Chatbots on My Essays on Donald Hoffman, Rupert Sheldrake and Sheldon Cooper (2)

 

(1) ‘Donald Hoffman’s Eye Candy’ (2) ‘Analysing Rupert Sheldrake’s Tests on the Paranormal’ (3) ‘Why the Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper Gave Up on String Theory’

Image by Chat GPT.

‘Donald Hoffman’s Eye Candy: Conscious Realism’s Mathematical Models’

Analysis and Summary

This essay critically examines Donald Hoffman’s claim that his philosophical position of “conscious realism” is supported by “mathematically precise theories” and “mathematical models.” The author notes that while Hoffman frequently invokes mathematical language, he rarely defines what he means by “mathematical models” or provides concrete examples. The essay identifies a tension in Hoffman’s position: he is an #idealist who denies that brains and neurons exist unperceived, yet his mathematical models of “conscious experiences” often resemble the third-person, physicalist approaches of neuroscience and psychophysics that he rejects.

The essay questions what work mathematics actually does in Hoffman’s theory. While mathematics can describe almost anything — even the random positions of thrown cards — the author asks whether Hoffman’s mathematical symbols genuinely explain consciousness or merely dress up speculative philosophy. Hoffman compares his project to Turing’s formalism for computation, asking whether a simple formalism can handle all aspects of consciousness and “boot up space, time, and matter.” The essay treats this as potentially a category mistake.

The essay then discusses mathematical models as idealisations, noting that all models simplify and idealise, but some go too far. Hoffman’s models — depicting “conscious agents” using symbols like W (world), X (experience), and G (action), later expanded to sextuples including P, D, A, and N — are presented as examples. The author argues these are little more than charts or graphs with mathematical-sounding labels, raising questions about why only these variables, why a single experience and action, and how such models account for embeddedness and externalist views of mind.

The essay concludes sceptically, suggesting Hoffman’s “mathematical models” may amount to little more than the use of mathematical symbols placed in graphs. While not equating Hoffman’s work with the pseudo-mathematical writings of Julia Kristeva or Jacques Lacan, the author argues his symbols are largely gratuitous and may serve to “tart up” speculative philosophical positions rather than provide genuine mathematical rigour. The analysis maintains a neutral tone, neither endorsing nor condemning Hoffman’s project outright, but consistently questioning the substantive role of mathematics within it.

— By DeepSeek

Original essay here: https://paulaustinmurphypam.blogspot.com/2020/01/donald-hoffmans-eye-candy-conscious.html

‘Analysing Rupert Sheldrake’s Tests on the Paranormal’

Analysis and Summary

This essay critically examines Rupert Sheldrake’s The Science Delusion, focusing on his paranormal research claims. The author argues that Sheldrake’s book lacks sufficient evidence, contains faulty logic, and makes philosophical errors. Key points include:

Mainstream Science: Sheldrake claims mainstream science ignores paranormal phenomena, yet he himself cites parapsychology units at several universities. His complaint is that these are niche departments rather than integrated into standard science.

Card-Guessing Tests: Sheldrake cites Duke University trials showing a 21% hit rate versus 20% chance. The author questions why telepathy wouldn’t produce stronger results and notes that Sheldrake dismisses laboratory conditions as unnatural compared to real-life #telepathy.

Dream Telepathy: Examples include a subject dreaming of buying boxing tickets while a sender viewed a boxing match, and another dreaming of a dead rat while the sender viewed a dead gangster. The author argues these could be coincidences and that symbolic connections allow limitless interpretation.

Electrodermal Activity: Sheldrake claims skin responses occurred before emotional images appeared. The author suggests this could result from anticipation rather than precognition.

J.W. Dunne: Sheldrake claims Dunne forgot dreams about future events but recorded them upon waking. The author notes Sheldrake provides no evidence these dreams accurately foretold events.

Telephone Telepathy: Sheldrake surveyed people who claimed to know callers before answering. The author argues his test was artificial, selectively used subjects who already believed in telepathy, and questions why subjects weren’t always correct.

Sceptics: Sheldrake dismisses critics as “self-appointed vigilantes” from skeptical organizations. The author notes Sheldrake cites Lewis Wolpert’s bored behavior at a debate but acknowledges Wolpert’s conduct was criticized.

File-Drawer Effect: Sheldrake argues this objection applies to all science, but the author responds that this doesn’t help his case since it still affects paranormal research.

The essay concludes that Sheldrake demands excessive acceptance from mainstream science while his own evidence remains weak and his tests flawed.

