Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere. The genie is out of the bottle, and there’s no putting it back. A flurry of controversies surround it, from plagiarism and creative integrity to job security and the stability of higher education. Debates rage over whether AI is robbing college students of thinking and writing skills, graphic designers of jobs, and authors of their intellectual property. We should also ask how dependence on AI may rob us of our humanity. What is conspicuously missing is a discussion on what makes us human and what intelligence actually is. Without an understanding of what intellect actually is, people theorize the possibility of artificial general intelligence (AGI), the hypothetical intelligence of a machine that can understand or learn any task that humans can, mimicking any human cognitive activity. We may fool ourselves into thinking we can engineer intelligence in machines, but there are certain things they will never be able to do. Understanding authentic intelligence will go a long way in guiding ethical debates about its artificial counterpart.
I. What does it mean to be human?
To be human is to be the image of God. Exactly how are we like him? After God says “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” he explains what it means by giving humanity a mandate: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:26-28). Zooming in to get more details on the creation narrative, we read in Genesis 2 that “God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (2:15). Next, God brings the animals to the man so he can name them (1:19-20). Naming is an act of dominion, but more fundamentally an act of reason. It takes reason to observe commonalities between things and distinguish categories by naming species. When God commissions man to be his viceregent ruling the earth, it is not as a despot but as a shepherd, studying the order of creation to put more order into it and cultivate it into something more than it could be on its own. To be a gardener is to understand creation so that you can cultivate it. It takes a mind to put order into something that doesn’t have it.
Making order from chaos is an integral part of the creation narrative. When Genesis 1:2 says that “The earth was without form and void,” what immediately strikes readers is not creation ex nihilo but creation out of chaos. Creation ex nihilo is certainly implied, but the story here appeals to Israelites at the foot of Sinai trying to un-learn Egyptian creation narratives. According to Egyptian myth, the god Atum emerges out of the chaotic primordial waters of Nun. In the Genesis account, God already exists and is outside and above chaos. “God is not a God of disorder but of peace” (1 Corinthians 14:33). He puts order into creation, then commissions mankind to put more order into creation. We are meant to be subcreators, as Tolkien said.
Subcreating includes procreating as God made man and created him to make more men, but subcreating also includes what theologians call the “cultural mandate” to fill the earth and subdue it. That is, we are meant to continue Adam’s task of naming. We observe animals, name them, and categorize their natures into genus and species. We see how plants function, then put them in rows to make do more than they could by themselves. We turn rocks into buildings, minerals into computers, and cotton plants into clothing. Besides science and technology, we also create culture (hence, “cultural” mandate), which is to say that we cultivate ourselves into civilization, producing not only technology but art. We compose symphonies, movies, fandoms, higher education, and bobble head figurines. These are all part of what it is to be human. They are the fruit of what it is to be the image of God.
If science and culture are only the fruit of intellect, what is intellect itself? What is the core or essence of what it is to be human? The cultural mandate as expressed in the Genesis narrative of gardening, naming, dominion, procreation are all fruits and effects of a common cause. The historical consensus through most of the history of theology and philosophy is that to be human is to be rational. What separates man from animal also separates man from machine. Part of what it is to be human is to have intelligence, and as we forget what intelligence is, our ability to distinguish between authentic and artificial intelligence becomes fuzzy. Defining intelligence begins with observing how humans are similar and different from animals.
II. Rational Animals
People have a lot in common with animals. We’re made of the same stuff and have bodies that feel pleasure and pain, express emotion, and even dream. We can learn habits, communicate with others, and even figure out how to use a stick to open a jar containing our favorite snack. Whatever we have in common with animals has to be ruled out as the core of what it is to be the image of God.
