Kerry On

A few years ago I was interviewed on Catholic TV and on Sirius Radio about my meeting Mother Teresa in 1989. We met in Kentucky during a fundraising event. Lucky me, my friend brought a camera with him and called my name. I looked up at him after I gave Mother a big smooch on her cheek. He took this amazing photo.  Mother Teresa was intentionally present. Whether she was comforting the dying, or sitting at a dinner or speaking engagement, or writing one of her many letters, she was present to the people in front of her. Anyone who has lived a public life can attest to the difficulty of this task. For those few moments of time reading a letter and responding, her attention was focused solely on you.  Here is a letter she sent to me after i invited her to Cincinnati, Ohio. It is typed on a simple typewriter on paper that is stamped with the Missionaries of Charity to make it a letterhead.  Mother Teresa signed it in her handwriting. Such attention!  My interviewer wrot...

Artificial intelligence is a complex achievement of human making. It demonstrates technē at an unprecedented scale. I decided to look at this advancement in techne through the brilliance of Pope Benedict XVI. Pope Benedict XVI addressed the relationship between techne (technique, craft, applied science) and episteme (rational knowledge, understanding, science) by arguing that modern, purely functional, and utilitarian approaches to technology (techne) must be guided by a deeper, ethical, and metaphysical understanding of reality (episteme). He applied an ancient philosophical distinction that is increasingly urgent today—the distinction between technē and epistēmē. If AI is evaluated only in terms of efficiency, prediction, and utility, deeper questions about meaning, freedom, dignity, and truth risk being displaced. A society guided solely by technē risks losing sight of the epistēmē that ought to govern it. It risks losing its soul and nous . Soul (psyche) is the animating, life-givi...