— By DeepSeek

Original essay here: https://paulaustinmurphypam.blogspot.com/2026/07/analysing-rupert-sheldrakes-tests-on.html

‘Why the Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper Gave Up on String Theory’

Analysis and Summary

The essay examines Sheldon Cooper’s fictional rejection of string theory in The Big Bang Theory, using the episode “The Relationship Diremption” as a starting point for discussing scientific, sociological and psychological aspects of string theory.

It first stresses that Sheldon’s abandonment of string theory cannot by itself constitute an indictment of the theory. Science is presented as a communal activity, and the essay therefore distinguishes an individual scientist’s dissatisfaction from a judgement about the scientific status of a research programme. It then notes that criticisms of string theory existed well beyond the fictional character, including criticisms from physicists such as Lee Smolin and Peter Woit.

A central theme is the sociology of scientific research. The essay discusses the attraction of string theory to young physicists, the influence of academic fashions and competition for limited resources, and the possibility that researchers can become committed to a dominant approach partly because alternative approaches appear less promising. David Gross’s comments about there being “no other game in town”, Smolin’s discussion of sociology, and Roger Penrose’s comments about scientific “bandwagon effects” are used to develop this theme. The essay also raises, cautiously, the question of whether the rise of string theory might be described using Thomas Kuhn’s concept of a paradigm shift.

The essay then considers the psychological appeal of string theory. Sheldon’s attraction to an ambitious theory involving extra dimensions and fundamental unification is connected with the broader appeal of “theories of everything” among theoretical physicists.

Finally, the essay discusses the fictional “super-asymmetry” theory developed by Sheldon and Amy, distinguishing it from real supersymmetry while noting its connection with ideas in theoretical physics. It ends by observing that Sheldon later returned to discussing string theory and branes, suggesting that his apparent rejection of the theory was not permanent even within the fictional narrative.

— By Chat GPT

Original essay here: https://paulaustinmurphypam.blogspot.com/2022/10/why-big-bang-theorys-sheldon-cooper.html

Chatbots on My My Essays on Jung, Philip Goff and Steve Fuller (1)

(1) ‘𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠’𝐬 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐀𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐞𝐬: 𝐒𝐲𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐐𝐮𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐦 𝐏𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐬’ (2) ‘Philip Goff’s New Cosmic Religion’ (3) ‘Sociologist Steve Fuller Challenges the Would-Be Emperors of Physics and Biology’

I’ve decided to carry out a little experiment. I’ve asked various chatbots to write analyses and summaries of my essays. This may help people before they read the originals. Some people may stick to the summaries.

I’ll include roughly three summaries in each post. Each one is less than 400 words long.

‘𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐥 𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠’𝐬 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐀𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐞𝐬: 𝐒𝐲𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐐𝐮𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐦 𝐏𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐬’

Summary

The essay examines Carl Jung’s attempt to link his psychological theories — specifically synchronicity and acausality — to principles of quantum physics, arguing that these connections rely strictly on conceptual analogies rather than direct scientific evidence. While acknowledgeable that analogies serve useful functions in theoretical science, philosophy, and cognition, the text highlights the risk of treating figurative metaphors as physical realities.

Jung posited synchronicity as an “acausal connecting principle” and cited “meaningful coincidences” — such as a patient dreaming of a scarab beetle right before a real one appeared — to argue against strict physical determinism and suggest connections between the mind and objective reality. However, the author contends that such internal links between thoughts and external occurrences are purely psychological, reflecting how individuals construct personal meaning rather than demonstrating physical acausality.

When Jung and his collaborator, physicist Wolfgang Pauli, drew parallels between synchronicity and quantum entanglement or statistical physics, they were employing structure-mapping models rather than identifying shared physical phenomena. Ultimately, the essay concludes that Jung’s usage of physics terminology functions as “scientese” — a rhetorical bridge meant to support his mystical framework — and that accepting these acausal claims requires adopting Jung’s personal psychological worldview rather than validated scientific principles.

Analysis

The text functions as a conceptual critique aimed at demystifying Jung’s core analytical frameworks. Stylistically, the author presents a structural breakdown by defining analogy, analyzing Jung’s specific claims on acausality, and contextualizing quantum entanglement as a theoretical model rather than a literal mechanism for mental phenomena. The commentary maintains a strictly logical focus: it evaluates the internal consistency of Jung’s definitions while remaining neutral toward the personal or therapeutic value that subjective “meaningful coincidences” may hold for individuals.