Since at least the fourth century BC, we’ve known that humans are uniquely gifted with reason. Aristotle (b. 384 BC) said, “All men by nature desire to know.” Augustine (b. 354 AD) said, “Man’s excellence consists in the fact that God made him His own image by giving him an intellectual soul, which raises him above the beasts of the field.” Tertullian (b. 160 AD) explains, “Consider first of all, from your own self, who are made ‘in the image and likeness of God,’ for what purpose it is that you also possess reason in yourself, who are a rational creature, as being not only made by a rational Artificer, but actually animated out of His substance.” Gregory of Nyssa (b. 335 AD), explaining that it should not surprise us that we know so little of God when we know so little of ourselves, draws the parallel in speaking of the image of God in man:
For if, while the archetype transcends comprehension, the nature of the image were comprehended, the contrary character of the attributes we behold in them would prove the defect of the image; but since the nature of our mind, which is the likeness of the Creator, evades our knowledge, it has an accurate resemblance to the superior nature, figuring by its own unknowableness the incomprehensible Nature.
Human nature is philosophically defined as “rational animals,” which persists in the scientific classification homo sapiens (“wise man”). The designation rational animal is not meant to classify humans as mere animals but rather to highlight what makes us different within the broader category that acknowledges our similarity. In fact, the thirteenth century theologian Thomas Aquinas emphasizes this point by saying that not all of what makes us human is the image of God, “The intellect or mind is that whereby the rational creature excels other creatures; wherefore this image of God is not found even in the rational creature except in the mind.” The human body is not the image of God. The Bible is clear that “God is spirit” and “a spirit does not have flesh and bones” (John 4:24; Luke 24:39). Having a body is what makes us similar to animals. God made us to be physical creatures. God joined mind and matter in creating humans. We’re a kind of hybrid, a rational animal.
If reason separates us from animals, that means whatever we have in common with them is not part of the image of God and is not part of intellect. Instead, whatever we have in common with animals must be a function of material bodies, although the mind has quite a transforming effect on the functions of the body. For example, animals have emotions, so emotions are a bodily function. It is common knowledge that stress affects health and medicine can change emotional states. Humans and their pet dogs both feel stress when away from family or in the presence of danger. Human intellect identifies delights or dangers that animals could never imagine, but the emotional aspect of our response is our body’s response or interaction with the mind. This isn’t to say that desire, delight, and disappointment have no place in the intellect. Love, for example, may be expressed through the entire spectrum of emotion, from fury to fondness, which shows that love (as a virtue) is something more than emotion. But that it is no more without emotion than our mind is without a body.
Humans and animals have a lot in common. We both dream, become emotionally attached to people, and need attention and play to remain physically healthy. Don’t believe Disney movies when they tell you that what makes us human is our emotion. That urban myth, combined with minimal understanding of human intellect, has given rise to people attempting to attribute personhood to animals. Not surprisingly, people are now “dating” AI girlfriends and attributing personhood to them as well. If animals have emotions and no immaterial soul, then emotions are a physical function. It may or may not be theoretically possible that technology may one day replicate those physical functions, but what can never be replicated is authentic intelligence, which we turn to now.
III. What is Authentic Intelligence?
If the image of God entails having minds, what are the commonalities and differences between human intelligence and artificial intelligence?
The power of reason is defined by its actions. Just as the ability to speak, write, and sing are defined by the actions they produce, reason is defined by the acts of mind that define human intellect. Defining human nature as rational animal points to the essence of what it is to be human, and definitions point to the perfect expression of something. When people choose to act like fools, they are still rational animals. People with mental disabilities or fetuses and infants are also still rational animals. Babies will grow into reasoning adults, and disabilities may heal by medicine or miracle. If Jesus were to make a donkey talk, it would either be by puppetry or by an act of creating a new species. Giving an animal body a mind that can speak sounds familiar. If Jesus makes a mute human speak, it is a restoration of their already-existing human nature.
