reasoning with unknowns

Society Religion & Philosophy
1

Everybody here has done it. Ninety percent of those who frequent Religion are here to demonstrate the superiority of their faith. shia, sunni, wahhabi, ahmedi, christian, hindu, atheists.. all faith based creeds, each one of them.

We bicker back and forth, gloating in percieved victories. But what is a victory in these matters? Where you argue with one until he stops responding most often. but do you ever convert someone this way?

eventually, the beaten fall back to faith. the victors, on another day will do the same. and one should too. many a time I’ve been outdebated by an athiest, and eventually i find an answer to it, even years later. everyone has their moments when the only thing holding them to their religion is their faith in its correctness.

and that is the fundamental flaw of all our reasonings. we reason, when the basis of our religion is faith.

we lack a language for faith. we lack conditionals, negations.. we lack mechanisms to manipulate faith. and so we fall back on reasonings.. when reason has absolutely nothing to do with faith. you start believing once reason falls behind.

that story we often hear.. when Ibrahim (as) destroyed the idols and played the picket in the hand of the largest God. We laugh at the powerlessness of their idols, logically to us, it seems that their god was powerless to defend himself, how could he create the world. But then, everyday we see in these forums athiests making fun of Allah. Allah today gets more invective than any other entity. Doesnt the same question apply there too? perhaps you say that their words dont injure Allah, but then again, that entity broken in the temple isnt the actual god for them either. its an image. you dont shatter gods through their images.. atleast if they see it as an image.

Ibrahim (as) might have targeted the faith of these people. he might have spoken that language that people hear when they adopt a faith. perhaps to those people the idols were the Gods, not their representatives.

but we have forgotten that language, or i have. does anyone here know how to speak about faith without bringing reason in?

or

have i missed something. is there some way to base your faith on reason? is it possible to come up with rational justifications for everything we believe in? i suspect not.. i always think that the mathematical proof of undecidebility of absolute truth is the logical basis of faith. but i’d be happy to be proven wrong.

2

as Imam Hamza Yusuf said in one of his lectures that I was fortunate enough to attend, debates and harsh arguments never get the point across....
he gave the anology of a football match and said, if team A goes and plays against team B and wins, will the fans of team B convert to team A fans????
no, they will simply say, loud or within their hearts, "u won today, we'll get u tomorrow"....
and the hatred within will intensify....

3

When we talk about reasoning, I think the very basic question we must ask ourselves is, what is intelligence? We should not only ask this question but also try our best to answer it. It is possible to answer this question but how many of us can?

Perhaps we should start a new thread for it to discover some interesting links related to intelligence.

4

MMughal, you can talk about intelligence here. I would appreciate your own thoughts though.. links are distracting. i'd prefer a discussion not an education :)

5

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by armughal: *
as Imam Hamza Yusuf said in one of his lectures that I was fortunate enough to attend, debates and harsh arguments never get the point across....
he gave the anology of a football match and said, if team A goes and plays against team B and wins, will the fans of team B convert to team A fans????
no, they will simply say, loud or within their hearts, "u won today, we'll get u tomorrow"....
and the hatred within will intensify....
[/QUOTE]

that is completely true..

6

Like all things that exist the brain also has properties of its own which define it or if you like describe it.

So if the question is, what is intelligence? The answer has to be the ability of the brain. Since all abilities of anything are for some reason/s so what function does the ability of the brain serve? The answer has to be so that the brain is able to process the information. Since anything that does something does it for a reason, so for what reason the brain has to process the information? The answer has to be to survive.

This is THE PRIMARY reason that makes a computer different from the brain otherwise computer has a memory and ability to process information as well as can sense information and react to it but has no purpose other than what we humans assign to it by means of its hardware and software ie components and programs. In other words humans invented computers so that they serve their purpose and not to become their own boss like humans.

This simple explanation raises questions that take us into various directions. For example, are we able to design the computers that could exist for themselves? The answer is we certainly can because we have the idea from our own existence. However, do we have the necessary technology to do so just now? The answer is no we have not.

The question is, what are we ourselves or how exactly do we function as biological machines? The answers as they come through our reseach and exploration help us decide how we too can design machines that could be like ourselves.

