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7/07/2015 7:44 pm  #1


Original sin and von Neumann machines

I've been reading Summa Theologica, First Part of the Second Part, Question 81, Article 1: "Whether the first sin of our first parent is contracted by his descendants, by way of origin?" (http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2081.htm)

In an effort to test my understanding, I'm trying to rephrase Aquinas's position in terms of von Neumann machines.  This is probably a little kooky.  I'm wondering if it is at all on the right track.  (I have no emotional attachment to this, so feel free to tear it to shreds.)

The picture that I'm getting is something like the following:  Human Nature is like a computer program.  Adam was like a von Neumann machine that ran the first instance of this program, and who built subsequent instances.  A soul is a particular instantiation of this program in an individual machine.  Original sin came into the program itself, and hence into Adam, and hence into each of us via Adam because he built the machines that built the machines that ... that built the machines that built us.

(I'm calling us "machines" here just because I'm thinking of us as like von Neumann machines in some sense for purposes of illustration.  I realize that we are not literally machines under A-T.)

The point is, it was the program, the nature common to us all, that sinned, and not just the particular instance of the program in Adam.  That is how each of us can have guilt.

This raises the question of when the damage to the nature occurred.  At first, it seems that, if Adam's nature had changed from undamaged to damaged after he was alive, then he would have changed his substantial form and so become a different kind of thing.  That is, he would have been destroyed at the time of his sin and replaced by something else of a different kind.  But this doesn't seem like the intended story.

This suggests that there is an "inner program" and an "outer program".  The inner program is the substantial form itself, which cannot change, any more than the form of "triangle" can change.  Nothing can change this substantial form.  Things can only go from having it to not having it, or vice versa, and nothing can do even that while remaining the same thing.

Then there is the "outer program", which includes something like "accidents" on the substantial form itself.  This outer part can change without changing the underlying substantial form.  Moreover, the actions of a particular instance of the program can change the outer part of the program, and the instance can do this while remaining the same thing.  It is the program as a whole, including the outer part, that belongs to "human nature", and which gets transmitted by each generation as it builds the next.

So the story now is something like this:  The entire program is instantiated in Adam.  Adam, running this entire program decides to sin in a particular way that re-writes part of the program, damaging it.  That is, the program has decided to damage itself via the instance of itself called Adam.  However, this damage has not changed the "inner part" of itself, the part that determines a thing running the program to be a human.  Nonetheless, the damage has rewritten the program in a way that gets propagated to all the future instances that descend from the first instance.

After reading the other articles in ST under this question, I think that the story above holds up.  Under Thomism, there are something like "accidents" in human nature.  The Thomist jargon seems to be in this quote in Article 2:

"Now just as something may belong to the person as such, and also something through the gift of grace, so may something belong to the nature as such, viz. whatever is caused by the principles of nature, and something too through the gift of grace. In this way original justice, as stated in the I, 100, 1, was a gift of grace, conferred by God on all human nature in our first parent. This gift the first man lost by his first sin. Wherefore as that original justice together with the nature was to have been transmitted to his posterity, so also was its disorder."

So, my "inner part" is what "belong[s] to the nature as such, viz. whatever is caused by the principles of nature", while my "outer part" is what "[belongs to the nature] through the gift of grace".

Does this seem to be in the right ballpark?

 

7/08/2015 7:33 am  #2


Re: Original sin and von Neumann machines

I am intrigued by your use of "machine" though I am very wary of it as well. Levi Bryant has also worked with this concept (albeit in his own inimitable way), and he uses it quite productively.

I have been working on the problem of OS from a non-metaphysical viewpoint. I might suggest that inner/outer programs might actually be anterior/local programs. The local program is a description of 'the way things are (sin)' and the anterior program is retrofitted to mimic what is described: it translates into binary code the data of the experience of sin in order to generate the pattern experienced.

Am I on track with you here?

My blog has been addressing the matter in earnest, such as it is.

Currents in Catholic Thought

Thanks for your interesting post.

Cordiallly,
Joe

Last edited by semioticsymphony (7/08/2015 7:34 am)

 

7/08/2015 10:20 am  #3


Re: Original sin and von Neumann machines

I don't have time at the moment to comment in much detail, but I'd say that, yes, you do seem to be in the right ballpark overall.

One caveat: be careful in speaking of "guilt," as the Church specifically denies that any personal "original guilt "associated with original sin is somehow inherited (just the state of original sin, namely the privation of sanctifying grace). That doesn't affect your main point, though.

Be careful, too, in speaking about damage to human nature itself. It's true that original sin affects all human beings through their shared human nature, but that nature itself is just human nature, full stop. The "damage" is the loss of supernatural gifts, including the ability to order one's appetites appropriately.