The human ability to speak, write, and sing is a function of language. While animals may have complex systems of signals and may be trained with human sign language, they can never understand language as language. Examples abound of humans teaching orangutans sign language, but they do not invent it themselves, and they do not display abstract understanding as will be described below. By contrast, humans invent language because it is not so much a system of signals as it is a symbolic representation of human understanding. Human language provides infinite flexibility and creativity. The philosopher Heraclitus (c. 500 BC) was the first on record to say that the Greek word logos (“word”) also refers to reason because that’s what it represents. Other Greek philosophers picked up on this and recognized that any time we see order in the universe it displays a divine logos. Early Stoics spiritualized the laws of nature into a somewhat pantheistic divine Logos and later Stoics attributed personhood to it, saying that it even cares for humans and has personalized plans for their lives. When John 1 says that “the Word was God” and created all things, the apostle intentionally affirms the claim of widespread Roman stoicism that God is the creator. But John adds that He loves us in such a way that he would become human, dwell among us, and give his life for us.
Language is still a product of reason and not constitutive of it. In order to whittle intellect down to its essential attributes, we need to survey distinctly human actions and take note of their similarities. Animals do not have true language. They may create nests, but not art. They sing beautiful notes, but not songs. They collect in groups, but do not seek the common good. Distinctly human actions are all the fruit of what both classical and modern logicians call the three acts of mind. The three acts of mind are the core function and definition of authentic intelligence that cannot be replicated by AI. AI may be programmed to mimic authentic intelligence enough to fool those who don’t know what authentic intelligence is, but it can never come close to the three acts of mind.
IV. The Three Acts of Mind
What logic calls “the first act of mind” is “understanding.” Understanding is the apprehension of abstract concepts. Dogs can pursue goals, like chasing a rabbit, and learn stimulus-response habits, like begging or house training, but they do not abstractly understand what they are doing. They cannot reflect on their actions, think about thinking, or become self-aware in the way humans are.
The understanding of concepts is expressed in terms and represented by words, but it is not confined to those words. If it was, translation between languages would be impossible. An easy thought experiment illustrates the point. We can think of what it is to be a tree and how trees are different from bushes. Trees have roots, trunk, and crown (leaves). A child may draw a tree with a couple vertical lines and a squiggly circle. I don’t know what species of tree that is, but I know that the word “tree” also applies to pine trees, palm trees, and willow trees, even though I mentally symbolize the abstract understanding of “tree” with a generic shape that more closely resembles an oak tree. I know the difference between the symbol and the abstraction because I am human and can understand abstract concepts. While an animal may pursue a goal, it cannot reflect on its action as a goal. Reflection, or thinking about thoughts, is only possible because humans understand abstractions.
The mind most commonly apprehends abstract concepts by observing many individual things (like trees), subtracting their differences (size, number of leaves, fruit), and abstracting their commonalities (trunk, roots, crown) to form a concept that universally applies to each of the individuals. Apprehending universals by abstracting commonalities is similar to pattern recognition, also known as induction. But patterns can fail, so they only produce probable knowledge that something is likely to continue in the same pattern. When something “clicks” as being necessary, then probabilistic knowledge becomes certainty. For example, at first a child learns by practice that water doesn’t increase or decrease when poured into differently shaped containers, but at some point the principle of the conservation of mass clicks. Similarly, a child may follow rules by sheer duty, but hopefully they come to understand that duties arise from principles that, when understood, characterize wisdom. A child’s process of learning may result in growth of understanding, but learning itself results from the first act of the mind. All knowledge begins with the basic ability to recognize commonalities and differences in things. AI can outpace humans in probabilistic pattern recognition, but it lacks the most basic act of mind.
The second act of the mind is “judgement.” Judgement combines the understanding of abstract concepts into propositions that make truth claims expressed by declarative sentences. “A tree is tall” combines the concepts “tree” and “tall” to make a true claim while “a phoenix is real” combines terms to make a false claim. A claim is true if it matches reality.
