Philosophy and the Problem of Computers

The philosopher Gordon Clark once said, "If a truth, a proposition, or a thought were some physical motion in the brain, no two persons could have the same thought. A physical motion is a fleeting event numerically distinct from every other. Two persons cannot have the same motion, nor can one person have it twice. If this is what thought were, memory and communication would be impossible…It is a peculiarity of mind and not of body that the past can be made present. Accordingly, if one may thing the same thought twice, truth must be mental or spiritual. Not only does [truth] defy time; it defies space as well, for if communication is to be possible, the identical truth must be in two minds at once. If, in opposition, anyone wished to deny that an immaterial idea can exist in two minds at once, his denial must be conceived to exist in his own mind only; and since it has not registered in any other mind, it does not occur to us to refute it."

But every single one of his assertions is nullified by the existence of computers. Two computers can indeed have the same thought, or one so similar in each machine that it defies differentiation to all intents and purposes. Two computers can have the same motion, and each of them can replicate that state indefinitely. Memory and communication obviously remain possible, as do immaterial ideas that exist in two (or more) minds at once. In fact, this post, if considered an immaterial idea, will soon register on many different servers in many different places, all at once.

The Clark quotation can be found in Ronald Nash's 1994 book, Faith and Reason: Searching for a Rational Faith, in which Nash states a six-point defence of truth. A quick reading of this tome, followed by a quick re-reading of other related issues, convinces me that almost all philosophers have a blind spot which has to do with their audience. Essentially, philosophers are writing for a human audience, and so their thoughts are limited to what humans can understand, evaluate, or otherwise process. This can still be pretty strong, sometimes, since you can convert many such arguments into symbols and have a computer evaluate them.

The problems begin to surface when you substitute the implicit or explicit human audience with an audience of computers. You might not be able to duplicate, clone, or replace chunks of memory perfectly in a human — but you can do this with computers. In theory (well, information theory, anyway), you can do many more things with computers reliably than with humans, when it comes to information. The only escape is to assert that a computer doesn't think and hence cannot be used to answer philosophical questions about mind and God, while asserting that this 'idiot-savant non-thinking data-processing' ability is different for humans.

That, however, is a point not of philosophy, but of faith. I have no problem thinking of this as an article of faith, but I think it is dishonest to sell it as a premise on which to base rigorous systems of philosophy.