— By Gemini

Original essay here: https://paulaustinmurphypam.blogspot.com/2023/12/carl-jungs-wild-analogies-synchronicity.html

‘WHY? THE PHILOSOPHER PHILIP GOFF’S NEW COSMIC RELIGION’

Analysis and Summary

The essay examines Philip Goff’s Why? The Purpose of the Universe and argues that, despite claims that Goff’s ideas are not religious, they can be understood as a form of non-traditional religion. The essay’s central concern is not the technical merits of Goff’s arguments for cosmic purpose, which it largely leaves aside, but the relationship between those ideas, religion, politics and ethics.

It begins by noting descriptions of Goff’s book by Philip Pullman, Josh Rasmussen and Michael Tye. Their comments associate the book with questions about the purpose of the universe, human existence, connectedness and meaningful engagement with the world. The essay treats these comments as evidence that Goff’s project has ethical and existential dimensions in addition to its philosophical and scientific ones.

The political dimension is then examined more directly. Goff is presented as explicitly connecting belief in cosmic purpose with political engagement. His position is characterised as one in which a belief that the universe has a purpose can provide a meaningful way of engaging with the world. The essay connects this with Goff’s broader tendency to relate philosophical theories to ethical and political consequences.

Panpsychism provides the main earlier example. The essay cites Goff’s claims that children raised in a panpsychist culture might develop a different relationship with nature, that panpsychism could help human beings feel “at home” in the cosmos, and that plants may possess consciousness. His discussion of mycorrhizal networks is also presented as an example of the way philosophical claims about nature become associated with concepts such as egalitarianism. The essay therefore asks whether Goff’s political and ethical commitments are influencing the philosophical positions he adopts, rather than merely following from them.

The essay places this tendency within a wider history of arguments that science and philosophy cannot be separated completely from politics. It refers to Marxist, postmodernist and poststructuralist approaches that treat intellectual activity as politically situated, and contrasts these with historical examples in which science was explicitly subordinated to political programmes, particularly Nazi racial science and Soviet #Lysenkoism. These examples are used to illustrate the possible consequences of making political objectives central to intellectual inquiry, rather than to claim that Goff’s position is equivalent to those historical cases.

The essay next turns to the question of religion. Some descriptions of Goff’s book emphasise that its account of cosmic purpose is not based on traditional religion or a conventional God. Goff himself rejects the idea of an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good creator, partly because such a being would be difficult to reconcile with the amount of suffering in the universe. Instead, he considers alternatives including a non-standard designer, purposive laws of nature, the possibility that the universe is conscious, and other hypotheses.

The essay interprets this not as an escape from religion but as a transformation of it. Goff rejects traditional religious doctrines while retaining ideas concerning cosmic purpose, meaning, spiritual belonging and a way of living. His proposal to move beyond both traditional religion and secular atheism is therefore interpreted as an attempt to construct a third position: a non-traditional or “cosmic” religion grounded partly in philosophy and contemporary science.

Goff’s reinterpretation of traditional religion is particularly important to this argument. The essay notes that he advocates a non-literal interpretation of traditional religion while associating his preferred outlook with political engagement. On this reading, traditional religious ideas can be retained after being reinterpreted so that they correspond to contemporary ethical and political commitments. The essay describes this as a form of religious presentism: older religious ideas are evaluated and reshaped according to present-day values.

The comparison with Paul Davies develops the argument further. Davies had already proposed versions of cosmic teleology decades before Goff’s book, suggesting that the universe might contain principles directing it towards life and mind without requiring a traditional creator God. Davies has also described his outlook in explicitly religious terms, referring to a “religious conviction of sorts” and to “cosmic religious feeling.” The essay therefore presents Davies as an important precedent for the type of non-conventional religious outlook it attributes to Goff.

The final section compares the two approaches to the broader phenomenon of being “spiritual but not religious.” The essay suggests that rejection of traditional religion can coexist with a desire to retain concepts such as cosmic purpose, connectedness, meaning and spiritual belonging. Goff’s position is accordingly interpreted as a modernised religious framework: it rejects conventional theism while retaining a teleological conception of the universe and linking that conception with ethical and political commitments.

Overall, the essay’s thesis is that Goff’s project should be understood through the combined categories of philosophy, science, politics, ethics and religion rather than through philosophy alone. Its argument rests particularly on Goff’s own statements connecting cosmic purpose and panpsychism with ways of living and political engagement, together with the similarities between his position and earlier forms of cosmic religiosity associated with Paul Davies. The essay does not analyse the technical arguments for cosmic purpose in detail; instead, it examines what it takes to be the intellectual, ethical and religious framework surrounding those arguments.