The third act of the mind is “reason.” Reason combines truth claims into a syllogistic argument that explains why a claim is true by stringing together three claims. “Humans are mortal; John is a human; Therefore, John is mortal.” John is mortal because he is human. A syllogism claims a generality, claims or denies that something counts as an instance of that generality, then makes a conclusion. “The tree is tall because it is taller than me” claims that “something is ‘tall’ relative to my height (generality); the tree counts as one of these things; therefore a tree is tall.” When an argument omits one of its three claims because it is implied, assumed, or obvious, it’s called an enthymeme. “Abortion is wrong because it kills an innocent life” leaves out “killing innocent lives is wrong.” Arguments may mimic syllogisms while not pointing to what justifies why the conclusion is true. In more technical language, the argument may be valid but not sound. For example, “Texas is big because it’s the biggest state” is a valid argument. It has a true conclusion that does indeed come from the premise that Texas is the biggest state. The argument is correct in form, but it has the facts wrong. The argument presents a faulty justification because the conclusion comes from a false premise. The conclusion is true by sheer coincidence and not because the argument correctly identifies why the conclusion is true.
Everyday thought is characterized by syllogistic reasoning. It is so integral to our mental activity that we are hardly aware of it most of the time. At its simplest, syllogistic reasoning is simply moving from one thought to another by way of some bridge or connection. Syllogistic reasoning uses judgements and understanding, so mental activity can be seen as cumulative or holistic in its simplicity. For example, “Cheryl needs to go to the store for groceries” uses understanding of a variety of concepts; employs truth claims about needs, stores, and groceries; and combines these into a justification for why Cheryl needs to go to the store.
V. Intellect Seeks God
Since humans understand abstractions, make judgements and truth claims, and engage in discursive reasoning, we are self-aware in a way that animals are not. While intellect is defined by its three acts, it also has several consequent properties. Understanding abstractions makes us capable of reflection, thinking about thinking. This level of self-consciousness generates moral responsibility as we do not act on instinct but act for ends. We know what we ought to do and choose to do it or not. Since we are self-aware, we are other-aware and can serve others for their gain. We can sacrifice our private good for the common good in the love of neighbor. Language is also an expression of intellect as it relies on understanding, judgement, and reason. It also shows us that humans are made for community in a way that animals are not. Dolphins may use complex symbols, and monkeys may be taught sign language, but animals cannot invent new languages. Human discovery and creativity push us to invent new words to express new concepts. It is no wonder that language is always changing. Artificial intelligence will never be self-aware in the way that generates moral responsibility, seeks the common good out of unconditional love, or parallels human creativity.
With a full picture of the essential functions of intellect, we see that it seeks not only to understand that something is true but to know why. We are not satisfied with Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade that “Theirs not to reason why; Theirs but to do and die. Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.” We want to know why something is true—to understand causes.
Aristotle said, “All men by nature desire to know” and “wisdom is understanding causes,” namely the highest or first cause. “Evidently there is a first principle, and the causes of things are neither an infinite series nor infinitely various in kind… if there is no first there is no cause at all.” Man’s craving to know is fulfilled in knowing God. “The First Mover, then, of necessity exists; and in so far as it is necessary, it is good… If, then, God is always in that good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder…” Who is God?
And life also belongs to God: for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and God’s essential actuality is life most good and eternal. We say therefore that God is a living being, eternal, most good, so that life and duration continuous and eternal belong to God; for this is God.
The desire to understand is fulfilled in “the activity of intellect, which is contemplative” and thus “it follows that this will be the complete happiness of man.” But contemplating God is beyond man’s ability.
Such a life would be too high for man… as something divine is present in him… But we must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us; for even if we be small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth surpass everything.”
Since comprehending God is beyond our ability, perhaps it is god-given. “If there is any gift of the gods to men, it is reasonable that happiness should be god-given, and most surely god-given of all human things inasmuch as it is the best… for that which is prized and even of virtue seems to be the best thing and something godlike and blessed.” Thomas Aquinas agrees, “Even as we hold by faith that the last end of man’s life is to see God, so the philosophers maintained that man’s ultimate happiness is to understand immaterial substances according to their being… and this will be the beatific vision.” Nevertheless, “to see the essence of God is possible to the created intellect by grace, and not by nature.”
