[e]volutionary theory…has little to say, as of now, about questions of this nature” (1988:167). Other theorists have not been so reticent, and a large literature has grown up in which the selective advantages of having a language are adumbrated."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/innat ... ge/#LanEvo

There's a lot of "might haves" and speculation in the Stanford article, Geo.

I'll link an article by Chomsky and other linguists on this question. I don't expect you to slog through it all. Bottom line.

"It's a mystery." They look at some of the ideas generally put forward and given reasons for rejecting them.
Of course they are evolutionists and suggest possible paths of investigation which may provide naturalistic ways out of the problem.

Piggybacking on structures which formerly had other functions is one suggested in the Stanford article.

Here's a curious thing I came across by one writer. "The neural structures and circuits involved in the production and comprehension of language are homologous to structures found ubiquitously in most monkeys and apes brains:old structures performing new functions."

An interpretation is here given that humans formerly used these same structures for the function apes still do, but now they have an exclusively linguistic function in humans and no longer the function now still used in apes.

Why then did ape's brains not follow this evolutionary path themselves if it's so advantageous and naturally selectable?

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/ ... 04041/full

Bad link. Google; Frontiers, the mystery of language evolution.

The correlation is often made between higher levels of intelligence and empathy in intelligent animals. And yet much A.I. is arguably way more intelligent that the average mammal. So where's these robot's empathy?

geo wrote:The idea that scientists should not assume material explanations always boggles my mind since science is a methodical study of the natural world. There seems to be an element of the sacred with certain areas of scientific exploration—especially with respect to the beginnings of the universe and the beginnings of life on earth. Some believers must feel that it's almost sacrilegious to subject these sacred realms to the taint of scientific understanding. There's an element of 'Here There Be Dragons', as if to explore them will incur the wrath of God.

Not at all Geo. Newton and many other scientists who were theists were all for scientific research and discovery believing it was God's creation.

What's not acceptable, is pretending that something is nothing in the name of science. The same goes with origin of life studies. Most serious researches admit they haven't a clue given the complexity and constraints involved.

A.I. is useful in many ways.I'm just pointing to the materialistic philosophical underpinnings to expectations to produce sentience and consciousness in such creations.

They won't because there is no one home there. Theists accept that the normal course of nature is based on laws and principles built in to nature.

Even Genesis says that about reproduction according to kind. Nevertheless it is a philosophical rather than a scientific position that all events at all times had,and must have a naturalistic explanation.

http://www.arn.org/docs/johnson/dennett.htm

Machine AI will likely not exhibit human intelligence because of perhaps one reason only - a lack of emotional intelligence.
Machines can not relate to the environment emotionally. That is likely the reason for our success to date.
We are becoming so immersed in cyberspace, the effects are becoming apparent - desensitization.


It is very naive to think scientists that also are people of faith do not seek materialistic explandum to describe the natural world, or that they are somehow fearfull of such explanations.

ant wrote:Machine AI will likely not exhibit human intelligence because of perhaps one reason only - a lack of emotional intelligence.

Maybe this should be moved to the other thread about machine sentience (as distinct from intelligence). I tend to agree with you because although machines could be programmed to mimic emotions convincingly, they can neither suffer nor exalt. However, the singularity is not so far away, where machines become close or equivalent to human intelligence with applications we are unable to envision.

But we can take a crack at three areas of almost certain development where sentience is not a requirement.
1. Military killing machines. Lack of emotion in the killing machine is a benefit. Loss of machinery instead of human life is vastly preferable. Perhaps machine foot soldiers with drone operators. You've seen the movies - it's true: the global military-industrial complex can no longer be stopped!
2. Fük-Bots. Programmed with only positive emotions. Porn has driven many tech innovations; in the distant future actual füking will make this industry explode. I mean, if I had a clü where to invest now...
3. Artificial reality. In the distant future, say 100 - 500 years from now, wealthy people who do not need to work might spend the vast majority of their time in alternate realities, perhaps exiting AR only for eating/bathroom activities... See Jaron Lanier for more on this...

OK back to the original topic.

I agree debating Young Earth Creationists (YEC) serves no intellectual - as in academic - purpose. However, in practical terms debate is necessary. For one example YEC folks come up with arguments like "The earth's magnetic field gets weaker over time. If the earth was much older than 6000 years, the magnetic field would not even exist. Since it does, that proves the earth is very young."

If that statement is never debated or countered, YEC advocates will state "Science has no answer, no response whatsoever, therefore YEC is a proven fact!"