Sacred Sodding Cow

You'll sometimes hear that even the die-hard sceptics have a so-called "sacred cow", something which is excepted from their otherwise critical inquiry. The form of this can sometimes be surprising, like the otherwise-perfect scientist who nevertheless believes that the idea of God is perfectly compatible with their rationality. It recently occurred to me that I too have one, which no matter how rational I try to be, still nags at my intuition.

So I give you my holy cow: Sod's Law. Also known as Murphy's Law in the colonies, it concerns the perception of the world as generally contrary in nature. If something can go wrong, it will.

Clearly, this runs counter to the rational model of reality which would state that in a given situation in which there is an even chance of either of two outcomes, repeated trials should result in approximately even results. Sod's Law, however, states that if one of the two outcomes is less desirable than the other, that is the more likely to happen.

This is probably the result of a particular world-view, call it pessimism or cynicism perhaps. It would make sense that someone under the influence of this outlook would be more likely to commit confirmation bias, noticing only those times at which something does go wrong, and of course not mentally registering everything that goes smoothly. Even if one's mindset is less skewed than this, it is understandable that things "progressing as normal" would be less easily remembered than setbacks and general awkwardness.

I think this will just be an ongoing battle for me, having to continually remind myself of the actual odds involved, and that my desires do not have a direct effect on outcomes. It's comforting to know that I'm far from being the only one suffering from this misconception, and that it's really not all that bizarre.

The anti-progressive sceptic

It is a sad and oft-times tediously annoying fact that the word "sceptic" has many differing connotations. I've mentioned this before, but it's something I continue to come back to mentally so I thought I'd subject you all to it as well. Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, recently defined "skeptic" simply as "someone who insists on seeing the evidence" - I'm probably paraphrasing but that was the jist of it.

And here's the etymology. The Greek word "skepsis" has an ambiguous meaning also - which has somehow either found its way through to the present day, or is simply coincidentally re-asserting itself now. It could mean "doubt" or "inquiry"; I would say that Phil's definition falls under the latter of those, and sadly the general definition in the public mentality falls under the former.

This is certainly not helped by those who term themselves sceptics in relation to a particular controversy, such as climate change sceptics, moon landing sceptics, or AI sceptics. Unsurprisingly for those who know me, it's the latter on whom I wish to focus today - though much of what I say can be generalised. Use your discretion in this regard.

I don't know if John Searle has ever been explicitly termed an AI-sceptic, but he certainly is one. I'm currently writing an essay on his arguments against the Turing Test, and while they're very intelligent, eloquent and influential, one can't help but get the impression that he is simply against the idea of an intelligent machine or computer program from a very ideological perspective.

It has been suggested that Searle's objections to the possibility of machine intelligence will one day simply be made obsolete by the progress made in the scientific and technological fields; that he and his supporters will have to give up their position when faced with the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Eventually, proponents of AI claim, there will be a program which is capable of passing the unrestricted Turing Test. I find this a hard assertion to disagree with, as it's a little like denying that there could be intelligent life somewhere in the galaxy - it makes no sense to rule it out simply on the grounds of what we can observe today.

However, I don't think that any evidence will persuade "Searleans" away from their anti-AI prejudice, and Searle's Chinese Room Argument gives them the perfect excuse. It is based on a program that is capable of passing the unrestricted Turing Test, and as such, means that even if a machine did everything it could to fool you into thinking it was a human, the "AI-sceptics" are still able to deny that it thinks for itself, or understands in any way what it's saying and doing. The only reply one can give to this is to say that there is exactly the same amount of empirical evidence for the program's understanding as there is for a human's understanding.

This is the fundamental difference between sceptical doubt and sceptical inquiry - the former can lead to dogmatism and an arrogant refusal to face evidence and adapt one's ideas to suit. The latter is true open-mindedness, in the most beneficial sense. But I'll admit bias in that regard.

Chickens and Eggs

For one reason or another, there's a theme recurring in my thoughts today. It began on the bus ride to university, when I was contemplating the philosophy of language (as I am wont to do of a morning); one of the most interesting questions I've come across is where it meets the philosophy of mind. The question in its basic form is this:

Did our language evolve to reflect our concept of mind, or did our concept of mind grow out of the inaccuracies in our language?

The idea here is the possibility that phrases like "I have a body" mislead people into separating their identity from their physical presence - seeing one's body as a possession rather than as the root of the "self". The question here is asking whether this subtle nuance of the language grew out of our natural perception that we inhabit (rather than are) our bodies, or whether this perception itself came out of our habit of speaking this way. I'm inclined to say the former, but it's still a very interesting and thought-provoking question.

The second part of this continuing "Chicken and Egg" theme came when overhearing a conversation in the library about religion and morality. Someone was reporting someone else as saying that most contemporary morality originally comes from religion. They weren't drawing conclusions from this - just stating a fairly widely-held and generally uncontroversial view.

But it got me thinking: why would we assume this to be true, just because many of the laws of today's society (against murder, as a classic example) are also present in religion, which predates modern law? Do we not even think to consider what predates religion? This relates to Euthyphro's Dilemma, which asks:

Is something right because the God(s) approve of it, or do the God(s) approve of it because it is right?

I love Socrates. I think it's fairly clear to anyone who thinks objectively about these things that religious morality grew out of social morality - rules for living together harmoniously. Modern law then grew out of the influence of religious morality. It's generally a harmless mistake to fail to look beyond the initial cause to the root which gave rise to it, but in some insane rare cases, people are actually arguing that (for instance) atheists should be exempt from human rights, because morality comes from God. I'm not going to go into it here, but it may well come up in the future.

And on a final, frivolous note - the egg came first. Dinosaur eggs, anyone? Fish eggs? If you were to ask which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg, then the question might be a bit more interesting. But I'm just a pedant like that.

UPDATE: As regards the first question of language and the perception of the mind, there's been some research on it done recently. It would appear that there is evidence to support the idea that our language does in fact influence our understanding of things such as what it is to be alive. Via ScienceDaily.