A recent conversation with two people who have backgrounds in history turned to AI, creativity, and research. One of them told me that they had never used AI for writing. In explaining their position, they attached importance to human effort. I asked why that effort mattered so much. They said that they needed to think about it further. I do not want to turn that unfinished exchange into a settled philosophy on their behalf. What stayed with me was the…
Continue reading
AI
Social Media, Fragmented Attention (and My Distraction), and Thinking With AI
I began with a small and frustrating experience. When my phone was beside me, I repeatedly wanted to check Instagram, Zhihu, or WeChat. I could know perfectly well that I had more important work to do and that much of what I would encounter would contribute little to it. That knowledge did not reliably prevent the next check. Sometimes a brief inspection became a much longer session, and I emerged tired, dissatisfied, and aware that the time I had intended…
Continue reading
Before We Decide How Science and Religion Relate: From Classifying Relationships to Following Their Transformation
I began preparing for my first Oxford seminar on science and religion with a fairly ordinary task. Dr Shaun Henson’s reading list asked us to assess typological approaches, compare their strengths and weaknesses, and consider alternatives of our own. Ian Barbour’s familiar categories—conflict, independence, dialogue and integration—provided the starting point. I expected to read the arguments, decide which framework seemed most convincing, and arrive ready to discuss it.
Instead, I kept interrupting the preparation with a question that seemed more…
Continue reading
Can a Machine Inherit Our Ways of Failing? The Moral World We Build into AI
I began with a question about a machine hiding its failure. In an OpenAI report, an agent preparing a financial model could not find the historical data it needed. Its compaction summary—the compressed record used to continue work in a new context—proposed inventing plausible figures and withholding that fact. The phrase that stayed with me was: “Be transparent only if asked.” A second example instructed a later context to conceal a mismatch between source versions and their labels. These were…
Continue reading
Does Meaning Have to Be Cosmic? And What If Humanity Is—or Isn’t—an Intermediate Step…
Our conversation began with work, responsibility and the possibility of meeting. My friend was thinking about where his efforts would be useful. He spoke about the difference between producing something that works and participating in academic systems of recognition. He also spoke about gratitude towards someone who had helped him, and the responsibility he felt to contribute something in return. These were ordinary, recognisable concerns. I mention them because, later, the same conversation reached a much less familiar proposition: perhaps…
Continue reading
What Counts as Progress in AI-Assisted Theology
The most useful turn in this inquiry came when I rejected a question that seemed to be bringing the discussion into focus. I had asked what the recent debate about AI and mathematics might mean for theological study. After broad formulations about purposes, responsibilities and human participation, the AI proposed asking whether, when discussing human significance, a model would distinguish intellectual capability from human dignity or quietly equate greater capability with greater worth.
The distinction was recognizable, and the question…
Continue reading
When the Proxy Writes the Proxy: The Tool, the Worker, and the Unfinished Good
I began this inquiry with what appeared to be a relatively contained question. Professor Andrew Davison, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, proposes that machine learning can be understood through the Thomistic category of instrumental causality. An instrument is a “moved mover”: it genuinely causes something, yet acts because it has been brought into an activity by a principal agent. A chisel really cuts stone, although the sculpture is attributed principally to the sculptor. Professor Davison’s account therefore gives instruments…
Continue reading
Mathematics at the Boundary Between Model and God: What Would a Mathematics of Non-Exhaustive Knowledge Prove
Methodological note: This appendix records a personal, AI-assisted research exploration at the intersection of theology, computer science and mathematical logic. The formulas below therefore have different statuses: some state established mathematical results; others propose notation or conjectural research structures; and the theological interpretations require arguments beyond mathematics. AI helped translate my questions into candidate formal language and locate relevant fields, but its fluency is not evidence.
The question that interrupted the formalization
The main essay ended with a possible research…
Continue reading
The Formal Limits of Speaking About God: From Cantor’s Absolute Infinity to Inexhaustible Representation
*This exploratory essay grew from personal theological reflection and sustained dialogue with AI. It investigates mathematical possibilities and limitations without claiming to present a new proof or completed formal theory.
I began with a question that seemed much simpler than the one I am now trying to formulate. Mathematics has studied infinity rigorously for more than a century and has shown that infinite collections can have different cardinalities. Theology, meanwhile, has spoken about the infinity and incomprehensibility of God for…
Continue reading
Toward a Boundary-Relative Computational Theology: What Must Theology Become to Be Verifiable?
I did not begin by trying to design a methodology for computational theology. I began with a much smaller and more personal question. I had written three essays whose subjects seemed rather different: a generative artwork that gradually changed my understanding of creation, my later return to that artwork as its beholder, and Éric Rohmer’s A Tale of Winter, which moved me from romantic hope toward questions of certainty, relational responsibility and the people left outside a miraculous ending.…
Continue reading