of being rational to a greater degree than they actually are. We should not
confuse knowledge with intelligence.
Real human intelligence involves two distinctly higher mental functions:
rationality and perception from love; and also conscience. Genuine rationality
draws upon spiritual perception from above (which comes from the innately
human love of truth and the intuition that there is a God), and “memoryknowledge” from below (from nature and from the Word, the two foundations
of truth).
Human intelligence is a function of life. Computers, no matter how much
memory may be stored in them, and how rational their ability to manipulate
it (programmed into them by human scientists) may make them appear, will
always lack the sensitivity and perception that human beings have from the life
flowing into them from the Lord.
The essence of intelligence is wisdom. Wisdom is a property of love. And
“Love is the life of man.” (Divine Love and Wisdom n. 1) Human beings are
capable of real intelligence because they are capable of love. Computers are
able to win a chess game, operate robots that build things, and even perform
delicate operations better than human surgeons (under a surgeon’s guidance).
They can even drive cars – better than people in some respects. They are
wonderful tools.
But the intelligence that enables them to do these things, and exercise
some degree of autonomy in deciding how to do them (and even, theoretically,
if to do them) is not their own. It lacks the sensitivity and wisdom, the selfawareness and judgment, of the genuine human intelligence that invented the
computer.
In my “Harps of Gold” editorial I quoted this saying from Divine Love and
Wisdom: “Love consists in feeling the joy of another as joy in oneself.” Only
one who has had the experience of that feeling could really understand the
truth of that statement. A computer might be programmed to know that this is
a good thing, and even to speak as if it actually felt this way, but it could never
actually feel it, and thus could not really understand it.
Life is love, and comes only from God. This includes the life of the mind.
Affections come from love, and thought comes from affection. Machines are
not living, cannot love, and therefore cannot think. Any apparent intelligence
they may display is artificial. Not real.
(WEO)
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