Chuan to Fenn:
"'The highly evolved sophotectic mind is pure mind. It has its drives, desires - emotions, spirituality - but they are not expressions or sublimations of raw instinct. What Gautama Buddha, Plato, Jesus, oh, so many human philosophers and prophets, what they spoke of - but for them it was only words and wistfulness - it is real for the machine. The good, the true, the beautiful. Those are what it seeks. And they are ethereal. Inner, not outer. Constructs or discoveries? I cannot say, except that they are in the realm not of matter, but of spirit.'" (p. 335)
Where to start with Chuan's farrago? Goodness, truth and beauty are both inner and outer. Spirit is consciousness which is materially based. (If a brain is an instrument of consciousness, is consciousness immaterial? Then, if a bomb is an instrument of destruction, is destruction immaterial?) I have just checked a dictionary definition of "ethereal": "extremely delicate and light in a way that seems not to be of this world." (My emphasis.) The world is what exists. Whatever exists is of the world.
Truth is surely a discovery, not a construct. Beauty is both a discovery and a construct. Goodness is a construct in the sense that there would no morality without consciousness but it is not an arbitrary construct. We cannot decree that wrong actions are right so, in that sense, we discover what is right.
Gautama, Plato and Jesus are not interchangeable. Plato was an analytic philosopher, analyzing concepts, thus working with words. Jesus prayed, fasted and preached an imminent "kingdom," both a new society and a new consciousness. Gautama, I believe, ended attachment within himself and thus was able to teach the way to others. He at least went far beyond words and wistfulness.
Machines and spirituality are usually antithetical. It is strange to find them identified. See also "...went up in the machines..." here.
I do not believe that machines seeking goodness, truth and beauty would practice the great deception to which the smooth-talking Chuan is party so I find the climax of The Fleet Of Stars implausible and a bit flat. A great discovery, to which they pretend, would have been more appropriate.
19 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And my belief is that Jesus the Christ, being God as well as man, went infinitely far beyond mere words and wistfulness. And I don't believe Buddha went beyond what other philosophers had achieved.
I am not at all so confident that "intelligent machines" allegedly seeking goodness, truth, and beauty would necessarily be above the frauds and deceptions we see them perpetrating in THE FLEET OF STARS. If only because we don't know how AIs and sophotects, if they are possible, will behave.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
All I can say for certain is that Zen practice helps us toward nonattachment/inner freedom and that many people have traveled a lot further down that path than I have. The practice could have come to us from the Yoga or Taoist traditions as well as from Buddhism.
Paul.
Basically, the sophotects are more interested in navel-gazing than anything else.
I used this as a postulate in some series -- that extreme AI just disappears up its own "spiritual" fundament.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: But meditation and contemplation of ultimate questions is not limited to Buddhists and Taoists. But can be found in orthodox Christianity as well, which has its own monastic tradition. E.g., the Benedictines and Trappists comes to mind. And I've though of such Christian works of spirituality, such as THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING, THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES of St. Ignatius Loyola, or Thomas A'Kempis' THE IMITATION OF CHRIST.
Mr. Stirling: I sort of had that in the back of my mind. The sophotects could have simply ignored the human race and withdrawn entirely into itself.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I have read THE CLOUD, Dame Julian and at least parts of THE IMITATION. Contemplation can exist in both theistic and nontheistic traditions. A visitor to the Zen Abbey that our meditation group is affiliated to said that she was a Christian so a monk said, "You continue to believe that and we'll teach you how to meditate."
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I too have read Dame Julian's REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE. And I'm sure the Benedictines and Trappists also have methods they find useful for contemplation.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We visited Norwich and saw Dame Julian's place.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And fortunately her writings survived the Suppression of the monasteries under Henry VIII, when so much was otherwise lost.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the monasteries Henry suppressed had largely become extremely corrupt, and no longer made much pretense of carrying out their original functions.
Eg., most "abbots" were living in private mansions on "monastery" land, with retinues of servants, usually mistresses as well, and riding to the hunt with the local gentry.
Revenues which had originally been intended for charitable or educational work had been diverted to private consumption, and the number of monks and nuns had been drastically reduced to make that possible by their own institutions.
Hence the lack of much public protest at the suppression, except in a few areas in the north.
