Meditations of the Machine

I have long been interested in linguistics, philosophy of mind, and spirituality, but in the past few years I have become particularly intrigued by how they pertain to the pursuit of artificial intelligence.

Another of my long-time interests is alchemy. The study of what it means to be human and the attempt to build machines more like us ultimately come together in the hypothesis that spirit is an epiphenomenon of matter.

I am starting this blog as a way to organize and store research for two of my writing projects. The first, tentatively titled The Meditations of the Machine, is a fictional critique of Descartes’s mind-body problem. The second is a nonfiction book on the future of human consciousness in the age of AI, which will provide an overview of literature on philosophy of mind, AI, and robotics, and then attempt to fill the gaps that other authors have left between mind and spirit, carbon and silicon.

Despite its title, Ray Kurzweil’s Age of Spiritual Machines never discusses the notion of a robo sapiens soul as overtly as one would like. I hope to cast some more light on the matter on this blog and in my two projects.

Filed by webmaster at 4:10 pm under Uncategorized