Aristotle is saying that even though man has much in common with the beasts, intellect is something we have in common with God. That presents us with a choice. We can focus our lives attending to our very worldly and mortal subsistence, or we can dedicate our lives to “strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us.” Aristotle recognizes that the image of God in man means that man is made to know God. Knowing God is what makes men happy, “It follows that the activity of God, which is transcendent in blessedness, is the activity of contemplation; and therefore among human activities that which is most akin to the divine activity of contemplation will be the greatest source of happiness.”
Can we know God on our own ability? Romans 1:18-20 says:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Faith is not required to believe in God, for “even the demons believe—and shudder!” (James 2:19). Rather, it takes god-given faith to stop suppressing the truth. Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
Having defined authentic intelligence by the three acts of the mind, which are fulfilled in knowledge of God, we can see that artificial intellect will never have the three acts of the mind. We are now equipped to discuss further limitations of artificial intelligence.
VI. The Impossibility of Artificial Intelligence
While explaining the nature of intellect helps us separate humans from animals, one might still ask, can genuine intelligence arise from a manmade machine? What’s to say that AI cannot one day perform the three acts of the mind? The above arguments can be supplemented with at least one more theological argument and one philosophical argument.
Theologically, humans are a creation of God. While God often works through secondary causes, it is clear that mankind is a special creation. God “formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Genesis 2:7). There is a special ensoulement that occurs in human creation as God makes man in his image. Thomas Aquinas draws from this verse to develop his theological argument.
Aquinas says, “The rational soul can be made only by creation.” Only God creates simpliciter or ex nihilo. “The First Agent alone can act without presupposing the existence of anything… Everything else acts by producing a change,” namely, “a change in matter,” Therefore, “the rational soul cannot be produced by a change in matter, it cannot be produced, save immediately by God.” In both procreation and human ingenuity, people create by rearranging matter. Whereas a human’s physical body draws from both parents the soul is not created from the soul of either parent. That “would involve the transmutation of one spiritual substance into another.” While the human soul is “created at the same time as the body,” it is not created in the same way.
The view that the human soul is derived or transmuted from the “spiritual substance” of the parents (similar to DNA transmission) is called traducianism. Traducianism is generally considered a heresy because it opposes the spiritual nature of the soul. The human soul is spiritual, not physical, even though it is united to the body as a composite nature. To treat spirit as matter undermines their difference, and leads to a host of problems both metaphysically and biblically. While it would be fruitful to explore the problems with traducianism, that is beyond the scope of this essay.
Another reason the soul must be created through a divine act is due to the soul’s incorruptible nature. When a thing exists by artifice, it is not, properly speaking, a substance, a self-subsisting thing. It is more properly considered an arrangement or a relation of things that exist of themselves. The soul exists of itself because God created it as a truly incorruptible substance. It will continue to exist forever without decaying into nonexistence unless God were to supernaturally annihilate it. This is even inadvertently affirmed in the heretical belief of annihilationism, which says that God destroys the wicked rather than giving them eternal punishment.
For a thing to truly be said to exist as a real, subsisting thing and not merely as an arrangement of pre-existing things, it must contain its own existence as given to it by God. This is not to say that the human soul has divine aseity or necessity. Rather, it is given its existence by God, not merely as a rearrangement of matter or “spiritual matter” but as a distinct being. This allows for the creature-creator distinction. The Creator and creation are separate beings because they have separate existence. But the difference between a substantial being that exists and an arrangement of existing things is the difference between an incorruptible substance and a corruptible relation. “Only substances are properly and truly called beings,” Aquinas says, and since “the rational soul is a subsistent form,” therefore “it cannot be made of pre-existing matter—whether corporeal, which would render it a corporeal being—or spiritual, which would involve the transmutation of one spiritual substance into another.” Theologically, God’s special creation of man’s intellectual soul as spirit distinguishes it from matter as a supernatural creation that cannot be replicated by human artifice.
There is also a philosophical argument that the soul is incorporeal, subsistent, and incorruptible. In the first act of the mind, the intellect can understand things universally. In understanding the universal “tree”, it can know something about all trees and is not limited to apprehending or imagining only particular trees. Aquinas says, “Whatever knows certain things cannot have any of them in its own nature; because that which is in it naturally would impede the knowledge of anything else.” Like glass that is tinted red, the presence of a particular color impedes anything else. In order for the mind to let in universals it cannot be limited by particularity.
