AI : Mind without Mysticism
Atheism : Life, the Universe, and
Everything without Mysticism
1

•
Religious beliefs are a very significant and personal aspect of one’s world view.
•
Every individual must be free to make up their own mind about religion without undue coercion from any educational or governmental authority.
–
I condemn and decry our own governor's approval and promotion of constitutionally illegal prayer at mandatory school events.
• As long as one does not contaminate one’s scientific hypotheses with un-falsifiable supernatural explanations, one can be a devout theist and an effective, productive scientist.
2

•
Science and religion have been claimed to be compatible since they address different issues (S.
Gould, The Rocks of Ages )
– Science is about “The ages of rocks”
• Predictive theories of the material world.
– Religion is about “The Rock of Ages”
• Spirituality and morality.
•
Tell that to Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, and other scientists that have been persecuted, despised, defamed, repressed, censored, criticized and/or ignored because their science conflicted with prevailing religious beliefs.
3

• I was raised as a devout Catholic with 8 years of parochial, religious education.
•
I became an atheist because, as I learned more and more about science, I found scientific explanations for physical, psychological, and ethical/moral phenomena much more believable and compelling.
• My beliefs about materialism and atheism are a fairly important component of why I believe
(strong) AI must be possible.
4

•
One of the original motivations for religion was to provide explanations of phenomenon that are now the province of scientific explanations.
•
Many psychological phenomena that are traditionally explained with spiritual, nonphysical causes are now the province of computational (AI) explanations.
5

Explanation Phenomenon
Thunder and Lightening
Origin of Species
Origin of Humans
Origin of the Universe
Origin of Life
Intelligence
Consciousness
Free Will
6

•
When evidence for one explanation increases, evidence for other competing explanations decreases.
•
A form of common-sense reasoning that is formalized in AI as abductive and Bayesian inference.
•
Bayesian formalization demonstrates that
“explaining away” is a mathematically sound and correct form of inference.
7

Origin of
Universe
Origin of
Life
Origin of
Humans
Intelligence Consciousness
8

•
Belief in any proposition depends on its prior probability.
•
A priori, belief in the existence of entities should have very low priors (Occam’s razor); otherwise, what prevents belief in a proliferation of entities?
• I don’t believe in God for the same reason I don’t believe in other entities that have no real explanatory power.
– Fairies
–
Unicorns
– Santa Claus
–
Easter bunny
– etc.
9

•
Upon the completion of his magnum opus
Exposition du système du monde , Laplace is said to have had the following conversation with Napoleon:
–
Napoleon
: “You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe.”
–
Laplace
: “Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.”
10

•
Dualism : The belief that mind, consciousness, cognition, and intelligence are separate and distinct from the material world and cannot be explained as purely physical processes.
– Rene Descartes was a dualist who believed that the mind made contact with the physical body through the pineal gland at the back of the brain.
•
Materialism : The belief that mind, consciousness, cognition, and intelligence are physical processes that can be explained through normal scientific investigation of the material world.
11



• Strong AI seems to imply materialism.
– If purely physical, deterministic machines can be intelligent, then mind is a physical phenomenon.
•
Materialism seems to imply atheism.
– If the human mind is a purely physical phenomenon
(Minsky’s “meat machine”), then there is no immaterial soul or spiritual free-will.
•
Atheism seems to imply materialism.
–
If there is no spiritual world, then mind must be a physical phenomenon.
•
Materialism seems to imply strong AI.
–
If mind is a physical process and computers can emulate any physical process (strong Church-Turing thesis), then AI must be possible.
12

• If all behavior is the result of physical causes in the material world, then there is no metaphysical free will.
•
Without dualism, how does human behavior and morality relate to a non-material God?
•
If a truly artificially intelligent agent was created, then what would be its religious/spiritual/moral standing in relation to God?
• Would we be “playing God” and thereby offend religious sensibilities by creating such a being?
13

•
Religion is a ubiquitous phenomenon in human culture that itself requires explanation.
• Religion may arise from “spiritual” experiences that have a neurobiological basis.
– V.S. Ramachandran, Phantoms in the Brain , Chap. 9
“God and the Limbic System”
• Religion may arise from various cognitive biases of human inference and belief.
–
P. Boyer , Religion Explained .
•
Religion may have evolved biologically and culturally to reinforce adaptive social behavior.
14

• AI provides scientific explanations for phenomena that were previously part of the province of religion.
•
Belief in AI decreases belief in religion due to
“explaining away,” a theoretically justified form of inference.
•
AI

Materialism

Atheism
• It is difficult to reconcile belief in strong AI with traditional religious ideas of free-will and moral responsibility.
15