For example, how do we know that brain processes information for survival? The answer is that when we observe and analyse the brains and bodies and the environments in which they exist and interact that gives us vast information to answer such like questions.

For example, if a human did not get air to breathe, drink to quench its thirst or food to satisfy its hunger then we know it cannot survive. This means to ensure its continuous existence it must prioritise its necessities for existence at any given time in any given place or situation or circumstances. This is wherein come internal and external body senses, sensors or detectors that help a human brain to find, plan and execute information for ensuring its continuous exitence for failing onmly means death. Thus human brain if you like is hardwired for survival and reproduction and this is what decides its priomary purpose ie its own existence. Anything else is secondary.

If this is the case with humans then what will make computers like ourselves? The computers can be like ourelves if we build and program them for their own survival. Whether that will be a sensible thing to do is another question but we are certainly moving towards the knowhow to be able to do so. More perhaps later

regards and all the best.

7

// once read some where that, we can never argue with shaitaan, he will always defeat us in argument even the most muttaqi/knowledgeable person of our age.//

Is it because that there are many unknown unknowns and known unknowns -:)

8

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by RashGuy: *
there are many unknown unknowns
[/QUOTE]
If its unknown then how do you know that it even exists? :)

Anyway, irreverence aside, my view is that, and I think I have said it a few times here, that people don't visit an online discussion forum to convert. They are here to exchange ideas. Those who think by posting long cut-pastes, cajoling and finally insulting people of other faith, they will somehow convert them live in a proverbial fool's paradise. Or maybe they are immature that they don't know better. In either case, they better spend their time in more productive manner.

The best use for online forums is to present your beliefs and learn about other's. That way hopefully you can talk somewhat intelligently and in a more comprehensive manner in future. Right now most people here come across as single-track horses.

9

Re: reasoning with unknowns

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by ravage: *
have i missed something. is there some way to base your faith on reason? is it possible to come up with rational justifications for everything we believe in?
[/quote]
You see Allah [swt] and Prophet has told the reasons of a few things and had not told reasons for others. So the one which we know, we are sure about them and the one which we dont know we [learned people] may think of s'thing which could be a justification for that but we cant be sure abou them.

10

to survive? if the sole purpose of the brain was survival we wouldnt have our higher desires. for what distinguishes our brain from that of the animals? they are hardwired to survived, we seem to demand more than just eating drinking and reproducing.

You contend that brains are biological machines, biological computers. I’m not so sure about it.

It remains an open research question whether there is a purely mechanical basis for the mind or not. It is also an open research question whether or not we will ever be able to come up with anything close to human intelligence through computers. not in our lifetimes i’d wager.

Turing’s halting problem, Godel’s theorems, the chinese translator problem, all of these question the existence of machine ‘intelligence’, intelligence in the sense of the human one. Scientists suspect that human intelligence has one source in intuition, for which there is no mathematical model of.

In the meanwhile AI has all but lost the battle for coming up with Mini-me. Neural networks were ambititious once, now they’re a niche machine learning technology. Name me a single technology you see hope for, as something that would eventually achieve human intelligence. Until then, your contention are founded on faith, not reason :).

This is not to say that we’ve completely given up the ghost on creating our spitting mental images. Marvin Minsky, the sole shining star for true AI, where the I is meant to be literal, still writes, still has ideas. I’d recommend his website to you, and his latest book, which is available online (the emotion machine)

http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/E1/eb1.html

read this. its very well written. but when you do, i suspect that like me, you’ll find that a system designed in this way, would still lack shockingly in almost every aspect of human intelligence that exists in the most dull toddler.

11

while we're at it mmughal, answer me this.. if you were to design a very intelligent computer, capable of the same computational power as the human brain (which today's super computers are..).. if you were to give it a purpose, such that it would match the human brain in function, what purpose would you give it? you mentioned survival, clearly that is insufficient. what would the purpose be?

12

Dear ravage,

Thank you very much for your valuable views and yes for the very intersting link as well. It is very interesting in the sense that it covers what I wanted to bring to peoples' attention. It save me a lot of bother.

