QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

advocated by Aristotle – i.e. put reasoning and communication back into a context. 386
In general terms, the approach adopted by natural science which concentrates on the universal
natural laws that rule external reality can be said to be reminiscent of pre-Socratic times in
antiquity. It was only during the blooming of ancient thought that Plato and Aristotle began to
pay more attention to humans. Over and above the general laws and principles, the scientific
approach should include what was unique and possible. Internal human experiences and the
meaning attached by each person to these are obviously individual and often unique, but at the
same time, they are not formed at random. Even though traditional Newtonian science had no
tools to handle this kind of conformity to laws, nothing needs to stand in the way of developing
scientific method so that we would better learn to understand and handle the contextual processes
of reality that take place inside humans.
The concentration on nature’s objective processes has resulted in less attention being paid to
intrinsic and regulative functions of the human mind. The question of the character and
significance of each person’s psychic and spiritual talents has however become more relevant
than previously when, as a result of research into artificial intelligence, more has begun to be
said about learning and thinking machines. Technologically-oriented utopian researchers into the
future have already announced the birth of tekno sapiens, a new species. “Thinking machines”
will be able to take over troublesome routine mental tasks and they also can solve all the
problems of humankind by joining us or by taking over man’s position as the intelligent
controller of this earthly kingdom. Increasingly often, this kind of biased vision of the future has
also awakened consideration of the deeper problems of human existence. Are people just
technologically determined robots bound to obey externally imposed laws, or are they able to
make their own decisions about their future development?
Even though defenders of machine intelligence condemn their critics as paying romantic and
irrational attention to some special biological or psychical features, human choice and
responsibility cannot be ignored in technological development. Even if both machines and
humans could be thought of as “products” of a material evolution, all development hardly takes
place automatically. To a significant extent, humans seem to be able to choose the type of future
they construct: i.e. the types of machine they develop and the limits of the power that these
385 Saariluoma 2001, 26-48. Revonsuo 2001, 51-52, 60.
386 Devlin 1997, viii-ix, 82-83, 260-270. Referring to the established mathematician Gian-Carlo Rota, Devlin argues
that the day will come when currently vague concepts such as motivation and purpose will be made formal and
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