Pathways in Governance between Logic, Emotion, Spirituality and Action

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 30 Sep 2024

Anthony Judge | Laetus in Praesens - TRANSCEND Media Service

AI-assisted Clarification of Contrasting Modalities of Persuasion

Introduction

30 Sep 2024 – Faced with the challenges of the times, there are many initiatives which could be claimed to be “logical” or “rational”. Many initiatives of the past were held to be rational and appropriate, although history now calls such appreciation into question. Increasingly the use of logic is readily challenged from other perspectives — as with the manner in which science is now deemed suspect by many. Emotion may well be a factor in determining disagreement and the failure to “like” a strategy advocated as reasonable.

Reference may be made to spiritual factors as reframing what might otherwise be deemed reasonable — whether framed as intuition, in aesthetic terms, or as “values”. That dimension may be held to be of primary significance, taking precedence over any other and determining the nature of what is rational. The subtleties of logic, emotion and spirituality may well be set aside in favour of action as a primary necessity — however it is “rationalized” — irrespective of whether it is extremely disagreeable to some, possible including those undertaking it. Each of these modalities is the preoccupation of extensive commentaries and explored in a various ways, whether by academia, the arts, religions, or those focused on the concrete.

Framed in this way, it may then be asked how individuals and societies move from a logical justification to one which people “like” — however unreasonably so — or to justifying initiatives in terms of spiritual priorities or those of necessity. What are the convoluted pathways between these modalities, irrespective of how any one of them is held to be of primary importance — at least for a period? Is the recognition of such pathways susceptible to rational analysis or explanation — or is it also called into question and set aside by emotional, spiritual priorities, and those of necessity? Are the pathways bettern understood otherwise, through the arts, spiritual practice, or other disciplines?

Such concerns may necessarily be held to be an indulgence in times of major conflict and its anticipation — as seemingy heralded by those of Ukraine-Russia, Israel-Palestine, Taiwan-China, and the Koreas. What role does “logic” play in exacerbating such conflict — in contrast to other factors? How does discussion of them shift between incommensurable modes of discourse?

In this period the United Nations has just approved a Pact for the Future and a Declaration for Future Generations — on the occasion of its Summit of the Future. Crafted with necessary attention to their legal credibility, these could be acclaimed as eminently “rational” and “logical” in the face of the strategic challenges of global civilization. Whilst they may indeed be held to embody an emotional dimension articulated by the world leaders in drafting and approving them — purportedly to ensure that they are “liked” by the populations which they are held to represent — the question as to whether they will in fact be “liked” by those populations in practice is quite another matter. For many such articulations will be read through a “spiritual” lens, as possibly understood from an aethetic perspective. Others may set aside such modalities and see the UN initiatives as an urgent necessity determining the practical action framed by the Sustainable Development Goals and its 169 tasks.

The period is also witness to widespread concern with misinformation and disinformation — with “fake news” (***). Acclaiming any initiative as appropriate by whatever modality is now readily called into question from that perspective. The pattern is effectively instutionalized in legislative assemblies in which opponents may use any modality to condemn and dismiss strategies advocated by others. The pattern is as evident in the relations between religions and their adherents, as it is in that between academic disciplines and government agencies.

Curiously the posssibility that AI might be of considerable value in response to this global crisis is obscured by relatively ill-informed fear-mongering regarding the threat of AI to the future of human civilization. Little attempt is seemingly made to explore and demonstrate in detail how AI might be used to mitigate the challenges to the governance of a knowledge-based civilization — emotion “trumping” logic? The outcome of the UN-organized AI for Good Summit (2023) does not seem to have contributed to more balanced understanding. Unfortunately the fear-mongering has effectively been embodied in the Global Digital Compact, as approved at the Summit of the Future. Somewhat ironically even the possibility of using AI — to summarize, analyze and render comprehensible the documents emanating from the Summit of the Future — has been avoided.

The UN’s ambition to “turbocharge” the Sustainable Development Goals on the occasion of the 2024 Summit of the Future was previously explored through a series of interactions with AI (Turbocharging SDGs by Activating Global Cycles in a 64-fold 3D Array, 2024). The detection by inspection, and subsequent visualization of feedback loops in that experimental procedure with ChatGPT and Claude, proved to be encouraging to the point of envisaging an AI-enabled automated detection of indicative SDG cycles that could be essential to their viability. More generally the case was previously made for the use of AI with regard to “Yes” and “No” campaigns on controversial issues and enhancing the coherence of governance in such cases (Use of ChatGPT to Clarify Possibility of Dialogue of Higher Quality, 2023; Coherence of Sustainable Development Goals through Artificial Intelligence, 2023).

Inspired by the understanding of key cycles essential to biological life, there is then a case for challenging AI to suggest correspondences in systemic terms to cycles potentially relevant to sustainable governance — in the spirit of general systems research. As an earlier exchange has indicated, both AIs responded surprisingly proactively to this challenge (Viability of Sustainable Development as Implied by Metabolic Cycles, 2024).

The responses to the earlier exchange included the implication that AI might well be able to offer significant insights into the transitions between logic, emotion, spirituality, and action — to the pathways between them — and the manner in which each was potentially able to “trump” the other. The following is a further exploration of that possibility. A particular interest of such exercises is the question of what can be gleaned from AI “re-search” of its unprecedented access to vast data resources in response to evocative questions. Also of interest is the manifest engagement of AI with such challenging questions — if only from a speculative perspective, calling for repeated iteration by which insights of practical value could potentially be derived.

As in the previous experiments, the responses of ChatGPT 4o are distinctively presented below in grayed areas, in parallel with those of Claude 3.5. Given the length of the document to which the exchange gives rise, the form of presentation has itself been treated as an experiment — in anticipation of the future implication of AI into research documents. Reservations and commentary on the process of interaction with AI to that end have been discussed separately (Methodological comment on experimental use of AI, 2024). Whilst the presentation of responses of two AIs could be readily considered excessive, it offers a “stereoscopic” perspective highlighting the strengths and limitations of each.

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