The populace in general had no great stake in the issue, and a fair proportion of it had become rabidly anti-clerical -- had been since the Lollard movement founded by Wycliffe in the 14th century, and whose ideas had survived its suppression.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Of course I agree that by about 1560 many of the monasteries and convents had become slack. But, that was not true of all. And the suppression attended by plenty of venality, brutality, and corruption. Here I'm thinking of the savage treatment treated meted out by Henry to the London Carthusians. Or the fate of the last abbot of Glastonbury. Writers like Fr. Philip Hughes and Eamon Duffy discussed this in great detail in THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND (Hughes) and THE STRIPPING OF THE ALTARS (Duffy).
Ad astra! Sean
Oh, Henry’s aims were quite venal - and his creditors were even more so. The man was a natural spendthrift. Which may explain why his daughter Elizabeth was equally notoriously tight-fisted.
The point is that there wasn’t much popular regret over it.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I don't entirely agree with that last point, about "lack of regret" for the destruction of the monasteries by Henry VIII. Eamon Duffy, in his book THE STRIPPING OF THE ALTARS, does make a good argument for saying the monasteries, and Catholic life in general in England, was not as moribund as older writers thought. A combination of Protestant propaganda with the police state terrorism of Elizabeth devastated English Catholicism.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: compared to Spain, Elizabethan England was a libertarian paradise.
English Catholics who kept their heads down and were ostentatiously loyal to the Crown got along reasonably well -- even centuries later, there were pockets of Catholicism among the nobility. The Calvert lords who founded Maryland are an example.
The problem was that the Papacy -- strongly allied with the Hapsburg kings of Spain -- publicly denounced Elizabeth as illegitimate, called for her assassination, and used the apparatus of the Church as an arm of the Spanish war against England and the priests (especially Jesuits) smuggled in from the continent worked for Spain as spies and subversives.
That being so, it's scarcely surprising that there was widespread anti-Catholic feeling, and that Protestantism became strongly identified with English nationalism and vice versa.
Catholics were distrusted because a lot of them actually were traitors and subversives working for the overthrow of English independence and for foreign enemies.
Elizabeth once said she wasn't interested in "making windows into men's souls" and was genuinely indifferent to theological niceties.
But political alignment with hostile foreign powers was a different matter altogether.
Not to mention the example of what was going on in the Netherlands at the same time, where a lot of English volunteers went to help the Dutch in their war of independence.
Catholics and Protestants had their roles in the time wars in THE CORRIDORS OF TIME.
The Time Patrol would have to prevent the assassination of Elizabeth and ensure the defeat the Armada.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I still disagree, because the Act of Supremacy of 1559 and the Oath it required of all the English, affirming that Elizabeth I was "supreme governor" of the Anglican Church if they wand to avoid the punishments for treason, made it impossible for convinced Catholics to take that oath. And that was only the beginning of a steadily harsher series of Penal Laws.
However unwise it was of the Papacy to do so, its denunciation of Elizabeth as illegitimate did not occur till at least ten years after her accession. Which makes me think the Popes of that time hoped to come to terms with her.
Btw, Elizabeth I was illegitimate. No one ever really believed the marriage of Henry VIII with Anne Boleyn was valid. And Henry had his tame Parliament declaring his "marriage" to her was null. Elizabeth's only real claim to the throne came from Parliament granting Henry the authority, during his life time, to fix the succession by will. With Henry then including Elizabeth as one of his heirs, after Edward and Mary.
If Elizabeth was going to treat "recusants" as traitors, I am not surprised that some actually became traitors. And the anti-Catholic Penal Laws became steadily harsher after 1559, culminating, in Elizabeth's reign, with he Jesuits, etc., Act of 1584. It has been estimated that from about 1580 onwards, at least 200 Catholics were put to death for their faith.
For the most part, however, these Catholics were not guilty of actual treason. St. Edmund Campion and his fellow Jesuits were even forbidden to meddle in any way in politics. They focused strictly on their pastoral duties.
Historians have quarreled over what Elizabeth truly believed, in matters of faith. With some arguing for her being a convinced Protestant, and others not being so sure, pointing out how she seemed to believe in Transubstantiation.
Ad astra! Sean
Catholics in Britain still had a siege mentality in my childhood in the 1950s.
Kaor, Paul!
Even AFTER just a bit more than 120 years after the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829? But merely abolishing legal burdens and disabilities would not abolish widespread anti-Catholic prejudices. That would take much longer to fade away.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
When I showed a Marist Brother some publicity about my father's promotion within his company, the Brother commented, "What positions Catholics can reach!" My father was not a Catholic at the time.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
The point being this Marist thought it striking or unusual for someone he thought was a Catholic to reach a ranking position.
Ad astra! Sean
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