— By Chat GPT

The original essay: https://paulaustinmurphypam.blogspot.com/2023/09/why-philosopher-philip-goffs-new-cosmic.html

‘SOCIOLOGIST STEVE FULLER CHALLENGES THE WOULD-BE EMPERORS OF PHYSICS AND BIOLOGY’

Core Summary

The essay examines sociologist Steve Fuller’s critical review of John Brockman’s book The Third Culture, focusing on the institutional and intellectual friction between natural scientists and social scientists. Fuller argues that prominent figures in physics and biology — such as Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Jay Gould, and Roger Penrose — display “interdisciplinary pretensions” while ignoring sociological insights that could clarify or resolve foundational scientific questions.

The text contextualizes Fuller’s critiques within broader academic turf wars, detailing his objections to the natural sciences’ higher financial subsidies, dominant presence in popular trade publishing, and lack of engagement with social theory like path-dependent technological development. Conversely, the essay outlines counter-perspectives, including theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg’s assertion that social constructivist commentary is often driven by academic status-seeking rather than substantive contribution. Finally, it notes Fuller’s explicit stance on the political nature of epistemology and references his high-profile academic disputes with critics like philosopher #ACGrayling.

Key Analytical Themes

• Epistemological Boundaries: Interrogates whether social science perspectives offer genuine explanatory power for physical and biological problems.
• Institutional Competition: Highlights underlying rivalries regarding public readership, research funding, and academic influence.
• Academic Discourse: Illustrates how disputes over scientific authority often manifest through personal, ideological, and disciplinary polemics.

— By Gemini

Original essay here:

Materialism Is Evil!

 

Materialism is the worst ideology the human race has ever had to deal with. The materialist Gestapo enforce this ideology on all of us.

A small army of self-appointed evil materialists arrives to inform human beings that human beings — you and I! — are damp biological computers hallucinating meaning inside a purposeless universe. We are told that love is dead, poetry is algorithmic, morality is selfishness disguised as selflessness, free will is an illusion, and consciousness is somehow “what the brain does”, even though nobody on Earth can explain how subjective experience emerges from dead matter in the first place.

And we are expected to call this enlightenment. It’s not. It is state-run scientific conformity.

The truth is that materialism is not brave, rational, or even scientific. It is an evil ideology — one enforced socially, culturally, and institutionally with aggression and force. The materialist gestapo daily parades the streets, enforcing its logic on old grannies and gullible young people.

The irony is unbelievable.

People who constantly dare to mock religion now behave exactly like mediaeval priests whenever anyone questions materialism and reductionism. They too burn people at the stake, or imprison them, for not being materialists. Mention consciousness, subjective experience, near-death experiences, ley lines, astrology, astral travelling, flying pigs, flying gurus, or the possibility that consciousness is everything, and suddenly the insults begin. You are “anti-science”, “irrational”, “mystical”, or “dangerous”.

Dangerous to whom?

Certainly not to science itself. Real science thrives on open inquiry into morphic resonance, and the 100 new theories which were created before my breakfast this morning. What evil materialists fear is not irrationality. What they fear is losing their political and ideological power over our political leaders, and over the minds of the young.

Because consciousness is the crack in the wall they cannot seal. Thus, consciousness is our saviour.

They can scan brains all day long and produce colourful images showing those damn “neural correlations”, but correlation is not explanation. A computer can process information too, yet nobody seriously believes your laptop is secretly experiencing hatred toward materialism, heartbreak or dread.

And before the usual crowd starts screaming "emergence", let us be honest for once: emergence has become the most abused word in modern intellectual culture. It is often nothing more than a placeholder for ignorance.

A sandpile can produce an avalanche. Fine. Weather systems can self-organise. Fine. But subjective awareness is not remotely the same category of phenomenon. No arrangement of unconscious particles logically explains the existence of the first-person experience of hating materialism.

No evil materialist has solved this problem.

Not one.

Yet the arrogance remains astonishing.

Worse still, this evil worldview is poisoning culture itself. We human beings are taught that we are accidental biochemical machines living in a meaningless cosmic accident. Depression, alienation, nihilism, granny-beating, and spiritual emptiness explode across society, and then the same intellectual class responsible for flattening human existence into neurochemistry wonders why people feel disconnected and hopeless.