Dear friend I did not say that survival was the sole purpose of human beings, of course there are other goals that are part of this purpose. However, this remains the fundamental purpose. Whatever we do is ultimately contributing to our survival in some respect. If we are exploring space, it is for our long term future.

Coming to computers and human beings, the differences are obvious but they are not impossible to reduce as the time passes and we progress in all kinds of ideas and technologies.

1) The basic computer is a central processing unit which is responsible for procesing all kind of data. So we have a bit of human being to some degree in this sense.

2) We also are familiar with transducer technology whereby we are able to detect some sort of changes in our environment at least eg we have invented temprature, vision and sound etc detectors or sensors.

Since human brain is very fast when it comes to processing information which it receives from very sensitive as well as wide ranging sensors and has the ample storage capacity, at the moment it cannot be matched. However, there is no reason to not to believe that one day all this will become possible provided we can increase the procesor speed as well as invent such transducers as are able to carry out similar fucntions as the human sensors do and likewise the data storage devices.

All I am saying is that we are on the right track but the track length depends upon the speed of our reseach and exploration, which in turn depends upon funding of such projects. That means if these kinds of projects found some use then they will get funding otherwise they will be left on the back burner and may even never materialise.

So the whole idea boils down to a workable theory ie such a thing is clearly a possibility but by no means a necessity. I am unlikely to be around in another 10, 20 years so I cannot say it will happen in my life time but if you are a young man as I assume that you are then you are likely to see great advances in science as I have witnessed them in my life time and good luck to you.

The main point to remember is that we have yet to develop such transducers that could detect such data as triggers so called rangeful emotional response as well as the mechanisms that could show that response. You have to agree that we have covered a lot of ground but I agree that there is still a long way to go.

As to your question, what purpose I would give to a computer, I think it will not be right for human bings to create machines that could take over humans. It will be like signing our own death warrant. It is therefore better to create more powerful computers but they must serve our purpose and not be given the ability to live independent of ourselves.

Regards and all the best

13

MMughal,

May you live long enough to see yourself proven wrong :).

my point is that current computing technology far outstrips biological information processing. there is a vast amount of research on emotional agents, I spent six months of my life working on them with two of the top researchers in the world. Atleast we could simulate human intelligence? we honestly dont even come close.

I used to attach myself to the same school of people who invested a great deal of mental energy to figuring out a way to make intelligence happen. it hasnt. given the current state of technology, it wont.

Godel, the great mathematician who proved that within a strictly logical system propositions could be designed that could neither be proved right nor wrong, and so closed the gate on the mathematical formulation of every single thing in the world. for some things there is no logical basis, there is none for intuition. and according to Godel, one of the greatest mathematicians of the last century, the essence of human thought and its superiority over mechanical machines might be intuition.

Regarding computers taking over us, we always have Asimov's laws to fall back on. but I had another point. My point was, that even if you had the capability to design a machine that operated like the human mind, what purpose could you possibly give it, to cause it to behave the way it does. think about that for a minute. there is no simple answer to it, leave that, there is no complex answer to it. our entire basis for existence, our reason for being the way we are, that purpose that is hardwired into us, where does that come from? from simple, animalistic urges.. no. there is the element of the superior in us that cannot be explained in base terms.

and can you still say then that there is no higher being..

14

ravage, so u r saying that Johnny Five was fake ? :teary2:

15

Dear ravage,

Thanks again for responding.

In my view to create intelligence like that of humans is a very real possibility though I agree that current state of things is not condusive to produce results that I am talking about. Nonetheless future evelopments in all fields of science and technology cannot be ruled out.

As a scientist you are well aware of the fact that theories change, mathematical models improve and so many new things come about of which people of the past generations are not even aware.

When I was in school science was a single subject, by the time my children went to school it was three separate subjects and now when my grandchildren are in school even those fields have become further subdivided ie we have so many kinds of biology eg plants, animals, human etc or for that matter physics and chemitry.

