Acton Institute PowerBlog - Entries from Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Rev. Robert Sirico is scheduled to appear on the Laura Ingraham Show this morning during the 11:00 hour to discuss the shootings that took place yesterday on the campus of Virginia Tech.

You can find a local affiliate for the show or listen online by checking out Laura’s website.

Update: Here’s a portion of the transcript:

Ingraham: Father Sirico, a number of people have e-mailed into our web-site after hearing me talk about the need, at this point in time, for faith. And that faith is ultimately what will get us through these tough times. And we don’t think about it much in the good times. But when something like this happens, I think it’s essential. And someone e-mailed in, “Can you define for me what faith is at a time like this?” How would you define it?

Sirico: Well, I suppose to try and put it in the most accessible language to people across religious perspectives, even for those who don’t have or don’t see themselves as having faith, I would say that life has a purpose. We do not exist simply as material beings and that the sum total of our existence is our materiality is important as our physicality is because when something like this goes wrong to the body, we mourn that. But that our life has a transcendent purpose. Our life has a value that transcends the physical. What faith attempts to do, what Biblical faith attempts to do, is give some shape and some orientation and some finality to the purpose. And that, even in the face of such horrendous tragedy, the purpose, the dignity of human life is not thwarted. It is offended, it is aggressed against, it is violated, but the ultimate purpose of human life, it’s ultimate dignity, is not. And I think that those who, at a time like this, speak about how senseless, not just that the act was senseless but that the act was senseless, really compound the problem. How can you face the families of those who have died and been hurt in this tragedy, and speak of senselessness? You know, intuitively, we know that our lives have a purpose. They have a finality. And it’s precisely this intuitive knowledge that makes tragedy tragic. That it could be something more and should be something more. And that it is a failure to respect the dignity of life that makes this kind of stuff happen.

Ingraham: One thing that I always think about, I try to think about when something like this happens, or, each of us has potholes that we hit and during our own lives, is that the moments of grace that come out of just horrible, horrible experiences. And I saw that in my own life several times. And, and I think in this case, you do see those moments of grace. They’re, they’re all over the television set. With the way people are reacting, the outpouring across the United States. And I think that really exists.

Sirico: I know it does, from personal experience. That even, we talk about purpose and life, but even in pain, or maybe especially in pain, and in the context of our limitations that we can see a light that illumines the darkest areas of our lives. I mean, the scripture says that Jesus, to speak from a Christian point of view, that Jesus endured the cross. That, for the joy that was set before Him. Because he knew that at the end of this suffering there was redemption. We’ve just come through the period of lent where we meditate intensely on the suffering of Christ. And I think that all of humanity, in a way, when seeing our suffering having purpose, can, can in that sense be redemptive.

Socrates in some sense has come full circle. In a case of life imitating art, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Central Florida in Orlando have received a grant to create life-like virtual representations of historical figures, with whom students can interact, dialogue, and inquire (HT: Slashdot).

“The goal is to combine artificial intelligence with the latest advanced graphics and video game-type technology to enable us to create historical archives of people beyond what can be achieved using traditional technologies such as text, audio and video footage,” said Jason Leigh, associate professor of computer science and director of UIC’s Electronic Visualization Laboratory. Leigh is UIC’s lead principal investigator.

This project seminally resembles the technological world depicted by Robert Silverberg in his mid-80’s novella, Sailing to Byzantium. In that work set in the 50th century, Silverberg’s characters travel to variously themed reconstructions of cities, complete with interactive simulacra of historical or mythological figures.

The UIC/UCFO project will focus on creating digital “avatars,” who mimic the mannerisms and characteristics of the persona they represent: “Leigh said his team hopes to create virtual people who respond with a high degree of recognition to different voices and the various ways questions are phrased.”

Some commentators wonder if the concept has commercial appeal. Judging from the popularity of the cities in Silverberg’s novella, I would certainly think so.

But what is more striking is how a project like this provides an answer, albeit one that is incomplete, to the conundrum of communication posed by Socrates himself so long ago.

In the Phaedrus, Socrates makes the following critical observation about the nature of writing:

I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.

We now have within our sight a superficial answer to Socrates’ critique; these avatars will presumably be able to know “to whom they should reply,” and “to whom not.” Indeed, the simulacra might be able to give more than “one unvarying answer.”

But I think in some ways this simply sharpens rather than dismisses Socrates’ criticism. Will these avatars, in spite of the technological achievement of interactivity, fundamentally represent anything more than the illusion of intelligence, or “the attitude of life”? Whence comes the dynamism and spontaneity of human rationality, willing, and consciousness? Is it possible to truly recreate such things by means of “artificial intelligence”?

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Sailing to Byzantium with Avatars

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