Reflections on Magnifica Humanitas for Catholic Educators
On the importance of our shared responsibility to model critical thinking
Note: I’d planned to give a version of the following address on Magnifica Humanitas at a faculty workshop. However, I got ill and thus couldn’t deliver it. Many have remarked on this important document authored by Pope Leo XIV. My hope is that you’ll still find it (and my commentary on it) timely. If you like what you read, please consider forwarding this post or subscribing to this newsletter.
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I.
Over the summer, I ran into my mom’s neighbor who flies C-130s for the US military. When I asked him about his job, he said it was good, albeit there had been some adjustments made to the latest redesign of the C-130 that required some getting used to. He told me that two crew seats had been permanently removed in the redesign: the dedicated flight engineer and the navigator.1
I asked, “Are those people out of a job?”
“Well,” he said, “we’d known it was coming for several years now. Some got retrained as pilots.”
Presumably, those flight engineers and navigators had gone to school for those positions. I’m not sure if anyone asked them whether they wanted to keep their seats. What matters here is how the alterations in a technological environment—in this case, an airplane—may have pre-empted discussions with those stakeholders most affected by this change.
II.
With this anecdote in mind, let’s ask a guiding question, “What are the implications of Magnifica Humanitas for our mission to form students?” To begin, the document invites us to change how we speak and therefore think about AI. It is commonplace to say that AI is a neutral tool that can be used for good or evil depending upon the agent wielding it. Pope Leo corrects this pervasive but shortsighted view. He writes,
“In the abstract, technology in and of itself is not a solution to humanity’s problems, just as it is not inherently evil. In practice, however, technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it.”2
The Pope clearly wants the faithful to reflect upon the social, political, and ethical implications of technology, especially AI. The theme of the non-neutrality of technology recurs repeatedly throughout the document.3 His thoughts here correspond with what the Catholic intellectual Marshal McLuhan had to say about the matter: “Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot.”4 If we are not to be tech idiots, and if we don’t wish to spread our tech idiocy to students, we need to stop calling AI a neutral tool that can be used well or poorly depending on the will of the agent. If technology, especially AI, is not a neutral tool, then what is it? One answer is that it is an environment, a milieu, an architecture. It’s not that there’s not some truth to the idea that you can use a hammer to drive a nail or send someone to the hospital; it’s only that by focusing attention on the neutrality of technology you may obscure this crucial environmental dimension.
The overarching metaphor that Pope Leo uses in MH is environmental in nature. In the beginning of the document, he introduces the contrasting images of the Tower of Babel and Nehemiah rebuilding the wall in Jerusalem. Those who set to work on both projects were engaged in building environments that would have consequences for those who lived in and around them. Paragraph 110 of MH reads,
“Our task today is not only ethical or technical. It is ecological in the deepest sense, for it concerns a new dimension of our common home. AI is already an environment in which we are immersed, as well as a force with which we must engage.”5
A rich literature and field of study known as media ecology corroborates the Pope’s thoughts here. The media ecologist Neil Postman writes,
“The word ecology implies the study of environments: their structure, content, and impact on people.
An environment is, after all, a complex message system which imposes on human beings certain ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
It structures what we can see and say and, therefore, do.
It assigns roles to us and insists on our playing them.
It specifies what we are permitted to do and what we are not. Sometimes, as in the case of a courtroom, or classroom, or business office, the specifications are explicit and formal.
In the case of media environments (e.g., books, radio, film, television, etc.), the specifications are more often implicit and informal, half concealed by our assumption that what we are dealing with is not an environment but merely a machine.
Media ecology tries to make these specifications explicit.”6
Such taken-for-granted media environments may be physical or digital. Whatever the case may be, our task in thinking about technology is to become aware of these inconspicuous environments and their effects. For example, the front porch is more than just an architectural feature. It is a liminal space that mediates between public and private life, facilitating conversation among neighbors that might not otherwise occur.7 Email is not simply a neutral tool that you can use well or poorly. It totally transforms our understanding of work, altering our expectations of acceptable communication.
