Mulling over in my mind this morning this latest offering from Prof. Brands, “Can AI ever be truly creative? Can humans?” I am struck by the following: Last night, after driving for 11 hours, sitting with a beer in hand, Game 7 of the National League Championship on television, I opened and read Prof. Brands’ recent “Ever Victoria! Part 25.” When I came across the line: “The board calls Lib Tilton; she lies for Beecher now as she has lain with him in the past. (‘You always find the adulteress with the adulterer,’ one cynical lawyer observes.),” I stopped and re-read it several times, because it was a pleasing word play, and I truly appreciate fine word-crafting by word crafters in what I read.
This morning’s essay sparked me to think that last night’s polysemy appealed to me on an emotional level because the use of double entendre appeals to our sense of humor in the same way puns do. And I could not help but think I did not believe I had before read or heard this juxtaposition of forms of the words “lie” and “lain” making this novel, thereby adding to my enjoyment.
Then, I started remembering two philosophy professors whose lectures and personal conversations surely influenced my conscious mind: Prof. Irwin Lieb and Prof. Robert Solomon. Prof. Solomon stressed the role of our emotions, noting that it is our passions, not our reason, which are capable of demonstrating to us the meaning and purpose of life. Prof. Lieb once told me that one has to already know 80% of the answer to ask the question.
I have later come to realize that Prof. Lieb may have come to that sage advice having read it from an older sage. But, to me, I always associate it with him.
I then wondered if buried somewhere in my subconscious was an earlier exposure to the notion that to protect our mind’s personal narrative of self we sometimes recall as facts things that were really not facts, such as telling lies about those with whom we have previously lain. Lo and behold, I found that Ernest Hemingway in “The Sun Also Rises” used something similar in describing the relationship between Brett Ashley and Jake Barnes. And Mike Nichols used it in the film “The Graduate” to describe the relationship between Benjamin Braddock and Mrs. Robinson. Both of which, somewhere in my amygdala, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex or reticular formation, or maybe in all of them, are neuron projections and reinforced synaptic gaps of both of these examples which last night jarred an emotional memory recalcitrant to extinction when I read and reread Lib Tilton’s line.
To have consciousness, the subjective state of awareness of self and the world, we have to have a neocampus. And in the end, it is all chemistry.
So to the extent that the carbon and other elements that make up us and artificially intelligent machines all come from the stars and miraculously (or serendipitously, if you prefer) were assembled during the course of 4.6 billion years on our blue planet Earth into what became us, and out of us these machines, the answer to Prof. Brands question may be amenable to knowing, but it may take us another eon of millenniums to find out.
Mulling over in my mind this morning this latest offering from Prof. Brands, “Can AI ever be truly creative? Can humans?” I am struck by the following: Last night, after driving for 11 hours, sitting with a beer in hand, Game 7 of the National League Championship on television, I opened and read Prof. Brands’ recent “Ever Victoria! Part 25.” When I came across the line: “The board calls Lib Tilton; she lies for Beecher now as she has lain with him in the past. (‘You always find the adulteress with the adulterer,’ one cynical lawyer observes.),” I stopped and re-read it several times, because it was a pleasing word play, and I truly appreciate fine word-crafting by word crafters in what I read.
This morning’s essay sparked me to think that last night’s polysemy appealed to me on an emotional level because the use of double entendre appeals to our sense of humor in the same way puns do. And I could not help but think I did not believe I had before read or heard this juxtaposition of forms of the words “lie” and “lain” making this novel, thereby adding to my enjoyment.
Then, I started remembering two philosophy professors whose lectures and personal conversations surely influenced my conscious mind: Prof. Irwin Lieb and Prof. Robert Solomon. Prof. Solomon stressed the role of our emotions, noting that it is our passions, not our reason, which are capable of demonstrating to us the meaning and purpose of life. Prof. Lieb once told me that one has to already know 80% of the answer to ask the question.
I have later come to realize that Prof. Lieb may have come to that sage advice having read it from an older sage. But, to me, I always associate it with him.
I then wondered if buried somewhere in my subconscious was an earlier exposure to the notion that to protect our mind’s personal narrative of self we sometimes recall as facts things that were really not facts, such as telling lies about those with whom we have previously lain. Lo and behold, I found that Ernest Hemingway in “The Sun Also Rises” used something similar in describing the relationship between Brett Ashley and Jake Barnes. And Mike Nichols used it in the film “The Graduate” to describe the relationship between Benjamin Braddock and Mrs. Robinson. Both of which, somewhere in my amygdala, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex or reticular formation, or maybe in all of them, are neuron projections and reinforced synaptic gaps of both of these examples which last night jarred an emotional memory recalcitrant to extinction when I read and reread Lib Tilton’s line.
To have consciousness, the subjective state of awareness of self and the world, we have to have a neocampus. And in the end, it is all chemistry.
So to the extent that the carbon and other elements that make up us and artificially intelligent machines all come from the stars and miraculously (or serendipitously, if you prefer) were assembled during the course of 4.6 billion years on our blue planet Earth into what became us, and out of us these machines, the answer to Prof. Brands question may be amenable to knowing, but it may take us another eon of millenniums to find out.