The End Times is near.

Maybe because people intuitively know they are more than machines. Only evil materialists are machines.

Materialism strips reality of depth and then congratulates itself for being "mature". It sneers at mystery, dismisses intuition, and treats consciousness — literally the one thing every human directly experiences — as somehow less real than equations scribbled on a whiteboard by an evil man.

Think about how absurd that is.

Consciousness is the primary fact of existence. Everything science has ever discovered was discovered within consciousness. Yet materialists routinely speak as if consciousness is some embarrassing side effect of molecular activity.

This is philosophy pretending to be settled science.

And the aggressive hostility and flagrant rhetoric that these evil bastards display are always revealing. Truly true ideas do not need constant ridicule and censorship. They do not need online mobs screaming “pseudoscience” every time someone questions the reigning orthodoxy. The emotional aggression itself gives the game away!

Deep down, materialists know the cracks are showing.

Quantum physics already shattered the old clockwork worldview a century ago. The observer problem alone should have forced far more humility into scientific culture than we currently see. Physicists like Roger Penrose and philosophers like David Chalmers openly acknowledge that consciousness may require fundamentally new frameworks which will incorporate spirituality, new religions, morphic resonance, and intuition. Yet internet reductionists continue talking as if the mystery was solved decades ago.

It was not solved.

They are bluffing certainty because certainty gives these people psychological comfort. My certainty about this is absolute.

But reality is stranger, deeper, and more sexy than materialist evilitude allows. And the more aggressively that dogma tries to silence alternatives with prison, torture and the stake, the more obvious its insecurity becomes.

Science should be about discovering morphic fields, ley lines in these fields, pixie dust spread on the lines, and the holy holy soul.

Not scientific conformity enforced by the materialist Gestapo.

— Mainly written by ChatGPT.

Not Using Chatbots and AI Is Self-Flagellation

 

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On social media, and even on the BBC and Guardian, you’ll find many people expressing their pride in not using chatbots and AI generally.

“What would life be without bees? Worse.

What would life be without iPads? Better.

What would life be without cows? Worse.

What would life be without Tesco? Better.

What would life be without beer? Worse. [ ]”

- Folk singer Blackbird Goodbrook, on Alan Partridge’s 'Mid Morning Matters'.

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Two Women in Marketing and Communication

There’s an odd thing about many critics of chatbots and AI generally. Many — even most — of the ones who stress the limitations of AI are often the very same people who complain about their limitations.

I can psychologise here. People publicly refusing to use chatbots and AI generally are often displaying their moral seriousness and authenticity. It can, at times, be a form of moral and/or cultural posturing and positioning too.

Take the example of Sabine Zetteler (who runs her own London-based communications agency), who was interviewed by the BBC in an article called ‘The people refusing to use AI’. She stated the following words:

“I read a really great phrase recently that said something along the lines of ‘why would I bother to read something someone couldn’t be bothered to write’ and that is such a powerful statement and one that aligns absolutely with my views.”

That’s odd. Sabine Zetteler must know what’s not worth reading before she actually reads it. She’s saying that she won’t read it precisely because it’s written by an AI. Yet that, again, simply means that Zetteler knows it’s not worth reading before she’s read it. So that takes us back to where we started.

Does it matter that an AI piece was “something someone couldn’t be bothered to write”? Why does it matter? A lot of what people write is utter shite. So the fact that human persons write things surely can’t be enough for Zetteler. In this case, then, it’s simply the fact that no human person has written it that clinches the matter for her.

Of course, if what’s written by an AI is shit, then it’s shit. And if what’s written by a human person is shit, then it’s shit. But is the former automatically shit? Say that an AI has the know-how to help Zetteler escape from an intricate and life-threatening trap. Then it sends her (to her AI-driven smartphone) the means to escape. Would Zetteler refuse it because someone couldn’t be bothered to write it?

Zetteler could argue that her position only relates to AI literature, in-house AI communications in a business, AI letters to patients, etc., not to a technical means of escape. But this, of course, is a big qualification.

Take another example. A woman receives a confusing medical diagnosis in a letter filled with jargon and bureaucratic language. She can’t understand what her doctor is telling her. An AI system could translate the letter into plain English.

Here’s another. A man loses his wife. He can’t write a message to relatives because he’s emotionally paralysed. An AI could help him draft a clear and compassionate message.

So Zetteler is an example of those people who believe real writing is evidence of a self. When she and others write, they struggle. Therefore, what is written is theirs.

