Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!UCSD.EDU!pluto%beowulf From: pluto%beowulf@UCSD.EDU (Mark E. P. Plutowski) Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest Subject: Re: science, lawfulness, a (the?) god Message-ID: <19880903035109.4.NICK@HOWARD-JOHNSONS.LCS.MIT.EDU> Date: 3 Sep 88 03:51:00 GMT Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 55 Approved: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu To: comp-ai-digest@ucsd.edu Path: sdcsvax!beowulf!pluto From: Mark E. P. Plutowski Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest Subject: Re: science, lawfulness, a (the?) god Summary: God didn't design the universe... Keywords: God, ai, Elvis Date: Tue, 30 Aug 88 18:37 EDT References: <19880830031753.2.NICK@HOWARD-JOHNSONS.LCS.MIT.EDU> Sender: nobody%sdcsvax@ucsd.edu Reply-To: Mark E. P. Plutowski Organization: EE/CS Dept. U.C. San Diego Lines: 40 Regarding this quote from a previous posting: > ...the "quotation" from Einstein ...is just a restatement of... > the argument... [that goes something like this:] > ..."the universe appears to have been > designed, therefore there was a designer. I shall call it god." > How silly! In its refined form, this argument posits god as a > "primary cause": this makes god "beyond" natural law, as an > explanation for natural law. It is trivially refuted by pointing > out that it begs the question. (If the universe requires a > cause, why shouldn't god require a cause? And if not, why > presume god anyway?) God didn't design the universe, God is the universe. Therefore, God is everywhere (just like Elvis ;-} ) and everything is God, including you and me. Very simple. If you accept this philosophy, then it is easier to accept the belief that AI is plausible, since by the same token, intelligence doesn't "cause" a being (or mechanism) to behave intelligently, intelligence is the behavior, and hence, the being (and/or mechanism) itself. Therefore, hope springs eternal that this "intelligence" is not some elusive spirit or ether; and can be studied rationally. At the same time, since intelligence is the whole behavior, decomposing the behavior into its parts is only a part of the solution to understanding it, just as separating God from the universe (creating a separate entity called God) can inhibit you from passing thru the proverbial "eye of the needle," and understanding your particular universe. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Plutowski INTERNET: pluto%cs@ucsd.edu Department of Computer Science, C-014 pluto@beowulf.ucsd.edu University of California, San Diego BITNET: pluto@ucsd.bitnet La Jolla, California 92093 UNIX:{...}!sdcsvax!beowulf!pluto ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Listen to your surroundings and your self, instead of Jimmy Swaggert.