The immaterial mind uses the physical brain as its vehicle, and so we use particular images to represent universals. For example, when thinking of “tree” as an abstraction, we symbolize it with a particular image even while we know that the image does not sufficiently represent the full scope of the universal. The apprehension of the universal above and beyond the particular mental image is the first act of the immaterial mind not limited by being a purely physical phenomenon. Knowledge of universals occurs when the immaterial mind abstracts universals from particular images. Since apprehension of universals is not limited as a merely physical phenomenon, the human mind must be immaterial. As an immaterial substance, it also is incorruptible and cannot be created by humans. Since the three acts of the mind are the characteristic actions of this immaterial substance, they cannot be replicated by a purely material mechanism, such as AI, nor even by purely physical creatures, such as plants or animals.
VII. What AI Cannot Do
If the three acts of the mind are properties of authentic intelligence, then artificial intelligence can only mimic them. We can program machines to match the image of a word with a picture in order to make a connection that imitates language. AI can make and catalog similarities faster than humans, but this is not essentially different from my napkin being better at “remembering” phone numbers than I am. AI is not any more self-aware than my notepad when both display “I know I exist.” A calculator does not “understand” numbers abstractly, “judge” truth claims, or “reason” about what justifies something as true. While AI can be programmed to parrot humans and mimic discovery and reasoning, this is mere mimicry—an illusion that is more deceptive when we do not understand the true nature of intellect.
When an AI image generator spits out an image, it is only creating by rearranging what humans have created. Of course, humans are only rearranging what God has created, but we have the image of God because our subcreation is done for abstract reasons. Like a dog chasing a rabbit, an AI may process input and spit out a picture, song, or words, but it does not understand these abstractly as goals accomplished for reasons. It is not—and can never be—self-aware.
AI also cannot reflect. Reflection is a function of reason as it thinks about thinking. This entire article is an exercise in thinking about thinking. The previous sentence is an exercise in thinking about “thinking about thinking.” This level of abstract reasoning is only possible by authentic intelligence, and it is also what generates moral responsibility. The ability to compare what ought to be (or what is expected) with what happens to be the case requires abstraction. This comparison is symbolized in the comedy-tragedy theater masks. When expectation is subverted with a pleasant result, we have comedy, and when the result is not pleasant, we have tragedy. Recognition of good endings or tragedy requires a mind. For that matter, theater requires a mind.
On the other hand, AI and other manmade machines can hypothetically come to have whatever animals have. If animals do not have an immaterial and immortal soul, all of their actions are functions of mechanical materialistic systems. Animals are essentially complex material systems, and humans are good at creating complex mechanical systems. The building blocks may even be biological. Recent geneticists have started to use DNA as a structural building block. If you imagine DNA as a zipper, you can connect half of a partially unzipped zipper to another zipper. You can then string several zippers together in a complex shape that may be used. Geneticists have also created microscopic biological nanobots that can perform complex biological tasks. It is not beyond imagination that humans may be able to eventually engineer machines with emotions.
Emotion doesn’t even separate us from ants, which can feel pleasure and pain. Of course, more complex animals have more complex emotions, and human intellect interacts with the “passions of the flesh” in quite complex ways. Nevertheless, what separates man from machine is man’s authentic intelligence. A proper understanding of intellect is essential in seeing artificial intelligence as what it is—artificial.
We cannot underestimate human ingenuity or what future technology may accomplish. But we can chart some of the metaphysical limitations. Human engineering will not be able to create a machine that can engage in the three acts that are characteristic of the immaterial intellectual soul. Human intellect is the mark of the image of God in man and the result of his workmanship alone. Without a clear understanding of intellect, it is easier to miss the mark in addressing the variety of ethical concerns related to AI. In order for our answers to be principled and well constructed, they must start from a sufficient metaphysic of human intellect.
