A Realistic Exploration into Nature “What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.”
Thomas Aquinas College published a ten-part YouTube series on AI, Mind and Machine by Michael Augros. A quick thumbnail is that machines cannot be intelligent, if what we mean by intelligent is what humans do, because machines (and other human-made artifacts) can only originate transitive motions (parts working externally on each other), and not immanent motions or operations, and all truly
Jorge Luis Borges, the intellectual's intellectual, begins his essay on the infinite, "Avatars of the Tortoise," with this: There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite. Of course the infinite would be worse than evil to an intellectual! It's a concept that evades all discourse: as soon as you
Today is the feast of Albertus Magnus, St. Albert the Great, patron saint of scientists. This week I listened to the recent Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World episode on "St. Albert the Great & Magic," which is a representation of a Justin Sledge episode. The episode contained the statement, which I've heard many times before, that Albert was probably the last person who knew all of human
Today is the feast of St. Robert Bellarmine. He had a famous meeting with Galileo in 1616 that was later popularized as "Galileo's first trial," but wasn't really a trial. There in reference to Galileo's heliocentricism, Bellarmine warned Galileo not to teach as definite what was still conjecture. It's notable that Galileo's "proofs" of the rotation of the Earth were questionable at best. For
To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the expanse proclaims his handwork. I recently ran across the ESVCE translation of Psalm 19, the beginning of which is above. I've taken the liberty of substituting the alternative translation of "the sky above," which the footnote says is equivalent in Hebrew to "the expanse", and invites comparison to Genesis 1:6-8
There's a meme going around observing how Hallmark movies tend to feature a female protagonist who falls for the quirky, useless but entertaining guy over the steady but boring guy who wants to provide for her (and presumably a family). (Not exactly fair: they also tend to make the boring guy a jerk to boot.) But that's a definite tendency in Hollywood romantic-comedies in general too. Clearly a
Physicist David Bohm reflects on how a fragmenting philosophy, like mechanism, even though mistaken, tends to become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy and to create fragmentation in the objective world: Of course, there are areas in which the production of fragments is relevant and appropriate (e.g., the crushing of stones for the making of concrete). But what we are discussing here is that
A video I saw on "Dijkstra on foolishness of Natural Language Programming" (April 11, 2025) helpfully exposed me to some of Dijkstra's ideas on language. It's a short piece, but I'd like to focus on the central paragraphs: In order to make machines significantly easier to use, it has been proposed (to try) to design machines that we could instruct in our native tongues. This would, admittedly,
Sabine Hossenfelder, whom I generally like and who's probably one of the most sane of the public physicists, thinks scientists have managed to measure qualia. I suppose it's inevitable a physicist will incur into philosophical territory. In this case, Dr. Hossenfelder has done so in the way that seems best calculated to display her ignorance of philosophy. Qualia are by their nature
I've been watching the series of interviews that Curt Jaimungal conducted of Jacob Barandes from Harvard. The first, which is probably the most exciting (bang for the buck), here, runs over two hours. I found the discussion scintillating and probably the best thing on approaches to quantum mechanics in quite some time. So far, I don't know much about Barandes's approach beyond what I've seen in
Once you realize that "I don't have what I need" is all that you need, then your life can begin.
Following up on the previous post, on Ex Machina (2014), one remarkable aspect of the film is the ease with which Caleb accepts the possibility, and even desirability, of an amorous relationship with Ava. Even if you've only seen photos, Ava is quite evidently a machine. It's her face with its realistic expressions that is human enough to traverse the uncanny valley and convince Caleb that he is
When I saw the ads for Ex Machina (2014) many years ago, I thought it was some sort of sex-robot fantasy with a pretentious, high-minded esthetic. Quite the contrary1, the film is thoughtful and well-made, and actually one of the best films of recent years, especially as regards artificial intelligence.2 I encourage you to see it if you have not. The terms of my discussion will be so vague that
I may get in trouble for this, but I mean nothing heterodox. Let me hasten to clarify: God of course is complete and perfect in himself, requiring nothing outside himself. But there's a sense in which he withdraws a bit to make room for each of us creatures. So that God plus me is a whole. In that sense, God is my "other half," my complement. He is present like my shadow, though it would be
As he declined into dementia, my father was always asking to go home. "Home" was at first the place where he grew up, the house on Lavender Avenue in Baltimore, to which he proposed to improbably walk all the way from Texas. Eventually "home" meant just going to bed in his room. But what he was really behind all these requests was the desire for his real home, the definitive Home, the One that
I have friends who complain about replacing "AD/BC" with "CE/BCE" (Common Era, Before the Common Era) for historical dates. True, it is ostensibly removing Jesus and Christianity from the calendar set up by Christians, the Gregorian Calendar, that is.2 But can you really blame people who aren't Christians from not wanting to say this is the year of "our Lord," which is what AD, Anno Domini,
The title might sound condescending, but "toy" is meant in a sense similar to that in a physicist's "toy model," an oversimplified version of a physical situation. Modern physics famously has its spherical cows. In contrast with the universe of his "scientific" descendants, the cosmos of Aristotle will undoubtedly strike modern people as small. His entire cosmos had its termination in the sphere
A long time ago when I was an undergraduate, I read Thomas Molnar's The Pagan Temptation. One of the take-aways that remains with me to this day is that the pagan temptation is Gnosticism, or neo-gnosticism. That's undoubtedly an over-simplification, but it's what sticks with me decades after having lost touch with my copy of the book. My apologies to Dr. Molnar, may he rest in peace. Molnar was
Thomas Nagel once wrote a famous paper "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", about how we really can't know what the internal, subjective experience of another radically different being is like, for example, an animal with a strange suite of senses, such as a bat. But have you ever wondered how utterly alien it must be to be the all-powerful, all-knowing Creator and Sustainer of all being? Saying "his
Alas, science fiction novelist Michael F. Flynn passed to his eternal reward on September 30. His daughter announced it through his blog on Sunday. Ed Feser has a fitting, heartfelt tribute on his blog. For my part I can only say a couple words. I appreciated Michael's comments on this, my irregular blog. As you can see from his comments on my last post, he was an insightful commentator with a
Just a hot take regarding this short video: A Bet Against Quantum Gravity (6.75 mins). I don't have the credentials in the field to evaluate the merits of Jonathan Oppenheim's research program. But I have a natural philosopher's gut instinct. I like very much the fact that Oppenheim's theory allows information to be destroyed. As he says of the black hole information paradox, "It's only a
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me. —Pascal, Pensées, 206 It's well known that the Milky Way in the Star Trek universe is surrounded by a barrier, as shown in the original series episodes "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and "By Any Other Name". But I recently learned that there is also a barrier around the far-away Star Wars galaxy too. But why? Why a galactic
I've been reading Garrigou-Lagrange's Providence. Perhaps its most foundational principle, highlighted in the first paragraph: The greater does not come from the less, the more perfect does not come from the less perfect, since the latter is incapable of producing the effect. [emphasis in original] Now, Providence is a great book that I highly recommend. But if would be anyway it could now
Recently re-read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. I was quite fond of it when I originally read it as an adolescent. I wasn't a fan of the 1982 movie The Secret of NIMH. It was missing the wistful quality of the ending because it dispensed with the plot thread about the rats' forced departure. There's something about being temporarily let in on a vanishing secret bigger than oneself. Reading it
In recent years I've from time to time heard the lament that the adults aren't in charge anymore, as they were for example in the middle of last century. Along the same lines it's been said of a good person in an otherwise irresponsible organization that he or she is "the adult in the room." Certainly there does seem to be of late a dearth of people willing to put aside their own peculiar