13
“The telephone book is full of facts,
but it doesn't contain a single idea.”
– Mortimer Adler
Issue 4
February 1, 2015
If Adler were speaking today, he would say something like “The computer is full of information, but it doesn’t contain a single thought.” We need to be reminded of that, for computers are so dominant in our culture, so capable of such astonishing calculations, that many believe the future will bring what is thoughtlessly called ‘Artificial Intelligence,’ that is, in extreme form, thinking by a machine.
The concept of AI rests on various assumptions, one of which is that science can measure whatever can be measured, and what can be measured can be, at least in theory, duplicated. Therein lies the AI hope. We will measure everything in the head that can be measured, make a machine based on those measurements, (whatever it looks like; maybe as big as a house), call it a mind, and there you are: Artificial Intelligence! Thinking robots. Onward and upward.
But those who worship AI, worship a mirage. That the computer can and will become so sophisticated that it will be, in fact, another mind is the dream of the naturalist, but that dream is illusionary, for no matter how sophisticated it may become, a computer remains a machine. And while a machine may measure and duplicate a brain, it cannot measure nor duplicate a mind, for the brain and the mind are not the same thing nor the same kind of thing. A machine—the brain—can be taken apart into little bits, if not of material substance, then in image, and examined bit by bit. Not the mind, for the mind, any mind, even animal mind, is a mysterious unity, not a collection of bits, and that unity can think. A collection of bits cannot.
Try to imagine a computer being aware of where it is and what it is doing, of regretting an error, of making a decision, of having a self, of thinking. Only a mind can do that, not a machine. Only a mind can think, and humans cannot make minds. Never mind what Hollywood says.
Lots of facts but not a single idea!