For more, see here.

Last edited by Scott (7/08/2015 10:24 am)

 

7/08/2015 10:58 am  #4


Re: Original sin and von Neumann machines

Scott wrote:

One caveat: be careful in speaking of "guilt," as the Church specifically denies that any personal "original guilt "associated with original sin is somehow inherited (just the state of original sin, namely the privation of sanctifying grace).

If I'm reading Aquinas correctly, guilt associated with original sin is inherited, but this guilt is washed away by baptism (without repairing the "damage").  Here are the lines that give me this impression (from the link that I gave in the OP):

"[i]n the case before us ... guilt is transmitted by the way of origin from father to son, even as actual sin is transmitted through being imitated."

"[H]e that is born is associated with his first parent in his guilt, through the fact that he inherits his nature from him by a kind of movement which is that of generation."

"Although the guilt is not actually in the semen, yet human nature is there virtually accompanied by that guilt."

"Original sin is taken away by Baptism as to the guilt, in so far as the soul recovers grace as regards the mind."

Am I misunderstanding Aquinas on the heritability of Adam's guilt?

Last edited by Tyrrell McAllister (7/11/2015 5:47 pm)

     Thread Starter
 

7/08/2015 11:11 am  #5


Re: Original sin and von Neumann machines

Tyrrell McAllister wrote:

Am I misunderstanding Aquinus on the heritability of Adam's guilt?

 Well, if you're not, the Catechism trumps him anyway (scroll down to sections 404 and 405, especially the first sentence of the latter). But if you follow the link I gave you in my previous post and scroll down to the section headed "How voluntary," you'll find an elaboration of Aquinas's views taken from his De Malo. In a nutshell (and probably inadequately), the "guilt" is not individual but corporate, associated with one's shared, inherited human nature -- which is what your quoted bits actually say as well.

Last edited by Scott (7/08/2015 11:13 am)

 

7/11/2015 5:47 pm  #6


Re: Original sin and von Neumann machines

Well, if you're not, the Catechism trumps him anyway

I don't think that my reading of Aquinas contradicts the Catechism (as I read it).  But that's only because I wasn't reading a very particular meaning into the word "guilt".  My understanding of what Aquinas meant by the word was too vague to be easily contradicted.

You mention the distinction between individual and corporate guilt.  This raises the question for me of just what either of these kinds of guilt are.  For example, when a father commits a crime, and his son inherits corporate guilt, is this guilt a feature of the son himself, or is it just a relational fact about how other people perceive him (e.g., as somehow "stained" by his father's crime)?  If no one knew that the son was related to the father, would he still share in corporate guilt in any objective sense?

(It probably goes without saying, but I'm looking for answers from the perspective of scholasticism.)

     Thread Starter
 

7/11/2015 6:00 pm  #7


Re: Original sin and von Neumann machines

Just time for a brief reply while I'm on the forum.

Tyrrell McAllister wrote:

For example, when a father commits a crime, and his son inherits corporate guilt, is this guilt a feature of the son himself, or is it just a relational fact about how other people perceive him (e.g., as somehow "stained" by his father's crime)? If no one knew that the son was related to the father, would he still share in corporate guilt in any objective sense?

I think I'd say that neither of those alternatives is quite right and that the son would share in the corporate guilt even if no one else knew about it -- indeed even if he didn't know about it himself -- even though he wasn't individually guilty. I'm not offhand sure how to spell that out in detail (that is, beyond a general statement about community and shared human nature and such), but it makes sense to me and it seems to capture what Aquinas had in mind in the passage to which I've referred you. The guilt is neither a feature of the son nor reducible to relational facts about what other people think of him; it's objectively associated with the son through the relation of paternity.

Indeed, it's because such objective relationships are possible that a son can be shamed by the actions of his father. "What other people think of him" is based on their belief (which may be mistaken; the father may e.g. have been wrongly accused) that such an objective relationship obtains.

Last edited by Scott (7/11/2015 8:43 pm)

 

7/12/2015 4:39 am  #8


Re: Original sin and von Neumann machines

semioticsymphony wrote:

I have been working on the problem of OS from a non-metaphysical viewpoint. I might suggest that inner/outer programs might actually be anterior/local programs. The local program is a description of 'the way things are (sin)' and the anterior program is retrofitted to mimic what is described: it translates into binary code the data of the experience of sin in order to generate the pattern experienced.

This is a metaphysical point of view...

That you chose to use language borrowed from technological sources hardly fixes that issue.


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
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It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 

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