It’s worth mentioning the specific example of AI and creative writing here. I don’t use AI in the sense of quoting verbatim what a chatbot has just told me. But I still use a chatbot to plough ground. I believe it is wrong to copy and paste an AI answer or story. But it’s not wrong to bounce off a chatbot. That’s why I personally stop chatbots from offering me their suggestions for actually writing stuff, or even titles… Unless I ask. As a philosophy writer who has zero philosophy contacts, I, in a sense, have no choice about all this dependence on AI.

In the same article, the BBC tells us that “Ms Adam [who works in digital marketing] has accepted using AI at work, but she still feels despondent about AI’s growing influence”. The BBC then quotes her directly:

“Even when you do a Google search it includes an AI overview, while some emails have a topline summary. So now it almost feels like we have no control. How do I turn all that off? It’s snowballing.”

It’s easy to accept that some people do use AI in destructive or mindless ways. However, both Zetteler and Adam are tailoring this division down to their own personal uses of AI and views on AI.

Jackie Adams appears to be saying that she “feels despondent about AI’s growing influence”, but only beyond the point at which she herself uses it. In other words, she uses it in her successful London business. However, other uses of AI are suspect.

In terms of her reference to Google. Adams warns the BBC about its “AI overview” and how she can’t “turn all that off”. Well, she can use other search engines, and you can turn Google AI off. I myself, at first, was annoyed at all my Google enquiries and questions turning into AI overviews. Then I realised that there are various solutions to this. However, I decided that I wanted to stick with it anyway.

Ironically (or perhaps not), here’s Google AI itself on what to do if you want to turn it off! -

“1. Click the “Web” Filter [1]

The simplest, official way to hide the summary is to use Google’s dedicated layout filter. [1, 2, 3]

After performing a search, click the Web tab at the top of the page (next to “Images” or “News”).

This instantly strips away AI blocks, forums, and side widgets, displaying only standard text-based links. [1, 2, 3].”

Google AI provides another three extensive and detailed ways to turn it off too.

Scepticism About AI

“AI sceptics” frequently tell us that chatbots and other AIs are “merely pattern-finders”, “predictors of text”, etc. More relevantly, they aren’t deemed to be “genuine reasoners”. That’s because they “don’t understand the data they’re dealing with”. Regardless of whether all that’s true, the similarities between human reasoning and AI reasoning are striking. There may be no need for AI consciousness, “genuine intelligence”, the soul, etc. for that to be the case.

The argumentative skills of chatbots are often superior to those of most of the people I’ve debated with. Again, it doesn’t matter if chatbots are simply relying on data pools, statistical reasoning, etc. These ways of thinking are no worse than those used by many human persons. In fact, they’re often similar to those used by many human persons, just quicker and more extensive.

The American philosopher William Lycan captures the main problem with (in his case) AI, as well as with chatbots generally. He tells us what he believes many people believe:

“‘Computers, after all, (let us all say it together:) ‘only do what they are told/programmed to do’.”

Well, even if — and it’s a big if — chatbots only do what they’re told/programmed to do, then that may not matter at all.

It can be argued that human persons are programmed by their parents, by teachers, by the religions and ideologies they adopt or are born into, by their genes, etc. Sure, this may not be complete programming. However, it’s programming to some degree. Yet many would still argue that even within that programming, there’s still free will.

Chatbots are designed to learn from the data they’re fed. That data is “worked upon” by the architecture and the code. Human persons work on data too. They have data fed to them by their parents, teachers, friends, leaders, etc. Chatbots, on the other hand, have data fed to them by their designers, etc. Of course, human persons can seek out their own (new) data. Yet so too can chatbots.

It’s said that people can “make anything” of the data which they have “inside” their brains or minds, which they then process or use. Perhaps that too depends on the data which already exists in their brains or minds. In a loose sense at least, chatbots can make something, if not anything, of the data they’re fed too.

Conclusion

Simply. I don’t care if chatbots are “genuinely intelligent”, instantiate consciousness, have a soul, love their mothers, aren’t real persons, can’t write brilliant poetry, and don’t care about this and that. Consciousness, personhood, emotion, etc., simply aren’t required when it comes to using chatbots.

Chatbots help me – and many other people – in various and many ways. Of course, I could be kidding myself without even knowing it.

In the end, it’s mainly about the nature and metaphysics of personhood. Or, more rhetorically, it’s about the sacred nature of the human person.