Mathematics also have improved a great deal. Evolution theory is no longer what it was any more. So what we have not thought so far we cannot rule it out and only time will tell how far our present thinking is correct or incorrect. Likewise the research on brain is only beginning so we do not know how far we will go into that. Nonetheless as we have come to know a great deal about human body so we will come to know about the brain as well.

So far much research has gone into finding out how vision works so that we could help blind people see. The device has been developed that plugs into brain but resolution is very poor but race is on to find better and electronic eye for the blind. Likewise things will take their time. To develop human intelligence is not impossible at all, for even intuition one day will become a known thing, for after all something is triggering it. It has to arise from within the brain and only and only due to what brain contains in form a data or if you like information.

Finally, if you are trying to tell me that because we do not understand human brain fully at the moment therefore there is some other factor involved in all this, I am sorry I cannot accept that. I do not believe in mysteries of this kind regardless how big the mystery the brain may be. It will be explored to its full and people will be able to manipulate its parts as they are doing with the human body parts. Not only that but they are even trying to design artificial body parts. It is all matter of time as I said in my very first post. As a scientist it is important that you keep an open mind as regard future developments.

regards and all the best.

16

Dear chachoo,

Jonny six is on its way and that is real???? So don't panic yet!

regards and all the best.

17

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by MMughal: *
Dear ravage,

Thanks again for responding.

In my view to create intelligence like that of humans is a very real possibility though I agree that current state of things is not condusive to produce results that I am talking about. Nonetheless future evelopments in all fields of science and technology cannot be ruled out.

As a scientist you are well aware of the fact that theories change, mathematical models improve and so many new things come about of which people of the past generations are not even aware.

When I was in school science was a single subject, by the time my children went to school it was three separate subjects and now when my grandchildren are in school even those fields have become further subdivided ie we have so many kinds of biology eg plants, animals, human etc or for that matter physics and chemitry.

Mathematics also have improved a great deal. Evolution theory is no longer what it was any more. So what we have not thought so far we cannot rule it out and only time will tell how far our present thinking is correct or incorrect. Likewise the research on brain is only beginning so we do not know how far we will go into that. Nonetheless as we have come to know a great deal about human body so we will come to know about the brain as well.

So far much research has gone into finding out how vision works so that we could help blind people see. The device has been developed that plugs into brain but resolution is very poor but race is on to find better and electronic eye for the blind. Likewise things will take their time. To develop human intelligence is not impossible at all, for even intuition one day will become a known thing, for after all something is triggering it. It has to arise from within the brain and only and only due to what brain contains in form a data or if you like information.

[/quote]

You have faith then in our eventual ability to design artificial minds. I dont :).

As for eventually understanding intuition you may have a point there.

[quote]

Finally, if you are trying to tell me that because we do not understand human brain fully at the moment therefore there is some other factor involved in all this, I am sorry I cannot accept that. I do not believe in mysteries of this kind regardless how big the mystery the brain may be. It will be explored to its full and people will be able to manipulate its parts as they are doing with the human body parts. Not only that but they are even trying to design artificial body parts. It is all matter of time as I said in my very first post. As a scientist it is important that you keep an open mind as regard future developments.

regards and all the best.
[/QUOTE]

MMughal, my belief in God does not occur from the fact that we do not understand the brain yet. Instead it is strengthened from the fact that the purpose, which you so correctly identified as the essencial difference between human and artificial life, is not organic. It is not based on any of the principle urges that we see our 'predecessors' a product of. Think of any of our primary urges, think of the urges of our supposed predecessors. We can explain the 'purpose' of everything else, why not for ourselves?

(btw we've completely derailed the thread from what it was supposed to be on. but i guess theres another one on it.. so i'll post my thoughts there)

18

Dear ravage,

Thank you for your kind response and sorry for derailing your thread.

Here are some links that you may like to visit if you have some time on your hands.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00042F0D-1A0E-1085-94F483414B7F0000&chanID=sa008

http://www.holysmoke.org/icr-cult.htm

Sciforums - world events, science, religion, philosophy, and technology.?

It was nice to exchange a few words with you and thank you very much for your participation it was educational for me.

My regards and best wishes.

19

mmughal it was good talking to u..

http://www.wikiworld.com/wiki/index.php/Truth