The microphone was not a simple addition to the liturgy. Per McLuhan, it was unsuitable to the murmur of Latin and to exhortation from the pulpit. You can’t really yell into a microphone.8 McLuhan doesn’t want to argue whether the mic was good or bad or neutral. Rather, he wants to ask, “What effects on thought, perception, and community life did the microphone bring about?” Perhaps, he suggests, the mic had more to do with turning the priest ad populum than most realize.
III.
Critical thinking, a much-beloved term in our age of AI, turns out to be the ability to question well, to utilize the appropriate metaphors, and to attend to the underlying narratives guiding social life. The Pope writes,
“…it is important to recall that communication ‘is not only the transmission of information, but it is also the creation of a culture.’ The content that circulates within digital environments shapes how people perceive the world and introduces into the collective consciousness images and narratives that direct our desires and influence our daily choices.”9
How we repeatedly speak of technology affects how we think about it. By calling AI a neutral tool, by downplaying its social and political dimensions, we fail in our responsibility as scholars to think critically. Critical thinking is not so much something to be taught according to a method but a philosophical habit of mind to embody, such that students have a model to imitate.10 Alluding to Nehemiah building the wall, the Pope insists,
“No one can single-handedly bear the weight of the challenges the world is facing, just as no one is so weak that they cannot play their part, for “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9). All are given their own section of the wall: scientists and researchers, entrepreneurs and workers, educators and legislators, civil society, popular movements and faith communities.”11
Everyone has their own section of the wall, scholars and students alike. I once heard a prayer that went: “Lord, I am only one. But I am one. I cannot do everything. But I can do something.” If you, the educator, don’t model for students how to think about AI, then who will? Undoubtedly, certain powerful actors would be more than happy to instruct the youth about how to use their products and services. Let your prayer, therefore, be as simple as that of Isaiah: “Here I am. Send me.”12 MH invites us to consider our first responsibility as scholars: to think well and to embody a philosophical habit of mind worthy of our students’ imitation.
Why weren’t these people needed anymore? Automation. See here: https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/134346/pilots-give-new-c-130j-aircraft-rave-reviews/.
MH, para 9.
For more on the non-neutrality of tech, see also paragraphs 85, 92, and 104:
“Technological innovations, including artificial intelligence, are not neutral, for they can either foster participation and justice or exacerbate inequality, control and exclusion” (para 85).
“In his Encyclical Laudato Si’, Pope Francis denounced the growing dominance of a technocratic paradigm in our globalized world: the tendency to let the logic of efficiency, control and profit alone shape personal, social and economic decisions. This makes it clear that technology is not simply a tool. When it becomes the standard by which everything is judged, it begins to dictate what matters and what can be discarded, reducing creation to an object of exploitation and human beings to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency” (para 92).
“…we cannot consider AI to be morally neutral. In reality, every technical tool embodies choices and priorities through what it measures, ignores and optimizes, and how it classifies people and situations. If a system is designed or used in a way that treats some lives as less worthy, or excludes them without the possibility of appeal, then it is not merely a tool ‘to be used well,’ since it has already introduced criteria that contradict the inalienable dignity of the human person. For this reason, ethical discernment cannot be limited to asking whether we are using a system for good or bad purposes; it must also examine how that system is designed and what vision of the human person and society is embedded in the data and models that guide it” (para 104).
Understanding Media, 1964, pp. 31. McLuhan’s concern was perhaps less overtly political than the Pope’s, but he still wanted us to widen our purview beyond thinking about technology as neutral.
MH, para 110.
See Richard H. Thomas, “From Porch to Patio” in The Palimpsest. https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/From-Porch-to-Patio-R.-Thomas.pdf
See “Liturgy and the Microphone” in The Medium and the Light.
MH, para 135.
See Newman, The Idea of a University, on the importance of a philosophical habit of mind. The word “responsibility” appears 74 times in Magnifica Humanitas.
MH, para 13.
Is 6:8.