Answer from the Viewpoint of
Rational Machines The questions to open the discussion were: Q1. What is the philosophic and ethical challenge of the
physical, chemical, biological... sciences today with regard to human freedom
and the 'laws' (?) that should regulate our actions? What is the
meaning of 'natural law' today and can we take it as an analogy (?) in the
field of morality? are there other alternatives? In case we
would be able to construct an Artificial Person, we would have to address these
points, too. So, as we are – conceptually - able to simulate life as a
mathematical process, we are confronted with the consequences of the extent of
ethical attitudes within the consciousness of this living organism. An ethical
rule is in an autoregulated system a rule of behaviour. (It does this because
it {usually, normally, always, …} believes this to be the right thing to
do.) We deduct an ethical system from the actions of an agent. Therefore, if we
lay down rules of behaviour for an artificial intelligence, we lay down its
ethics. Asimov has looked quite deeply into this philosophical question (in his
theory of robots, as expressed in many of his works.) If the living
organism is an abstract cell, we could think its ethic to be directed towards
survival, growth and reproduction. “Recreate and multiply” is a
quite strong, basic, ethical rule. In a more complex environment, optimality of
reproductive success can be achieved by further rules, which can be subservient
or concurrent (in different hierarchical relations). (e.g. in order to avoid
retaliatory extermination, do not kill unless in self-defence) This
discussion gives us room to design the ethics of an artificial intelligence. Q1. What is the philosophic and ethical challenge of the
physical, chemical, biological... sciences today with regard to human freedom
and the 'laws' (?) that should regulate our actions? What is the
meaning of 'natural law' today and can we take it as an analogy (?) in the
field of morality? are there other alternatives? If an
agreement is reached that biologic organisms (including humans) act and react
along rational rules, this has the consequence that the shamanic class of
services suffers a crisis of legitimacy. If any thinking person can deduct the
rules of good behaviour, there is no need for specially anointed transmitters
of the divine (irrational, non-understandable, transcendent) Will. Q2. What is the philosophic and ethical challenge of
modern information technology with regard to human freedom? How far do
we conceive the 'cyberspace' or, more generally speaking, the potential
digitization of all phenomena (human and non human) as a (the?) condition for
understanding them, and what does this mean with regard to human behavior? More
specifically: do we conceive ourselves eventually as information processing
devices?, and if yes, what follows with regard to artificial digital devices
that we are creating now and in the future? Freedom is,
statistically, unpredictability. The extent of predictability is given by
Nature (as long as we believe the natural numbers to be a gift of Nature)
through some numeric interweave-patterns that explain the co-regulation of a
quasi-fluid matter emitting electrical bursts. The case of a
human making a decision based on his free will is a special case of the
predictability of the properties of the next state out of the properties of the
present state. How fixed is the future, generally? The answer to this lies in
the structure of our basic concepts. (If one grows up in a very strict
environment, his opinion of the world will be that it is a non-chaotic system.)
We learn our basic concepts - on the rational level – as we go to
elementary school. If the (system of rational concepts about the) world has
been presented to us as a place where nothing happens by itself, we shall have
a static idea about the world. (see: Trying to find
a compromise between the Newtonian idea of a natural, predictable state (idle,
etc.) and biology, which is anything but idle, and in some fashions less, in
some fashions more predictable than the non-living nature, one finds that
predictability is the interplay between what is now and what will be. Counting
now, how many diverse kinds of “now” there are and how many diverse
kinds of “will be” there are, one finds that the interdependences
are more-dimensional and quite complex. The main challenge for information
theory is to create an artificial organism that has moods (urges, needs) that
can be satisfied by more than one possible action. The good news is that the
problem can be solved. Q3. What does it mean for human beings to be able to
behave in a global digital world in which time and space seem to disappear?
What are the consequences of our doing for the whole planet? How can we create
rules of action that are accepted by all human beings in order to achieve a
global sustainable (physical and cultural and economic...) development without
deleting all differences that makes human life worth living? As the lasting
maximal congruence between Sollwert and Istwert cannot be achieved (due to some
number theoretical voodoos), there can be no winning strategy (specifically no
single winning strategy). If there would exist a good (or slightly better)
strategy how to live (procreate and multiply), we would see it everywhere,
winning. So, it is useless to look for The General Solution. It is puzzling
whether this or the next generation can build an elite among those who can
communicate (via the internet) and whether this elite will achieve a critical
mass to try to impose (sell, educate) its ideas on the whole of the population.
One should not overemphasise the internet. Now we have recreated the situation
in Athen where the well-educated and open-minded burghers spent time chewing
philosophical questions like we do. They were within hearing distance to each
other and could interact on the spot. This is the state we have regained. We sit
again on the agora and hear each other and can reply immediately. Let us hope we
are as well-motivated and investigative-minded as they were. ____________ Virus checked by G DATA AntiVirusKit Version: AVK 16.5960 from 07.03.2006 Virus news: www.antiviruslab.com |
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