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The Thomistic Institute

Can Machines be People, Too? | Fr. Anselm Ramelow, O.P.

The Thomistic Institute

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8729 Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Fr. Anselm Ramelow critically examines whether artificial intelligence can achieve personhood, arguing that machines lack the essential qualities of being, consciousness, and unity inherent to human nature.


This lecture was given on September 14th, 2024, at Dominican House of Studies.


For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.


About the Speaker:


Fr. Anselm Ramelow, O.P., a native of Germany, teaches philosophy at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California, where he is also currently the chair of the philosophy department. He is also a member of the Core Doctoral Faculty at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and the Academy of Catholic Theology. He obtained his doctorate under Robert Spaemann in Munich on Leibniz and the Spanish Jesuits (Gott, Freiheit, Weltenwahl, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997) and did theological work on George Lindbeck and the question of a Thomist philosophy and theology of language. Areas of research and teaching include Free Will, the History of Philosophy and Philosophical Aesthetics. He has worked on a philosophical approach to Miracles and other topics of the philosophy of religion, and more recently the philosophy of technology.


Keywords: AI and Personhood Debate, Consciousness and Qualia, David Chalmers on Materialism, Human Unity in Consciousness, Immaterial Nature of Humans, Nagel’s What Is It Like to Be a Bat?, Reductionism in AI Ethics, Simulation vs. Reality in AI, Thomas Hobbes’ Materialism

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.

0:06.2

Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.

0:12.7

The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.

0:19.3

To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at to mystic institute.org.

0:25.5

So AI is always a big topic for people, and so this age that may also affect our humanity in many ways.

0:34.2

So are we still human, may depend on what we think about machines, and whether they are like us or whether we are mere machines and so forth and so on.

0:43.4

So our image of our self is actually crucially affected here.

0:48.8

But first of all, the question is not entirely new.

0:52.2

People have tried to make robots for a long time that simulate human beings or other beings.

1:00.1

In fact, I read somewhere that it's sometimes attributed even to Albert the Great, but that may be more obscure reference.

1:06.2

Many of these begin in the 17th century in earnest, but still throughout history, there are instances,

1:15.1

Pinocchio, Frankenstein's monster, the golem, pygmalion, and other kind of mythologies and

1:21.7

tales that people have told about, artificial entities that become intelligent, people, consciousness,

1:29.2

or whatever you want to say here.

1:32.2

Now, the first thing I want to notice about that is that this is typically framed around performance,

1:39.9

what a thing can do.

1:42.9

And what they simulate in terms of what we can do, then the question is, then are they the

1:49.1

same thing as we are?

1:50.9

And I think that is first of all the difference between functioning and doing on the one hand

1:55.7

and being on the other hand.

1:59.0

These are two different things that I first of all want to point out.

2:03.0

And I think intuitively we still know that computers are not what we are, even if they're

...

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