Response to Week three's readings

"Women are the twin halves of men". Over fourteen hundred years ago Islam gave women rights which women in the West have only been given during this century, such as the right to own property, the right to inherit and the right to make a contract in ones own name. Annie Besant, who was writing in the 1930's, observed that, "It is only in the last twenty years that Christian England has recognised the right of woman to property, while Islam has allowed this right from all times. It is a slander to say that Islam preaches that women have no souls". Women are seen as the spiritual and intellectual equals of men, though again this is not the image presented. The hijab (the garment worn by Muslim women to cover the hair), is another issue of contention. The media presents it as being an enforced condition, though for most Muslim women it is a voluntary act which signifies their allegiance to Islam, as well acting as a symbol of their faith. The negative images built up around the Muslim way of life has influenced the ideas of many of my non-Muslim colleagues at University who have implied in conversation that I wear the hijab because I am forced to by my community. Many have been surprised and enlightened when I have spoken about my true reasons, and furthermore that I chose to convert to Islam from another faith. Where the public believes that they are being presented with educational material about Islam from a reputable and reliable source, all that they are being provided with are the confused opinions of individual producers and journalists - many of whom begin their research with preconceived ideas and aims." (http://victorian.fortunecity.com/coldwater/439/muslimwomen_media.htm)

Turing--while writing in 1952, brings up a theological objection as to why machinery can't think...but he has several flaws in this section...the foremost when he says, "how do Christians regard the Moslim view that women have no souls?" (55). This is not an accurate dipiction of Islamic beliefs as we can see from the quote above. also, my officemate is Muslim and would have problems with Turing's statement. Although he says that he does not agree with the statement, "Hence no animal or machine can think." (55), he does not do a good job of shoring up his argument within a theological context.

I think his strongest argument on "if a machine can think" is Lady Lovelace's objection on Pg 59..."[it] has no pretensions to originate anything. it can do whatever we know how to order it to perform" a better theological argument would be that since a computer cannot regenerate itself...or reproduce itself biologically, it cannot think.

What makes man and machine different...at least from my perspective...is the argument of clairvoyance...
A machine would have to use statistics and controls inputted by a human in order to guess a card! Someone that has ESP (like Edgar Cayce or others--possibly Dr. Bush since he can predict the future) can feed off human electrical energies that surround us in order to more accurately guess (statistics help as well) what the value of the card would be.

In man's quest to compete with machine on an intellectual field, we have already taught them how to play board and card games with us...that is why so many of us constantly loose to the game...we play the computer all the time when we are solo (whether it be through Wii, XBox or our PC's and cell phones) so there is no doubt that we can make machines able to respond to us as if they are able to think...are they able to perform higher level thinking processes? Can they think on a theoretical level? That is technology that is still left to be seen.