worldview

While scientific topics tied to AI are a main current focus — I will shortly add another headlined comment on why — there are several philosophical and theological topics that keep on coming up in and around UD. So, pardon a quick note on those wider themes. Here, on the soul and linked ideas from the thoughts on justice thread: JM, 155 to BA77: >>If you think I have not provided any evidence against the immortality of the soul, why don’t you answer my questions regarding the Adam and Eve scriptures?>> I picked this point up and responded: KF, 161: >>J-Mac, consider the scriptural definition of physical death: “as the body without the spirit is dead . . . ” Read More ›

Robo-Doc will see you? Maybe, but not just now. This item popped up from the usual suspect tabloid paper sites while searching on AI and memristors. I have tracked down a couple of more reputable sources so, here goes from China Daily (which is also on the spot): >>A robot has passed the written test of China’s national medical licensing examination, an essential entrance exam for doctors, making it the first robot in the world to pass such an exam. Its developer iFlytek Co Ltd, a leading Chinese artificial intelligence company, said on Thursday that the robot scored 456 points, 96 points higher than the required marks. The artificial-intelligence-enabled robot can automatically capture and analyze patient information and make initial Read More ›

While we’re on a roll on AI and its import at the hands of evolutionary materialistic scientism dressed in a lab coat, BA77 has linked a comic strip — see here (main site here; cf. twist on The Cave currently top of the heap) — that is at first funny then soberingly serious: As in, where do you think these issues fit in: And perhaps Engineer Derek Smith’s model has a few points to ponder as we think about the higher order, supervisory controller in the cybernetic loop: Food for thought. END PS: Could I put up for reflection the notion that the human soul is at the interface of spirit and body, including Brain and CNS?

This is a theme of increasing significance for the ID debate, but also it has overtones for an era where AI technologies may be driving the next economic long wave. Which is of instant, global importance, hence the Perez idealised Long wave illustration: However, this is not about economics (save, as a context for major trends) but about AI, Intelligent Agents as conceived under AI and the intersection with ID. Intelligent Design. Where, it is important to recognise that the concept of intelligence and of agency we will increasingly encounter will be shaped by the dogmas of what is often termed, Strong AI. Techopedia summarises: >>Strong artificial intelligence (strong AI) is an artificial intelligence construct that has mental capabilities and Read More ›

The Voynich manuscript has long been a mysterious object, seemingly a medicinal or magical survey of plants, or someone’s play on such documents, but written in an unknown alphabetic script: AI is now being brought to bear on the matter.  According to phys dot org: >>U of A computing science professor Greg Kondrak, an expert in natural language processing, and graduate student Bradley Hauer used artificial intelligence to decode the ambiguities in human language using the Voynich manuscript as a case study. Their first step was to address the language of origin, which is enciphered on hundreds of delicate vellum pages with accompanying illustrations. Kondrak and Hauer used samples of 400 different languages from the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” Read More ›

AI — artificial intelligence — is emerging as a future-driver. For example, we have been hearing of driver-less cars, and now we have helmsman-less barges: As The Guardian reports: >>The world’s first fully electric, emission-free and potentially crewless container barges are to operate from the ports of Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam from this summer. The vessels, designed to fit beneath bridges as they transport their goods around the inland waterways of Belgium and the Netherlands, are expected to vastly reduce the use of diesel-powered trucks for moving freight. Dubbed the “Tesla of the canals”, their electric motors will be driven by 20-foot batteries, charged on shore by the carbon-free energy provider Eneco. The barges are designed to operate without any Read More ›

The opportunity is open and it is time to seize the day. So, I think a comment in a discussion with GP and Dionisio should be headlined: >>My observation is those who are closed minded, indoctrinated and hostile will simply flare up in anger at anything that threatens their favoured evolutionary materialistic scientism or their comfortable fellow-traveller views calibrated not to get them in hot water with the domineering atheists. The issue then is, how well cultured they are. The cultured play at subtle rhetorical games pivoting on evasions and how could you concern trolling which provide more or less respectable “good cop” cover. Then come the “bad cops” who try to run riot, bully, intimidate, slander and stalk. I Read More ›

Over the past couple of days, I headlined a discussion in a previous thread on how tainting accusations spread destructive untruths far and wide, using Wikipedia’s article on ID as an example. During the course of that discussion, I took time to do a point by point response to the lead. In turn, I think it worth the while to headline it: _____________ KF, 33:>>Let’s go a little deeper in that opening remark at Wiki, to see how framing with disregard for truth or fairness can mislead: >>Intelligent design (ID) is a religious argument for the existence of God,>> 1 –> If the design inference on the world of life were a natural theology argument, it would have long since Read More ›

