Krispin the reason we wont to have computers that think, is because it will usher in the War with the Machines.
Heh, likely. But wouldn't that be cool all the same? Actually, I thought it'd be interesting to have a computer like that while studying Kant. He's really big into showing that what we perceive indeed is real, but is all the same only our filtered way of perceiving true, nouminal, things. He shows how people think, how we must think, to be human. Some of these concepts that we must have are space/time; we cannot but think spacially and temporally. We can say and think to imagine otherwise, but to understand anything empirically we have to know it. (I mean, try something like this. Try saying something about something out of time. You simply can't. Even metaphysically, I think, we're in the dark, as metaphysics can properly only help us with categories of our understanding - or is that reason that does such? I still have to study my Kant for finals. What would something be like out of time? Stopped? No, that's just stopped time. That's not seperate from time.) In the same way that the ideas of Self, World, and God, must exist as concepts at least so as to have any understanding as anything (God being, as I believe he calls it, the thourough determination of all disjuncts.) Anyway, when we program computers we're telling it what it sees, instead of letting it learn for itself what it sees. It'd be pretty cool. Because, after all, what seperates this cup on my desk from the desk? Why do we make that disctinction of it as an entity apart; why not seperate the plastic from the other parts? And if we hold those together, why not the desk as well? The answer is convenience, of course, but what it shows is that's how the human mind must think in order to conceive of anything at all empirically. But the idea of space and temporality are... not illusions, per say, because they are real, but they have meaning because this is how we perceive things. Without the human mind, this thing we call 'time' really has no meaning. These things are all just divisions of convenience that our minds draw, between such concepts as here and then. Nonetheless, it is all a neccessary filter so that we can perceive reality. Like watching a movie. Oh, the things that are filmed are real. But they're not the whole truth, are they? And yet to watch a movie things can't be anything but like that. You have to see things two dimensionally, never seeing behind the camera (even in a 3D movie). Does that make it less 'real'? No, not at all! Movies can bring across some very real things, and at least you know the actors are there, whether you see them in their three dimensions or not. And upon reflection of the way in which movies are made and we perceive them, we can understand that there is someone holding the camera; someone directing. Those things are not something we can empirically understand, but something upon reflection that becomes evident. Same goes for ourselves, eh? There are certain things that like outside empirical truths, ie. metaphysics, and those are arrived at by applying thought to ourselves and the manners of our thought. Yet when we make empirical statements about such things, we run into error. If we say 'the director has grey hair', because there is an actor we see whom we fancy must look like the director, we would be falling into error. The director may have grey hair; or he may not. We don't know. Of course, neither does that preclude the director telling us that he does, but that's another matter entirely.
By this it is, in fact, quite reasonable to say that to know the beginning of the universe is a logical impossibility. You cannot know the universe had a beginning because due to the nature of our understanding of space time to make such a statement is a leap in logic. It might have a beginning; it might not. Just like the concept of God, who might exist or might not (the concept is neccessary; the existence is not) the actual origin of the universe is technically unproveable. All we can say is that it was such and such really long ago. We can't say 'then it began' and more than 'here is where the universe ends.' Because that would assume the human mind could understand a disconnect between space and... what? To even ask that question is absurd! Essentially, it ends up making a statement about something we do not and cannot have knowledge about. Ah, Kantian philosophy! Love the stuff. Anyway, we've really got to program a Kantian computer, one that doesn't just come to the same solutions as we do, but actually thinks and learns like we do. And if that war must come, I'll fight it. The only question is, would it be wrong to kill machines?
Wait, why am I talking about this? Here? Darn it all, I got caught in a philisophical digression. Sorry guys. Culpa mea. Actually, no, you made the 'war against the machines' comment. Culpa tua.
