Category: Epistemology

Artificial Intelligence, Carl Schmitt, Christianity, Economics, Epistemology, Hayek, Legitimacy, Political Theology, Religion, theology

Computational Theocracy
Creation of Robotic Adam - Stock Image - C002/8593 - Science Photo Library
Is God creating robots, or are robots creating God?

In considering technological theology, it is necessary to distinguish between what I refer to as transcendent theologies: belief, absolutes, or truth, and what I call lived theologies: scripture, ritual, mantra, holy places and order. Transcendent theologies are claims to higher knowledge, beyond what is possible in nature, in areas like life after death, and the existence of God (upper case ‘G’). Lived theologies are claims about how one should live in order to serve god (lower case ‘g’), what it means to live a good or successful life. Transcendent theologies in one sense do not matter to our life on earth; they are by definition unprovable, revealed to us through prophesy, and while they may inform our lived theology, they relate to a higher order of existence than that with which we are currently concerned. Lived theologies are extremely important, and while often informed by revealed religion, they predate all of the great modern religions. Each of us adheres to a lived theology, with some base understanding of right, and righteousness, whether that’s an altruistic, socially sensitive collectivism, or a Darwinist individualism. In each case we seek to advance our interests based on an understanding of the world, an evolved ontology – that is our lived theology.

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AI, Carl Schmitt, Church, Climate Change, Deleuze, Economics, Epistemology, Hayek, Legitimacy, Markets, neoliberalism, Ontology, Political Theology, Religion, theology, Truth

Epistemic Theology and Epistemic Technology
The 'Robotic Moment' | Essay by Sherry Turkle | Britannica
We are in what Sherry Turkle calls ‘the robotic moment’

In considering my proposal of technological theology as a waypoint in our current trajectory, from religious, political and economic theology, the idea of epistemic theology was brought to my attention in considering the grounding of Carl Schmitt. There have been questions about the theology of Schmitt (was he primarily Christian, or secular?), and some questions over whether political theology is about the politics of theology or the theology of politics; medieval political theology certainly appears to have been about the latter. Adam Kotsko suggests political theology is more concerned with the relationship between the two fields of theology and politics, though the consensus is moving towards what he calls a politically-engaged theology. My reading, reflects a range of kinds of theology, in that political theology is an ontological structure, allowing the world to be understood and engaged with. Just as Deleuze and Guattari argued that the role of the philosopher is to ‘create concepts’ (What is Philosophy?, 1991(FR), 1994(transl.), Columbia, p.5), so political theology is a way to understand the world, to understand the real in social, or more specifically political terms. It is, in Schmitt’s explanation, a secular theology (Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, Chicago UP, 1985/2005).

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Artificial Intelligence, Deleuze, Epistemology, Ontology, Technology

The Ontologies of Technology
Richard Lindner, Boy With Machine, 1954

In Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s 1991 book What is Philosophy?, the writers make the argument that philosophers are things of their time, creators of concepts through which the world can be interpreted. Philosophy, juxtaposed alongside science and art, provides the fundamental constructs that those disciplines require as a kind of prima terra, before any art can be made, or any science can be done. Philosophers, then, are in the business of creating ontologies.

This is of course a rejection of truth, at least in the absolute sense of the word. Richard Rorty distinguished between the concepts that ‘the truth is out there’ versus ‘the world is out there’. This goes all the way back to Wittgenstein and language, and the relations between the subject and the world: truth can only exist with language; and language can only exist with a subject. Therefore truth can’t exist ‘out there’, only the world can be out there – with its phenomenona (Husserl) and forms (Plato) and things-in-themselves (Kant).

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Bewilderment, Donald J Trump, Epistemology, Fukuyama, History, Human Rights, Philosophy, Philosophy of SCience, Postmodernism, Truth

The Philosophy of History and The Binary Wasteland
Image result for dead or alive poster original
Death, the ultimate opposition, is the one we choose to disregard.

Presence or absence, with us or against us, in or out: righteousness has dogged mankind in modern times. Confidence in ourselves, in our existence, in our being, as rightful, positive entities on this planet and in this universe, has dominated the human condition. And so we seek to dominate! Assertive and strong (for to be otherwise is wasteful and somehow wrong) our existential duty is to dominate and multiply, to spawn and own. We are – nay, I am – absolute. Who denies me this? Who would argue that my existence is not infinitely significant, eternally worthwhile? Just as I shall not deny others their entitlement, I shall have mine.

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Epistemology, Truth

Judgement, Certainty and Theories of Value

In a recent high court case in Ireland, a Judge in the High Court ruled in a precedent-setting decision that in delivering an ‘all-clear’ result from a cervical smear test, the lab should only do so in cases where they have absolute certainty. The language used has raised significant concerns, as such a threshold is seen as too high to reach. As cancer specialist Prof Donal Brennan told RTE, there’s very little that is absolute in medicine; one presumes he was thinking of death as the sole exception to the rule. The reaction briefly opened up a dialogue on science and knowledge, truth and epistemology, revealing a fundamental flaw in the human condition, and just as quickly it closed again.

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Artificial Intelligence, Epistemology, Uncategorized

AI Reshaping Reality

I finally did the TEDx talk at Ballyroan Library a few weeks ago, and the video has just been published. As I’ve considered the impact of technology on politics generally, and AI on society more specifically, it seems to me that the most significant impact is on meaning, and understanding, on our systems of knowledge and epistemology. This crystallised somewhat in the talk. It was necessary for the format to simplify the ideas somewhat. I think at least in part that worked.