In a recent thread, the Kalam Cosmological argument family was challenged on the issue: can an actual infinity exist? If not (presumably due to Hilbert’s Hotel-like absurdities), then God could not be an infinite being as such is impossible of being. A thread of discussion developed, and I thought a summary intervention may be helpful. On further thought, perhaps it should be headlined: _________________ KF, 12: >> I think several themes are worth highlighting. It can be discussed that non-being, true nothingness cannot be a causal source. Were there ever utter nothing, such would therefore forever obtain. There would be no world.But, manifestly, there is a world. So, we must ponder the logic of being, at least in a nutshell. Read More ›

CR is a frequent objector here at UD, and it seems again necessary to headline a corrective response given some of his remarks in the thread on UB’s discussion of information systems in cells: ____________________ KF, 62: >>CR: constructor theory formalizes the view that, in science, justification isn’t possible or even desirable and brings emergent phenomena, such as information, into fundamental physics First, no-one has discussed justification as a component for knowledge, as post Gettier, to be justified in holding a belief that turns out to be true is understood for cause as not equal to knowledge. The matter of warrant has long since been brought to your attention repeatedly but insistently ignored. Thus, you have shamelessly played the strawman Read More ›

In the still active Knowledge thread, Mung asks at 224: “Do we have a sufficient number of examples yet to decide what knowledge is not?” This is sufficiently important to headline the response made at 225: KF: >>[W]e have both criteria anchored in experience and insight to define knowledge in a weaker and by extension a stronger sense. Given how science is a major cultural enterprise, we see the importance of the weaker sense: knowledge is warranted, credibly true (and — for emphasis — reliable) belief. Knowing is a key function of knowers, who must believe . . . accept sufficiently to rely on . . . what they know. But beliefs may be false or irrational. We need a Read More ›

In the What is knowledge thread, this has come up now, and I think it should be headlined: ____________________ KF, 201: >> Can we regard scientific theories as factual knowledge? This is a deep challenge, especially on the so-called pessimistic induction that historically theories in effect have hidden sell-by dates. That is, theories show more of a track record of replacement (sometimes presented as refinement) than we are comfortable with. A first answer is that a theory, from the abductive angle, is a “best current explanatory framework,” often involving dynamics which may be deterministic or stochastic (or tempered by stochastic factors), and may be empirically reliable in a known or unknown range of circumstances. The turn of C20 surprises faced Read More ›

Origenes, has put up an interesting argument that we need to ponder as food for thought. It’s Friday, so this should be a good thing to start our weekend on: >>>>>>>>>>>>>> ORIGENES: Here I will argue that self-prediction cannot be accommodated by materialism. In daily life we all routinely engage in acts of self-prediction — ‘tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock I will do 2 push-ups’, ‘I will do some Christmas shopping next Friday’ … and so forth. The question is: how does materialism explain that familiar phenomenon? Given that specific behavior (e.g. doing 2 push-ups) results from specific neural states, how is it that we can predict its occurrence? The fact that one can predict her/his own behavior suggests that Read More ›

As Breitbart (as a handy source) reports: >>“Historically, no god has survived science. Gods evolved,” the best-selling American novelist said at the Frankfurt Book Fair, where he unveiled his newest book, “Origin”. The fifth instalment in the wildly popular series that started with “The Da Vinci Code” tracks Harvard professor Robert Langdon’s latest code-cracking adventure to uncover the mysteries of the universe, this time exploring the battle between religion and science. “I happen to believe in looking at advances through technology,” Brown told reporters. “Over the next decade our species will become enormously interconnected at a level we are not used to, and we will start to find our spiritual experiences through our interconnections with each other. “Our need for Read More ›

These clips are taken from a video that was recently pointed to by CY and which I (with help of UD) embedded here. We need to ponder what is happening with our civilisation under the impact of evolutionary materialism and its fellow travellers up to and including cultural marxist agendas (also cf. here), so pardon some painful reading: How have we come to a pass such as this? Schaeffer (suitably modified) has a suggestion or two: Where also the seven mopuntains of influence perspective championed by Wallnau et al (again as adapted) may also help us see how the community is shaped by influences such as this branch of cultural marxism, aka “critical studies”: What should we then do? This Read More ›